Support the work of the FW de Klerk Foundation
For more information regarding donations contact info@fwdeklerk.org or scan the QR code below
2024 IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR PART 2 – KEY BUDGETARY & SOCIAL CHANGES THAT IMPACTED OUR RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS
Issued by Daniela Ellerbeck on behalf of the FW de Klerk Foundation 21/05/2025
Introduction
This is the second article in a series of two that cover broad societal developments that considerably affected South Africans’ constitutional rights and freedoms during 2024. This article looks at the budgetary and social developments – including crime and corruption – and how these impacted the health of South Africans’ constitutional rights and freedoms. The first article examined the 2024 political and economic developments that held ramifications for constitutional rights and freedoms.
South Africa’s Budgetary Developments
South Africa’s government operates on a fiscal year that begins annually on 1 April. Consequently, the calendar year January to December 2024 spans two financial years: 2023/2024 and 2024/2025.
In both budgets, education received the largest allocation of taxpayers’ money – although many have raised concerns about the poor return on investment in this sector, because, despite the fact that South Africa outspends most other countries on education, there is a reading crisis in public schools with 81% of grade 4 learners unable to read with understanding.
This was followed by social development, which is unsurprising given that approximately 45% of the population received social grants in 2024. In 2024, South Africa only had approximately 7,4 million taxpayers for a population of over 60 million people. That is 60 million people with real needs. This situation is unsustainable. Particularly given that government debt needs to be paid off to decrease debt service costs (see below).
The third-largest expenditure was on debt-service costs. Notably, during his 2024/2025 budget speech on 21 February 2024, the Minister of Finance highlighted that more than 20% of government revenue would be allocated to servicing its debt – an increasingly significant burden on the national fiscus.
Social Developments
South Africans’ happiness levels increased to 5,42 points in 2024, an increase from 5,19 points in 2021 according to the Happiness Index, which measures real-time sentiment of South Africans by monitoring their Tweets. Happiness is measured with 0 being very unhappy and 10 being very happy.
However, South Africa also continued to grapple with persistent issues such as high unemployment, inequality and social unrest: The unemployment rate remained a critical issue throughout 2024, remaining alarmingly high at approx. 32,8%, worsening poverty and inequality. Since more unequal societies tend to have higher crime rates, as well as lower social trust, unemployment also contributes to increased social tensions, such as xenophobic sentiments. In the words of president De Klerk: “Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign.” Of special concern is South Africa’s youth unemployment (individuals aged 15-34 years), mentioned at length in the first article.
Xenophobia remained a pervasive issue in South Africa in 2024: The year commenced with Operation Dudula and the Patriotic Alliance party preventing Zimbabweans without valid documents from entering the country at the Beitbridge Border Post. Videos of the vigilantes went viral and xenophobic hashtags supporting their efforts surged on social media platforms. Anti-immigrant sentiment was present in political rhetoric, particularly in the lead-up to the general elections in May 2024, with many political parties blaming immigrants for the country’s woes. The deaths linked to contaminated food bought at spaza shops that were often owned by foreign nationals, also saw xenophobic rhetoric rise again.
Crime and corruption remained major concerns in South Africa throughout 2024: The country had a high crime index of 75,4 on a scale from 0 to 100 (but this was on the lower side since 2017). Importantly, South Africa had the highest crime index in Africa, ranking as the fifth most dangerous country in the world. The World Bank estimated in 2023 that crime costs South Africa around 10% of its GDP annually.
Corruption continued to be a pervasive problem in South Africa, with the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2024 showing that South Africa’s perceived corruption levels are at 41/100. This is where a score of 0 shows a country is perceived as highly corrupt and a score of 100 shows that it is perceived as very clean.
Source: Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2024.
Maladministration, fraud, employment irregularities, extortion, bribery and procurement irregularities, especially in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Western Cape, were all manifestations of this corruption problem. Naturally, the State’s delivery of services is directly affected by this, with the World Bank noting in 2023 that the Government’s capacity is rapidly weakening due to corruption, especially at the local level.
Crime and corruption are significant issues, directly impacting the rights enshrined in the Constitution – including, but not limited to, the rights to life and freedom and security of person – as well as detrimentally affecting the much needed economic growth South Africa requires.
Conclusion
The above emphasises South Africa’s urgent need to address crime and corruption as priority number one. It also highlights the need for comprehensive education reforms to ensure schools produce youth who have had the quality education and skills training to be able to either walk into jobs or become successful entrepreneurs. Clearly, throwing money at education has not resulted in South Africa’s children being well-educated and equipped to be able to successfully enter the workforce and take their place as future taxpayers who can help advance the human rights and freedoms in the Constitution and build a future of freedom and justice for their next generation.
The FW de Klerk Foundation believes that a multi-pronged approach must be adopted instead of merely increasing the amount of money taxpayers spend on education. One such prong should be to properly skill and support school principals, who are charged with running schools and supervising teachers. Properly run schools, where teachers are required to show up to class on time and teach well, or face the consequences, will go a long way to addressing the problems the education sector faces. We need principals who are skilled and who have a community of other principals to do this.