DANIELA ELLERBECK'S HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT CARD LAUNCH ADDRESS

Introduction

Thank you, Christo. As Christo stated, I am Daniela Ellerbeck an attorney and the Foundation’s Constitutional Rights Programme Manager.

As Christo said, every year, this report card assesses the degree to which rights and freedoms are being enjoyed as a lived reality. In doing so, the Foundation also consider how the Government is meeting its obligations to respect, protect, promote and fulfil all the rights entrenched in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. This report card enables South Africans (and their leaders) to gauge how well the country is making the Constitution a reality for all – highlighting both successes and challenges. It is part of the Foundation’s efforts to encourage citizens to engage in discussions about these important issues, because they should form part of daily dialogue as citizens and constantly feature in the media we consume.

2024 Developments

When looking at how South Africa did with making its Constitution a lived reality, it is important to look at context in which people were living in 2024. For this reason, the report card starts of with an examination of the top 2024 developments in the spheres of politics, the economy, the national budget and social developments.

Political Developments

First and foremost, let’s delve into the realm of political developments.

In 2024, South Africa experienced its most transformative political shift since the dawn of democracy thirty years ago: South Africa’s 2024 National and Provincial elections have significantly changed the country’s political landscape: For the first time since the end of Apartheid, the African National Congress lost its majority at national level and in several provinces. Nationally, it managed to secure only 40,18% of the vote.

This necessitated the formation of a coalition government nationally and coalition government in the relevant provinces, because no single party won an outright majority (more than 50% of the seats). Thus, cooperation between political parties was needed to, e.g., pass proposed laws (i.e. bills) and govern effectively. Coalitions, thus, became essential for stability and functional governance both nationally and in the relevant provinces.

Ten political parties united to form a Government of National Unity (or “GNU”), consisting of the African National Congress, the Democratic Alliance, the Patriotic Alliance, the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Good Party, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, the Freedom Front Plus, the United Democratic Movement, Al Jama-ah and Rise Mzansi. The fact that the GNU includes parties that were traditionally seen as being ideological opponents is a significant shift in South Africa’s political landscape. Its formation was instrumental in averting a potential political crisis and paved a constructive way forward. This GNU, the second in South Africa’s history, holds a supermajority (i.e. more than 66,6% of the seats) in Parliament. This makes it possible for this GNU to implement significant changes to laws and even change the Constitution – except section 1, which contains South Africa’s founding values.

The coalition government faced significant challenges in addressing the country’s pressing issues, such as low economic growth, inequality, unemployment and high crime levels, while maintaining political stability!

Its key priorities included:

1. Drive inclusive growth and job creation;
2. Reduce poverty and tackle the high cost of living; and
3. Build a capable, ethical and developmental state.

When it came to political stability, the GNU delivered, despite facing numerous internal tensions during 2024, particularly with regards to the implementation of the National Health Insurance Act, 2023 and President assenting to the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, 2024. By the end of 2024, the GNU remained intact and was using its internal conflict resolution mechanism, the “GNU Clearing House Mechanism”, to resolve disagreements amongst its political parties.

The emergence of this coalition marked a watershed moment in South Africa’s democratic evolution – it is a historic departure from the African National Congress’ uninterrupted majority rule since 1994.

Economic Developments

Negatively, South Africa continued dealing with significant challenges: falling GDP per capita, high unemployment, widespread poverty and inequality, increasing public debt and a shrinking tax base. The International Monetary Fund (“or IMF”) pointed out that South Africa’s ineffective policies, its deep-rooted structural rigidities and its governance problems (prior to the GNU) had caused an erosion of South Africans’ standards of living, leading to the real income per capita falling for more than a decade!

To put it in numbers: South Africa’s real GDP[1] in 2024 was only 1,1%, while South Africa’s population grew by 1%. This means that the economy simply grew too slowly and barely outstripped the population growth, meaning it was too little to effectively address major issues, such as unemployment, poverty and income inequality. Inflation[2], measured as the CPI average, was 4,4%. Unemployment was ca. 32,8%. The government’s debt, i.e. public debt,[3] was approximately $311,3 billion USD at the end of 2024. Importantly, this is greater than 75% of South Africa’s GDP. The state’s inability to restrict its spending has caused public debt to triple since the global financial crisis: from 25% of GDP in 2008 to 75% of GDP in 2024. An unsustainable situation. Income inequality, measured as a GINI coefficient,[4] remained very high at 0,63.

Importantly, South Africa has a shrinking tax base due to the high unemployment rate and a desperate shortage of skilled workers in almost all sectors.

On the bright side, the country has a large youth population: 15- to 34-year-olds make up ca. 20,85 million – approximately 33,1% of the country’s 63 million population. This means that it has a large future generation who are ready to enter the workforce as taxpayers (to remain for a long time) and that they are in their prime upskilling life phase. However, despite the large size of the youth population, approximately 45,5% of 15- to 34-year-olds were unemployed in the first quarter of 2024 – significantly higher than the national rate of 32,9% for that same period. Notably, the unemployment rate among graduates was 11,8% during that period – but only 2,7% of 15- to 34-year-olds had bachelor degrees according to the 2022 census data. What this tells us is that South Africa, to its own detriment, is failing to make good use of its demographic advantage and even worse fails its youth in providing them with quality education, skills training and jobs.

These issues limited the GNU’s ability to spend on other important needs, such as education, because economic growth is necessary to allow more people to work and pay taxes. This increase in taxes can then be used by the State to improve public services such as education. This all emphasises South Africa’s urgent need for comprehensive economic reforms to stimulate much needed growth and address structural issues. While the GNU successfully managed to address loadshedding in 2024, disruptions to rail and port operations continued to inhibit economic growth.

In short, economic growth is not an option and more taxes are necessary to make the Constitution a reality for all, because rights require money.

On a positive note, the government acknowledged the importance of private sector investment in addressing economic challenges. Deputy President Paul Mashatile stated that privatisation was not a “swear word”, saying the GNU was seeking more foreign investment in energy, water and infrastructure due to South Africa’s constrained public finances. The GNU also launched several initiatives aimed at revitalising the economy, including investments in green energy and infrastructure projects.

Budget Developments

Shifting our focus to the budgetary developments:

South Africa’s government’s financial year commences on 1 April annually. I.e. January through December 2024 would fall within two financial years: 2023/2024 and 2024/2025. From both budgets, it is clear that the biggest expenditure is on education (with a very poor return on investment being pointed out by many). This is followed by social development, which is natural as approximately 45% of people received social grants in 2024, and thirdly by debt service costs.

Importantly, in his budget speech for the 2024/2025 budget on 21 February 2024, the Minister of Finance pointed out that the government’s payments on its debt (i.e. debt-service costs) will use more than 20% of government’s revenue.

Social Developments

When we consider the social developments that took place during 2024, we see that South Africans’ happiness levels increased to 5,42 points 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. The fact that South Africans’ happiness levels increased to 5,42 points, is an increase from 5,19 points in 2021, but still below the world average of 5,56 points.

Negatively, South Africa grappled with persistent issues such as high unemployment, inequality and social unrest. Let’s briefly examine each of these in turn:

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 former president de Klerk: “Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign.”

Of especial concern is South Africa’s youth unemployment (individuals aged 15-34 years), mentioned earlier.

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. We would be remiss if we did not point out that the World Bank estimated in 2023 that crime costs South Africa around 10% of its GDP annually.

Crime poses direct risks to the rights enshrined in the Constitution, including, but not limited to, the rights to life and freedom and security of person. Which my colleague, Shanees Nkandu will talk about.

To paint a picture of the overall crime trends could be noticed in 2024: There was a 12,2% decrease in the number of murder victims. But a 33,6% rise in the number of attempted murder victims. The number of assault with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm (or “assault GBH”) victims rose by 15,8%. And the number of rape victims decreased by 4,5%. (These are all from the official police statistics by the way.)

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 that it is perceived as very clean.

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 impact on economic growth and South Africans’ lived reality.

From the team’s assessment of the degree to which rights and freedoms are being enjoyed as a lived reality, the Foundation the following to be the top 10 human rights most threatened:

1. Health care, food, water and social security;

2. Children;
3. Freedom of Trade, Occupation and Profession;
4. Inequality;
5. Life;
6. Threats to Freedom and Security of Person;
7. Property Rights;
8. Education;
9. Freedom of Expression; and

10. Privacy

Thank you for your attentive consideration. I now yield the floor to my esteemed colleague, Shanees Nkandu, who will provide an in-depth analysis of the team’s findings on the rights to equality, life, threats to freedom and security of person and freedom of expression.

[1]The value of all the goods and services produced by South Africa’s economy in 2024, adjusted for inflation, making it more accurate than nominal GDP.

[2]Inflation is the rate at which the overall prices of commodities (i.e. goods and services) increase.

[3]Public debt is the total amount of money that the state owes to its creditors. When the state owes lots of money (i.e. when public debt is high), it means the government has less money to spend on other priorities and high pubic debt levels may affect economic stability.

[4] The GINI coefficient measures income inequality – a coefficient of 0 would indicate no income inequality (i.e. everyone earns the same income), while a coefficient of 1 would indicate perfect income inequality (i.e. where one person earns all the income).