SA’s cake is being sliced too thin

There are a number of experts who wonder whether Statistics SA (Stats SA) made an accurate enough estimate of the number of foreigners during its mid-year assessment of this country’s total population figures.

Dawie Roodt, chief economist at the Efficient Group, for example, speculated there could have been an undercount and there might be more people in the country – many of them illegal immigrants from the rest of Africa – than officially recorded.

Stats SA believes it has accurate figures for the number of foreigners living here, but that is not the worrying aspect of its assessment of our current population. We now have, officially, 60.6 million people living here.

Our annual population increase is between 1.5% and 1.6% and, while that may not seem much to be concerned about, the figure has to be looked at in conjunction with our annual growth rate, which is hovering around 2%.

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Roodt says: “It is very clear, on a capital basis, we will not get richer.”

Dr Azar Jammine, Econometrix chief economist, concurs that “on average, people’s living standards will have hardly grown at all”.

More ominously is that the country’s failure to properly educate and train its youth means that, in the years ahead, we will be unable to take advantage of what Roodt calls “the population dividend” – where most of our population is young and could be productive for a long time.

However, unchecked population growth – whether through natural reasons or artificial, such as illegal immigration – means that the national resources cake will have to be sliced increasingly thinner. And this will lead to frustration and bitterness by those at the bottom of the wealth pyramid. Which will be expressed increasingly through violence and revolt.

Layered on top of that bleak scenario is corruption and incompetence. We ignore these realities at our peril.