South Africa’s in recession again, and people are blaming Jacob Zuma

president jacob zuma south africa recession governmentza flickr
President Jacob Zuma addressing representatives of youth organisations and Committee of Deputy Ministers to kick-start National Youth Month during a meeting of the Presidential Youth Working Group at the Sefako M. Makgatho Presidential Guesthouse in Pretoria. The Presidential Youth Working Group brings together government and youth organisations, to promote youth participation in governance and policy making.The importance of youth has been recognized by government nationally and continentally as the AU declared the 2017 theme “Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through investments in Youth” and South Africa is also this month commemorating Youth Month under the theme: “The Year of OR Tambo: Advancing Youth Economic Empowerment ”.02/05/2017 Kopano Tlape GCIS

Statistics South Africa has today confirmed that the country’s economy is shrinking.

“The country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has contracted to -0.7% in the first quarter of 2017,” the national government’s news portal wrote in a press release.

The nominal GDP, which stood at R1.1-trillion in Q1 2017, was down by R17-billion over Q4 2016 with trade the biggest loser.

It’s not all doom and gloom though.

Agriculture has experienced a massive jump over the previous quarter, with its first spike in nearly two years of consecutive declines. Mining was also up 12.8% over the previous quarter.

South Africa’s GDP has dropped by 0.7% over the previous quarter, with agriculture and mining the best performing sectors

Nevertheless, the latest spate of bad news hasn’t been received well by South Africans. And some people know exactly who to blame for 2017’s bad news: President Jacob Zuma and the national ruling party, the ANC.

“ANC keeps hurting the black majority instead of uplifting them,” one Twitter user wrote.

The news of a recession comes in the same week that unemployment figures rose to 27.7% — the highest number in 13 years.

#Recession continues to trend on Twitter across South Africa as of 2pm Tuesday.

Feature image: GovernmentZA/GCIS via Flickr (CC 2.0 BY-ND, resized)

Andy Walker, former editor
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