The World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020. The South African government declared a national state of disaster to combat the pandemic on 15 March 2020 and eight days later implemented a nationwide lockdown.
The country is currently at lockdown level one and the state of disaster is still in place. Gatherings remain limited and it is still mandatory to wear a mask in public.
Ruling party relies on Stats SA data
Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), the country's national data agency, collects data on unemployment which it publishes in its quarterly labour force survey (QLFS).
Africa Check contacted the ANC to ask what Ramaphosa’s source had been for the claim that 1.5-million jobs had been lost since the start of the pandemic.
An ANC spokesperson told us: “Job losses due to Covid were calculated by comparing the number of people in employment – as reflected in the quarterly labour force survey – before the outbreak of the pandemic in Q1 [quarter 1] 2020 (16.4-million) to those employed in Q2 [quarter 2] 2021 (14.9-million), when most (but not all) of the Covid-related economic restrictions had been lifted.”
This is a mostly accurate calculation based on the data cited. The difference between the time periods was 1 441 000. However, the time frames compared do not reflect the most recent data.
Impact of ‘July unrest’ must be considered, says ANC
The latest edition of the QLFS from July to September 2021 recorded 14 282 000 people employed. It was released on 30 November 2021. This is a reduction of 2 101 000 employed people when compared January to March 2020.
We raised this with the ANC and they responded by saying that “the general view is that this figure is more likely to reflect the impact of the July unrest than Covid”.
This refers to several days of looting, protests and violence, mainly in South Africa’s Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces in July 2021. Nearly 2 000 people were arrested and many businesses were looted during the unrest.
Most recent data should not be ignored
Africa Check spoke to Dr Andrew Kerr, associate professor at the School of Economics and DataFirst at the University of Cape Town.
He thought the observed decline in employment was due to both the impact of the pandemic and the July unrest, without any clear indication of which had been more impactful.
“I don’t think there is a general view,” he said.
Kerr also pointed to employment rates by province. He said: “Mpumalanga and Limpopo have the largest declines in employment rates, rather than KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, [where] we’d expect these to have larger declines if it was due to unrest.”
But he said that for a number of reasons, this wasn’t enough evidence to indicate whether unrest or the pandemic had been more impactful.
Dr Thabi Leoka, an economist and chief executive of Naha Investments, said that “for accuracy, the party should factor in quarter 3 of 2021 where a significant amount of people lost their jobs”.
She said that although data would inevitably reflect both the impact of the pandemic and unrest, it should not be ignored.
