JOHANNESBURG - Former Statistician General Pali Lehohla says South Africa is a collapsed state, and all citizens are to blame for this.
Addressing an IEC seminar in Centurion, he argued that the country does not need a national dialogue because the evidence is already there.
Lehohla also accused government of lacking the political will to tackle unemployment.
The former statistician general argues that South Africa’s problems are man-made and exacerbated by a corrupt elite.
"In South Africa it’s the black surrogate capitalists with their white masters, and they siphon everything in the country," Lehohla said.
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He also criticised government economists, saying they have failed to provide meaningful solutions. He said government has also repeatedly failed to use data to guide decision-making, a shortcoming he believes has contributed to sluggish economic growth and persistently high unemployment.
"We’ve to walk the walk, and walk the talk, to solve this problem," he said.
"Otherwise, there’s no future for the children, I mean food parcels and t-shirts have brought us here. This economy must be a R21-trillion economy, it’s R7-trillion and the economic policies have been stupid, that’s what has brought us here."
IEC Commissioner and retired Judge Dhayanithie Pillay warned that South Africa’s democratic health cannot be separated from its growing social and economic inequalities.
"Declining democracies are not exclusively about failed and rigged elections, coup d'état nor are the terms democratic decline or recession abstractions, rather substantively, social injustices are fertile breeding grounds for recession to fester.”
- eNCA's Moloko Moloto reports.