SA drops further in latest UN Human Development Index
South Africa has dropped further in the United Nation's latest Human Development Index (HDI) and now ranks 129th out of 182 countries (based on data for 2007), with an overall score of 0.683. This is a drop of one position from the last report. South Africa falls into the "medium human development" category.
It is disappointing to note that the overall trend is one of decline. South Africa's HDI has fallen from 0.742 in 1995. Our global ranking has consistently slumped from 85th out of 174 countries in 1990, to 120th out of 177 countries in 2003, to its current (and worst comparative) ranking in the last fifteen years, of 129th out of 182 countries.
The UN's HDI report is the latest (and the most authoritative) in a long list of international indicators in which South Africa's ranking has declined. It shows that the enrichment of a few has had no impact on the grinding poverty that is the reality for the majority of our people, and exposes the truth that, since 1994, the gap between the rich and the poor has continued to grow - with the only significant change being in the racial profile of the wealthiest South Africans.
Significantly it also exposes the ANC government's talk of a "developmental state", for what it is - little more than a smoke screen. It is a concept which carries the veneer of economic respectability but, scratch below the surface and the true nature of the South African state is revealed: one defined by inequality and a failure to deliver on key services. Nor is this trend anything new; there has been a systematic failure by successive ANC governments to reverse our collective fortunes.
The recently released Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance measures the delivery of public goods and services to citizens by government. Although South Africa ranked 5th overall out of 53 countries (behind Mauritius, Botswana, the Seychelles and Cape Verde), it ranked only 10th in the category of "human development" and 8th in the category of "sustainable economic opportunity", coming in after Egypt and Morocco on both these measures.