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The African National Congress (ANC) is much derided for its delivery and economic and job creation track record. Such criticism is in certain respects unfair, as the party proved after 1994 that it could raise living standards at extraordinary speed through attracting investment and driving much higher levels of economic growth. Understanding that history is important as it debunks the idea that South Africa has been one flat-out failure since 1994 and that the ANC has been an entirely hopeless organisation throughout.

One of the claims thrown at the ANC is that of jobless growth. South Africa did not experience jobless growth in the early democratic period. The number of people with jobs rose from 7.9 million in 1994 to 14.6 million in 2008, an increase of 83.0%. During Nelson Mandela’s presidency, between 1994 and 1999, an average of 479 600 net new jobs were added each year. Under Thabo Mbeki, who was president from 1999 to 2008, the figure increased to 526 875. The expansion of work gave millions of households an income and became the most important driver of rising living standards.

The chart below shows the number of people employed and the average of net new jobs by presidential era between 1994 and 2026.

The jobs came because the economy was growing. Real economic growth averaged 4.2% between 2000 and 2007 and exceeded an average of 5.0% between 2004 and 2007. That was the first time South Africa had maintained growth at that level for four consecutive years since the first half of the 1960s. Real GDP per person rose from R62 000 in 1994 to R78 700 in 2008, leaving the average South African 27.0% richer in real terms than at the start of democracy.

The chart below shows real GDP per capita run against South Africa’s real GDP growth.

The gains were also visible in the improvements in service delivery. The share of households without electricity fell from 49.0% in 1996 to 18.0% in 2008. The number of families living in formal houses rose from 5.8 million in 1996 to 10.1 million in 2008, even as cities absorbed rapid migration and the number of households expanded. Access to clean piped water increased from 76.5% in 1994 to 89.6% in 2009, while access to flush toilets rose from 55.5% to 72.5%.

The chart below shows the proportion of households without electricity since 1996.

This social advance was achieved even as the state of government finances improved. Government debt fell from 42.7% of GDP in 1994 to 23.6% in 2008. The budget deficit was reduced to balance by 2005 and was followed by two years of surpluses. Lower debt servicing costs released money for housing, services, and a social grant system that expanded fivefold during the early democratic era. The ANC improved the lives of poor South Africans while strengthening the public finances needed to sustain those improvements.

The chart below shows gross government debt and the budget deficit as a share of GDP since 1994.

Confidence and investment triggered the cycle. Fixed investment rose from 15.0% of GDP in 1994 to 21.6% in 2008.

Fixed investment is one of the most important indicators of the economic health of a country. It is the money that businesses and governments spend on long-term investments, such as buildings, roads, or machinery. Lower rates of fixed investment show that a country’s businesses and government are more maintaining infrastructure rather than expanding it. For an emerging market economy to grow sustainably at rates of between 4% and 5%, it needs a fixed investment rate of around 25%.

After 2008, that cycle broke. The global financial crisis delivered the first shock, but South Africa never achieved the recovery seen across much of the rest of the world. Economic growth averaged only 1.6% between 2009 and 2018 and near 1.0% between 2019 and 2025. Fixed investment had fallen to below 15.0% of GDP by 2025, while electricity production declined.

The result is that several of the country’s most important gains have stalled or reversed. Real GDP per person was R74 747 in 2025, about 5.0% below its 2008 level. The share of households without electricity, after reaching 14.0% in 2017, rose to near 18% by 2025. Access to clean piped water peaked at 90.1% in 2014 before falling to 87.4% in 2025. The number of employed people reached 17 million in 2025, meaning that just 2.5 million more people had jobs than in 2008 despite 16 years of population growth.

Not every indicator has gone backwards but the reversal of the trends of the first 15 years after 1994 are obvious to see. It is important to distinguish South Africa’s democratic era into those two blocks of time. The ANC performed strongly in the first in many key respects but poorly in the second. That is a much more fair and honest assessment of the party’s track record in government than what is often offered in the media. It also suggests that in as far as some of the people who participated in the first era are still around there may still be a prospect for the party to prove its performance in future, although the prospects for that are something that very few observers would easily go along with.