President Cyril Ramaphosa has been the president of South Africa since 2018, about eight years. Population growth has been higher than economic growth for five of those years.

Effectively, for the majority of Ramaphosa’s presidency, South Africans have gotten poorer.

For his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, who was president from 2009 to 2017 (nine years) population growth exceeded economic growth for five of those years.

What makes these statistics even more jarring is that South Africa’s population growth rate is relatively low. The average annual population growth rate over the last ten years in southern Africa is about 3%, while for South Africa it has averaged around 1.4%.

What these numbers mean, in reality, is that South Africans are becoming poorer each year. In real terms, per capita GDP is lower than it was in 2006.