Chris Hattingh
Chris Hattingh is Executive Director at the Centre for Risk Analysis.
Articles By This Author
South Africa’s hidden tax: why crime is now a line item
Every business operating in South Africa already pays a tax that never appears on a South African Revenue Service assessment.
South Africa’s growth problem isn’t a story problem
Discovery CEO Adrian Gore’s latest statement on South Africa’s economy makes a case that has become all too familiar: driven by anaemic growth and structural unemployment, the country has spent a decade in societal crisis, but the tide has turned. Load-shedding has ended, state logistics are recovering, credibility has been restored, and what South Africa now needs is a shift in narrative – from perpetual decline to what Gore calls “realistic optimism.”
When the market builds what the state cannot deliver
A two-bedroom house in Protea Glen, Soweto, now sells for R1.03 million. It sits behind a boom gate, inside a perimeter wall, with private security patrolling a neighbourhood of paved roads and managed common areas. Emperors Security Estate, developed by Cosmopolitan Projects, is the first full-title security estate in South Africa’s largest township.
Fixing a burst pipe is not the same as owning the pipe
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Geordin Hill-Lewis’s proposed plan that private companies should help buy electricity and fix water systems elicited the usual predictable backlash on social media.
Two in three young South Africans can’t find work
The rate of joblessness among South Africans aged between 15 and 24 reached 62.8% in the second quarter of 2026, a percentage-point rise of 1.9 on the quarter and 0.6 on the year.
Water reform needs teeth
South Africa’s dams are almost full. At the end of June 2026, they stood at 96.6% of capacity. Despite consistently full dams, in 2025 nearly 28% of households endured water interruptions lasting more than 48 hours, and 20% went without water for a cumulative 15 days or more over the year. Thus, while South Africa doesn’t have water shortage, it definitely has a shortage of working systems to deliver it.
Tau is right about the decline, but the remedy misses the cause
Parks Tau, Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition, told a defence industry conference in Pretoria this week that South Africa must confront three decades of decline in its arms industry. Defence force acquisitions from local manufacturers fell to R850m in 2017 from R26.2bn in 1989/90. Over the same period research and development funding dropped to about R500m from R6.1bn. Employment across the sector collapsed from 130,000 people across 3,000 firms in 1990 to 13,000 people across 600 firms today.
South Africa’s next load-shedding is coming out of the tap
South Africa’s dams are almost full. According to the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), at the end of June they stood at 96.6% of capacity. By any normal measure, that should mean a good year for water security. Instead, the country is sliding into a water crisis that will eclipse load-shedding, and the dam levels prove the point rather than deny it. The problem, always, is whether the country can get water to a tap, treat what comes back out, and pay for the pipes in between.
Austerity is not South Africa’s health problem
Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi recently told South Africans that the public healthcare system’s failures stem from a decade of “austerity”. He repeated this word, deliberately, five times in one sentence. It is a memorable line. However, it’s not a claim the data support.
Why SA cannot subsidise its way out of becoming a failing state
South Africa is once again arguing about the Automotive Production and Development Programme (APDP). The key question is not whether this one programme pays for itself, but whether South Africa can keep subsidising firms and sectors while the basic services those firms depend on keep failing.