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THE SMART NEWS SOURCE | Feb 10 2012 23:07 | LAST UPDATED Feb 10 2012 23:07 |
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The African National Congress (ANC) government chooses to ignore the picture painted by international indices as it believes it is the only party capable of telling the truth, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Wednesday. "It therefore releases its own set of indicators on an annual basis, namely the Presidency's Development Indicators Mid-term Review report," DA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip and spokesperson Lindiwe Mazibuko said in a joint statement. In response to this, the DA released a comparative analysis of South Africa's performance on 20 key international indices since 1994 at a media briefing at Parliament. "The DA has compiled an overview of all 20 indices, and they stand in stark contrast to the Presidency's development indicators," Trollip and Mazibuko said. The 20 indices ranked countries in six key areas, namely governance, economic development, poverty and inequality, education, information technology and global interconnectedness, and lastly, the environment. Key findings included that South Africa had slipped down the rankings of 16 of the 20 indices. The most dramatic falls were trends in the Timms international mathematics and science study (down 25 places), global peace index (down 24), failed states index (19), and the network readiness index (down 18 places). South Africa stayed in the same position (number 45) on one of the indices, namely the global competitiveness index between 2005/06 and 2009/10, but closer analysis revealed it moved up nine places on the 2006/07 index only to slip back to 45 by 2009/10. South Africa moved up three of the 20 indices. All three of these indices measured poverty and inequality namely, global hunger index (moved up 16 places), global gender gap index (up 12), and mothers' index ( up six places).  CONTINUES BELOW It was clear from the analysis that South Africa was backsliding internationally and that:
The main reason for this was the ANC government had a long history of believing its political programme was the only legitimate course around which South Africa's future could be shaped. An analysis of that political programme, however, revealed a series of decisions that compromised the collective potential as a country, clearly demonstrated by the dismal performance on these international indices. Most of the Presidency's development indicators report usually ignored these international indicators and instead used "manipulated data and cherry-picked information to paint a glowing picture of its own performance and South Africa's economic, political and social development," the DA said. -- Sapa TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
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