Statistics South Africa will release March's retail sales figures on Wednesday.
In trend analyst JP Landman’s recently published book, The Long View, he says there is “far more to this complicated land than just the headlines”.
In a quest to “challenge the notion that South Africa is on the verge of collapse and implosion”, he puts forward a number of statistics that illuminate the positive in the economy.
It is a collection of good news; a sharp juxtaposition to the emerging-market maelstrom.
One of the positives is that, although unemployment has risen, employment has also increased from about nine-million in 1995 to about 14-million taxpayers in 2012.
At the same time, the economy has outstripped population growth, meaning that the nation is wealthier than before.
Income disparities between racial groups are also narrowing, with the incomes of black households increasing by 169% between 2001 and 2011 and those of white households by 88% over the same period of time.
