This article was first published by BBrief on 19 August 2025
In a video clip that has gone viral on social media a South African TikToker by the name of “Voice of RSA” (the Voice hereafter) takes aim at what he calls the dominance of “trickle-down economics.” He argues that economic growth during the presidencies of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, respectively, was essentially jobless and goes further to suggest that growth itself is a scam that only benefits the rich while inflating inequality. Without redistribution, he insists, the poor are left with mere crumbs.
The first fallacy in the Voice’s argument is the notion of jobless growth; the idea that the economy expanded under Mandela and Mbeki without producing jobs. This claim, which is common in left-leaning circles, has no credible basis and persists largely for partisan reasons.
During Mandela’s presidency (1994–1999), the economy grew by an average of 2.5%, with total employment rising from 9.5 million to 11 million. Having said that, job creation couldn’t keep up with the growing labour force, and unemployment rose from 16.5% in 1995 to 23.3% by 1999. Under Mbeki, growth improved to 3.25%, and job creation picked up. Between 2003 and 2008, around 3 million jobs were added, which drove unemployment down from 31% to 22.5%. While both leaders struggled with high unemployment, they did oversee meaningful and sustained job growth.
The second fallacy at the core of the Voice’s left-leaning ideological outlook is the notion that the economy is a fixed pie, whose growth only ever benefits the rich. It’s a zero-sum logic that assumes the gain of one must come at the loss of another and that the rise of the wealthy can only happen by keeping the poor down. This view naturally leads to a default faith in redistribution, which is framed as the only way to share or “democratise” wealth.
But this widely discredited orthodoxy, which quietly underpins a large portion of our failed public policy and economic discourse, misunderstands the basic nature of growth. The economy is not a static pie, and economic growth is not some game of musical chairs with the same fixed rewards. As Free Market Foundation Policy Officer Zakhele Mthembu argued in a recent column, the economy is a growing or shrinking entity that creates benefits across the board when it grows.
When individuals build businesses that offer value, the benefits don’t accrue solely to the rich. Those businesses create jobs, which means more people earn, more money circulates, and more investment flows back into the system. This is precisely what was witnessed during Mbeki’s presidency. Economic growth did create jobs, and those jobs brought a measurable rise in black middle-class households. If growth only benefitted the wealthy, how can this clear upward mobility be explained?
How, too, can the living standards in successful, market-driven economies like Singapore or South Korea be explained? These are countries that used economic freedom to unlock entrepreneurial energy, which in turn delivered prosperity. Are the only beneficiaries in these societies the rich? Or have most citizens (across income levels) seen their quality of life improve over time?
Another key point Mthembu raises is that in a freer economy where barriers to entry are minimal and entrepreneurship isn’t strangled by red tape; individuals can contribute value and thrive without that success coming at anyone’s expense. One person might own a large company that employs thousands, while another runs a small business that adds value in a different way. The free market isn’t about enforcing equal outcomes, but about creating conditions where broad-based wealth creation is possible. When everyone has the freedom to trade and compete, the overall outcomes are overwhelmingly positive.
One of South Africa’s biggest economic challenges is that its public policy discourse remains largely rooted in the idea that growth is a zero-sum game. This thinking has shaped policies that actively inhibit entrepreneurship and wealth creation. Black Economic Empowerment, for instance, is a redistributive policy that has failed to encourage actual growth. Far from rewarding wealth creation, it has punished it through a financially repressive model that extracts rent from existing capital without incentivising new investment or innovation. Worse still, ordinary South Africans trying to run small businesses or hustle for a living have been continuously harassed and criminalised by metro police officers, while politically connected elites who extract value from the private sector without producing anything receive undue praise for being symbols of “black excellence” or whatever euphemism that is used to mask blatant elite enrichment.
Until and unless this changes – and by “this,” we mean the dominant mindset that sees freedom and markets as threats rather than tools for upliftment – the country’s stubbornly high unemployment rate will continue to balloon. Until and unless the Voice comes to realise that growth, and not redistribution, is what’s needed to reboot the economy and get millions into meaningful work, the very inequality he rails against will persist and likely worsen.
The real path to reform, which stands a chance of pulling South Africa back from the brink, lies not in recycling failed redistributive policies, but in embracing a freer economy that encourages growth. This is the only way to produce outcomes that are both meaningful and inclusive.
