For the millions of South Africans who have watched job prospects fade over the past decade and a half, a new explanation is on offer, and it comes down to a single number. Bheki Mahlobo, the economics editor of The Common Sense, sat down with Gabriel Makin to walk through the country’s latest fixed investment figures, and his argument is blunt: how much capital South Africa commits to property, plant, and equipment is the best single predictor of the country’s growth, its jobs, and even its politics.
The numbers behind that claim tell a story of promise and retreat. In 1994, fixed investment stood at 15% of GDP. It climbed steadily to 22% by 2008, a period when the economy grew at an average of 3.5% a year. Since then the rate has slid to about 14%, the lowest among the original five BRICS countries and far below the 25% to 30% that comparable emerging markets manage to invest.
For ordinary households, the consequences have been severe. Growth has averaged just 1.1% a year since 2009, and with that slowdown job creation has stalled. The political effects are visible too: the ANC’s share of the vote has fallen from almost 70% to 40%, a shift Mahlobo ties directly to the economic stagnation that investment decline tracks.
What changed, in Mahlobo’s telling, is the purpose of that spending. At today’s level of investment, he explains, the country is essentially only maintaining what already exists, not building the new capacity that creates work and raises incomes. He also describes how government policy acts as a tax on capital, discouraging the very spending the economy needs. The National Development Plan once set a target of a 30% investment rate, but that goal, he argues, has been forgotten.
The full conversation, in which Mahlobo explains to Makin what the low rate of investment means for the country, is available at https://www.thecommonsense.co.za/videos/bheki-mahlobo-south-africa-s-investment-rate-has-fallen-the-consequences-have-been-dire
What makes the analysis striking is the counterfactual Mahlobo offers. Had South Africa sustained 5% growth since 2007, he notes, South Africans would today be nearly twice as rich. That gap, between the lives people actually lead and the lives they might have led, is the human measure of what a falling investment rate ultimately costs.
The discussion closes on a note of possibility rather than despair. Mahlobo identifies the reforms that could return the country to 5% growth, framing them as the path back to the kind of economy that creates jobs and restores confidence. For a country where the investment rate once rose by seven percentage points in fourteen years, the record suggests that recovery is not impossible, only that it requires the policy environment to change.
The interview is one of several recent analyses from The Common Sense. Mahlobo has appeared on the platform before, including a discussion on 1 October 2026, while Frans Cronje has contributed pieces on 13 October, 7 October, and 29 September, and Gabriel Makin has hosted segments on 14 October and 8 October. Together they form part of an ongoing effort to explain to South African audiences how economic fundamentals connect to the political and social realities they experience daily.
For readers trying to make sense of stalled wages, scarce jobs, and shifting political loyalties, Mahlobo’s core message is that the place to look is not the headlines of the moment but the quiet, cumulative decision of how much a country invests in its own future. On that measure, South Africa has been investing too little for too long, and the effects are now visible in every household that has waited for a recovery that has yet to arrive.