No images? Click here
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Subscribe here!
3 March, 2023
#31 🔥 Thrill seekers
Like most people we've (sadly) started to learn to live with loadshedding. We have gas, some solar and backup batteries to get us through the worst. But over the weekend we had three days without water, which is much more difficult to live without than electricity. So a water tank is on our list of next projects.
It's easy to be despondent about these things but one thing we learned during Covid was the value of being able to see and understand the bigger picture. During the pandemic, we collected and shared as much data as possible and so many people told us that just seeing the data helped them feel a little less vulnerable and helped them plan ahead.
The same is true, we think, of our current situation and so we're starting to build a number of tools with this in mind. Our local government project is an important part of this and further down you'll see some data from our new municipal audit tracker on the number of municipalities that have achieved more than 5 clean audits in the past 11 years.
👷🏽♀️ On the employment front, there is some good news if you dig beyond the obvious top-level numbers, which we've tried to do below.
🛒 We also get a lot of feedback on our monthly grocery basket comparison, mostly asking for us to add meat, fish and chicken to the list. For now, we're keeping the basket as it is but we will be doing extra comparisons of different grocery categories, starting this month with the proteins many have asked for. Guess which supermarket was the most expensive👇. And if you have suggestions for other comparisons let us know.
Bouncing back: For people who have the urge to throw themselves off bridges, we looked at the world's highest bungee jumps including some crazy records set in South Africa.
🏎️ Inspired by the thrill of hurtling off a bridge, we also looked at the top speeds of the Formula E racing drivers who were in Cape Town last weekend. The comparison with Formula One's Max Verstappen was eye-opening.
New(s) stuff: Our news quiz question is one of the most popular items in our newsletter so we've made a slightly longer quiz this week. Test yourself and let us know what you think of the longer format.
Have a good weekend,
Laura & Alastair
In this newsletter:
🛒 Grocery haul
🪦 Unwanted records
📔 Clean money
🛩️ Return trip
🪢 Taking the plunge
🏏 Run rate
🏎️ Electric speed
👷🏼♂️ Back to work
The unemployment rate is inching downwards slowly, but it’s still high at 32.7%. There is some good news, however, if you look a bit deeper at the employment figures in the provinces. It’s generally rising in all provinces, except for North West.
In the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey from StatsSA, the Western Cape has the highest number of employed people since 2008. Its unemployment rate is 22.5%, well below the national rate. But in 2008, the province’s unemployment rate was 16.4%. So there’s still a higher proportion of people in the province that are unemployed than there were 14 years ago.
The Northern Cape has the lowest unemployment rate at 22.1%. Then comes the Western Cape (22.5%), KwaZulu-Natal (31.4%), Limpopo (31.8%), Gauteng (34%), Free State (34.6%), Mpumalanga (36.1%), North West (37%) and finally, the Eastern Cape (42.1%), says StatsSA.
🛒 Protein prices
Last month, we took a look at the price of different proteins. For chicken breasts, Food Lover’s Market was the most affordable option at R69.99 a kilogram versus Woolworths at R124.99. Looking at the price of boerewors, Woolworths was again the most expensive at R139.99 a kilogram versus R94.99 at Shoprite.
Lucky Star’s 400g tin of pilchards was the most competitively priced item, differing by no more than R3 between the stores.
🪦 Deathly toll
An average of 76 people were murdered a day in South Africa last year, more than three murders every hour. In comparison, 59 people were murdered per day in 2020 in the US, and there were 111 murders per day in India. Brazil had 130 murders a day, or five per hour.
However, India has a population of 1.4-billion, which means three people were killed out of 100,000. In South Africa, it is 34 per 100,000, Brazil is 22 per 100,000 and the US 6 per 100,000.
📔 Cleaning up
Only 29 of South Africa's 257 municipalities got five or more clean audits in the past 11 years.
Nineteen of those municipalities are in the Western Cape, three are in Mpumalanga and three are in KwaZulu-Natal. Mpumalanga's Ehlanzeni district got nine clean audits. But none of the municipalities in Limpopo, North West or the Free State managed to get one.
Dive deeper with our audit tracker, and sign up for our free local government newsletter published every two weeks.
🛩️ Return trip
Half the overseas tourists visiting South Africa come from three countries. About 3,100 Germans, Americans and Brits arrived in the country every single day in January. They made up half of the nearly 188,000 overseas visitors to South Africa that month, coming in 55,300 people shy of pre-Covid levels.
🪢 Bouncing back
One of the highest bungee jumps in the world is from the Bloukrans Bridge on the Garden Route. Since 1990, people have been chasing adrenaline by plunging 216m from the bridge near Nature's Valley in the Western Cape. It is the highest bridge bungee jump in the world.
Officially the highest bungee jump in the world is Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge in China at 260m, with Macau Tower in second at 233m.
The Bloukrans Bridge is also the site of a few Guinness World Records, including:
- Mohr Keet (96) broke a world record without realising it when he jumped from the bridge in 2010 to become the world’s oldest bungee jumper.
- Linda Potgieter (50) made the 216m leap 23 times in 60 minutes last year, breaking the record for the most bungee jumps in one hour.
🏏 Big hitters
The South African women’s cricket team was the only African team to play in this year’s ICC T20 Women’s World Cup. They had a phenomenal run at the tournament, winning three out of their six matches. They also played more matches than England and India, who have a higher win percentage than South Africa.
Several of the South African players were among the tournament’s top performers. Marizanne Kapp, Shabnim Ismail and Ayabonga Khaka made the top 10 list of wicket-takers, placing fourth, fifth and seventh.
Two South African players made the top five for runs: Laura Wolvaardt scored the most with 230 runs and Tazmin Brits placed fifth with 186 runs. Brits was also one of the highest scorers in the tournament, placing seventh with a score of 68.
🏎️ Electrifying
Cape Town held its first electric grand prix in the middle of one of South Africa’s darkest bouts of loadshedding on 25 February. It was thrilling.
The 2.9km track proved to be one of the world’s fastest, and Nissan’s Sacha Fenestraz set a Formula E record for the fastest lap when he clocked 1:07.848s during qualifying.
Pascal Wehrlein holds the top spot for the fastest lap during a race while driving the Tag Heuer Porsche (1:07.968) in May last year in Berlin.
How does this compare to Formula One? Formula E tracks are an average of 2.6km long. Formula One tracks are double that at an average of 5km.
In the 2022 season, the fastest Formula One lap was 1:07.275 in Spielberg, Austria, driven by Max Verstappen for Red Bull Racing. The lap was 4.3km.
💡 Quiz
In last week's quiz we asked you which party eThekwini's new deputy mayor, Zandile Myeni, belonged to. The correct answer was NFP and 27% of you got the answer right.
This week we have a longer quiz with five questions, starting with:
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country. How large is its population?
Click one option below to test your knowledge and find out more.
A corruption tracker for Kenya
In our Inside Media Hack blog we share what we’ve learned about working with data. We recently spoke to Odipo Dev’s Odanga Madung about how they built Wizileaks, a corruption tracker, with African Uncensored. It’s a masterclass in wrangling a big data project. Read about it here.
How Bhekisisa uses data to boost its health reporting
The Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism prides itself on its evidence-based health reporting. That means data informs and underscores all of the team’s work. But without a dedicated data desk, they’ve learned to adapt their systems and plug the gaps. We spoke to the team to find out more.
📊📈 If you're looking for more tips for working with data subscribe to our Data Bites newsletter for bite-sized guides on communicating with data.
This survey is anonymous and will take less than a minute to complete, but it will help us enormously.
💬 Tell someone about this newsletter
If you enjoyed this newsletter please forward it to a friend👉. If you didn't enjoy it send it to an enemy☠️.
💬 Join our WhatsApp group
Click this link to request access to our WhatsApp group. Alternatively, email us your phone number (info@theoutlier.co.za) and we'll add you.
💬 Follow us on Social Media
Some small print: If you don't want to continue to receive this newsletter you can unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email. We hope you won't, but we understand if you do. Before you do, if you have any suggestions that could improve the newsletter please let me know: alastair@theoutlier.co.za I'd really appreciate hearing from you. - Alastair
The Outlier
Explainer journalism from and for Africa
theoutlier.co.za/
info@theoutlier.co.za
