Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast with Anastasia Galova.

Today is Friday the 13th of April 2007.

At a recent Cato event, South Africa's Tony Leon, the outgoing head of the Democratic Alliance and leader of the opposition in Parliament, spoke about the health of South Africa's democracy.

You can watch or listen to the event at the Cato Event Archive

available on our website. In today's podcast episode I take the discussion a step

further with Cato's Marion Tupi, a policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

Why don't we begin by telling me what are some of the troubling trends that are plaguing South Africa?

South Africa has achieved a number of very important improvements in the macroeconomic area.

The inflation is under control, there is accelerating economic growth, but the country is plagued

by a number of very important problems.

Among the most serious ones are unemployment, which a broad definition of unemployment is about 40% of the working populace.

Very high rates of violent crime.

About 18,500 people get murdered in South Africa

every year, which is as a proportional population,

it's about 10 times the murder rate of that of the United States.

And of course, there is a massive problem with HIV AIDS prevalence, which is very high among South Africans.

Why does crime remain such a daunting problem?

One of the reasons for crime, I believe, is that you do have very high rates of unemployment and you do not have enough of a flexible labor market that can soak up so many of these unemployed people.

South African population is growing at a much faster pace than the economy and so the

unemployment rate is actually increasing. In 1994 South Africa on a narrow definition had about 20% unemployed people today in a much

larger population it is about 26%. I should point out the difference between the narrow and the broad definition.

The narrow definition are people who are looking for work.

...