{"id":91582,"date":"2026-10-19T16:20:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T16:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=91582"},"modified":"2026-10-19T16:20:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T16:20:32","slug":"outlier-177-small-business-funding-municipal-voter-turnout-gauteng-mortality-manufacturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2026\/10\/19\/outlier-177-small-business-funding-municipal-voter-turnout-gauteng-mortality-manufacturing\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlier #177: Small business funding, municipal voter turnout, Gauteng mortality, manufacturing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Using the Outlier tool for checking out election candidates<\/a> simplified one part of the decision making process for me, but muddied the water in some unexpected ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First I realised that, based on their names, I didn\u2019t know if some candidates in my ward were male or female. And I realised that was irrelevant. But the tool also, quite unhelpfully, gave me the candidates' ages, which became a new, and weighty, factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surely one wants a representative that is up to speed on contemporary cultural issues, and is fuelled by the boundless energy of youth? I believed my incumbent to be pretty active in my community… until I heard about the breadth of activities of less experienced candidates in neighbouring wards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still on the horns of this dilemma I reminded myself that I was privileged to be voting at a time when there is more useful information available than ever before. And then my voting challenges quickly right-sized themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update<\/strong>: We\u2019ve now added the results from the last local government elections to the Outlier candidate lookup tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udfea Shop fronting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

South Africa\u2019s small businesses are overwhelmingly funding themselves, although more than 70% say better access to finance would make them more competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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According to the Shoprite Group\u2019s State of the SMME in South Africa 2026<\/em><\/a> survey of 800 businesses, more than 90% said they currently fund themselves. Around 14% lean on family or friends to bankroll their business while formal financing like bank loans funds nearly 10%. Just 3% have government grants or private investors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But ask owners what they\u2019d like instead, and the picture flips. Only 4.4% would prefer to be self-funded, while private investment becomes the top choice at 46.2%. Bank loans (23.5%) and government grants (22.5%) are also highly desirable. Funding from corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs is targeted by 10% of those surveyed, although less than 1% actually receive CSR money .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While 70.8% want funding to improve their competitiveness 57.4% have never even applied for it. In very small businesses funding could provide a buffer for smoothing cash flows and for replacing stock Meanwhile larger and more competitive businesses are ready to expand using diverse funding options including private investors and grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u274c Ticked off<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Across all South Africa's metros, most registered voters didn\u2019t vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021 about 12-million people voted in the municipal elections. This was less than half of all registered voters (46%), the lowest turnout in a local government election since democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most metros the number was even lower. Cape Town had the highest voter turnout, at about 47%, just one point above the national average. Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City matched the national average of about 46%, but all the other metros were lower. eThekwini was lowest at about 42%, followed by Johannesburg (about 43%), Ekurhuleni and Mangaung (both about 44%) and Tshwane at 45%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voter numbers have fluctuated a lot throughout the last 20 years of local government elections, although all metros saw a significant drop from the previous two events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 2000 and 2006 local government elections voter turnout in many metros was low at around 46%, but this rose sharply in 2011 to nearly 58%. Researchers have suggested various reasons for this, including lively campaigning by opposition parties and increased service delivery protests in metros where people may have voted to simply to get government\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa\u2019s biggest pre-election poll, by News24 and SABI, assumed a 52% turnout in its modelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\ude4f\u00a0Produced in partnership with <\/em>GroundUp News<\/em><\/strong>. <\/em>Read the full story.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udfed Production values<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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South Africa\u2019s factories produced slightly less in August 2026 than the same time last year, but the rand value of their sales rose 2.8%. Prices, not production, carried the month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine of ten manufacturing divisions produced less than they did a year earlier; only textiles and clothing grew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two divisions stand out for generating revenue which outpaced inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motor vehicles, parts and other transport equipment produced 8.8% less but sold 7.8% more. For vehicles alone the gap is wider: output fell 10%, while the value of vehicle sales rose 16.4%. That suggests pricier models, or cars sold from stock, rather than more cars being built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The petroleum, chemicals, rubber and plastics division produced 5% less but sold 9% more. In the petroleum sector sales value rose 21.3% while only 1.4% more product was sold. This is easily explained by rising petrol prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rising sales can look like good news. But factories made fewer goods than a year ago, and once inflation is accounted for, they sold less too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u26b0\ufe0fGoing, going<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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For women living in Gauteng, the top causes of death were diabetes, hypertension resulting from severe high blood pressure, and cerebrovascular diseases like strokes, which are affected by blood supply to the brain. According to StatsSA\u2019s latest Mortality and Causes of death in South Africa Report<\/em>, these were also among the top five killers in men, along with heart disease and flu and pneumonia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the country the numbers show that \u201cnon-communicable diseases\u201d like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and asthma have been steadily increasing and now account for about 60% of deaths. Before 2009, communicable diseases: those spread between people, like TB and pneumonia, caused more deaths in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Gauteng more men die from \u2018non-natural\u2019 causes than women. Just over 20% of male deaths were 'non-natural' compared with 6% of female deaths. However StatsSA notes that these deaths are very poorly documented in about three quarters of cases, and it is usually not possible to properly classify the cause of death. Of those classified assault and transport accidents are the most common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Produced in collaboration with Our City News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":91577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1387,1380],"tags":[1500,1470,1152],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-91582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-outlier","category-this-week-in-charts","tag-death-causes","tag-local-government-elections","tag-manufacturing"],"acf":{"post_style":"bc","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":false,"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91584,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91582\/revisions\/91584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91582"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=91582"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=91582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}