Research institute the Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s (GCRO’s) Quality of Life (QoL) Survey for 2020/21 finds that the quality of life in the province decreased considerably since the previous study; however, this must be understood in the context of the pandemic.

The GCRO is a partnership between the Gauteng provincial government, the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Johannesburg and organised local government in Gauteng.

The GCRO has run the QoL survey every two years since 2009.

The latest survey, the sixth iteration, was launched during a virtual event on September 9. The theme of this survey’s launch is the ‘Human side of the Data’.

These results provide new insight into the overall wellbeing and quality of life of residents of Gauteng in late 2020 and early 2021. The GCRO defines quality of life broadly and looks below the surface of how Gauteng residents live, to understand their experiences, perceptions and challenges.

The findings cover a range of components shaping overall quality of life, including the direct impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, economic and psychosocial conditions, socio-political attitudes and beliefs and satisfaction with government.

It considers living conditions, socioeconomic circumstances, self-reported health and well-being, psychosocial attitudes and beliefs about and perceptions of government, service delivery and local challenges.

“There is no doubt that 2020 and 2021 will go down in the history of the world as an extraordinary period. The results of the survey reflect the mood of a city-region confronted by a new, uncertain and challenging social and economic reality brought about by the pandemic,” GCRO executive director Rashid Seedat said during the launch.

The final QoL 2020/21 dataset records the lived experiences of 13 616 of Gauteng’s residents. Seedat highlighted that this meant that it covers a wide sample range of the province’s population.

Participants were randomly sampled in each ward of the province, which includes 529 wards with at least 20 interviews in each. Data was collected by a team of dedicated fieldworkers from October 2020 to May the year.

Starting just five months after the country’s hard lockdown in March 2020, data collection spanned the second peak of Covid-19 infections early in the year and varying levels of lockdown.

The QoL 2020/21 Survey balanced questions used in previous survey iterations with new content. New content included the impact of Covid-19, social mobility and experiences of violence. The project explored the quality of life for Gauteng residents across 12 major themes.

The findings show an overall QoL Index score of 61 out of 100. This represents a substantial decline from 64 out of 100 in the previous survey, conducted in 2017/18.

Other key findings from the survey include that the economic impacts of the pandemic are extreme, with many respondents reporting a reduction in salaries and working hours, as well as job losses.

Grants and social support, however, have provided some crucial protection to the most vulnerable.

However, in general, the most advantaged have experienced the least economic fallout, while black African respondents and those with lower levels of education have been hit hardest. The pandemic appears to have driven lower-income households into poverty, the survey indicates.

Moreover, it finds that inequality between income groups remains significant, which has had considerable socioeconomic impacts. Also, the steady decrease in poverty levels over time has been reversed, which was highlighted as concerning, as several years of progress have been erased.

Moreover, in terms of the social fabric, the data shows evidence of substantial, and growing, psycho-social distress.

Levels of crime are high, and issues of safety and security are of great concern to residents. While there was some decrease in crime levels, the perception of crime levels did not decrease, it was indicated during the launch.

Residents o...

The current global semi-conductor (computer chip) shortage has not significantly impacted operations at the BMW plant in Rosslyn, Pretoria, as production at the facility is being prioritised within the German car maker’s larger manufacturing network.

“At BMW we are managing quite well [with the shortage],” says BMW management board member for production Dr Milan Nedeljkovic.

“We have high flexibility in our production system. We are capable of rescheduling our whole production set-up six days in advance. So, six days in advance we can change our whole sequence of production and shuffle it around.”

This helps the premium car manufacturer when it becomes aware that certain components or accessories will not be delivered on time.

“We can then resequence the whole production line and avoid this component as far as possible,” explains Nedeljkovic.

“This has helped us significantly to maintain production irrespective of the semi-conductor shortage.

“Of course, we had to shut down some production, but we are manoeuvering around quite well.

“However, with South Africa, with its long supply chains, we don’t have this flexibility, so we are trying to secure production by just prioritising manufacturing in South Africa,” notes Nedeljkovic.

BMW Group South Africa produces the X3 for the local and exports markets.

Nedeljkovic explains that the global semi-conductor shortage has, in part, arisen from the continuous increase in demand from the automotive industry for components that require computer chips.

“We are putting more and more electronics into cars, especially through driving assistance systems. There are additional cameras, sensors and computers to calculate and analyse data.”

Nedeljkovic says the rise in the complexity of the single vehicle had already caused “a certain tension” in the supply chain before the advent of Covid-19.

Now there is the added tension of a "surprisingly quick recovery" from the pandemic, so much so that entire supply chains are struggling to keep up with demand.

“This recovery is challenging the semi-conductor industry significantly,” says Nedeljkovic.

“And, on top of this, we now have some countries with additional lockdowns.”

He says Covid-19-related lockdowns in Asia, in countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, are hitting the automotive industry “very badly”, since the supply pipeline was “already quite empty”.

Yet another added complexity is that the ‘missing’ components within the supply chain may vary from week to week, depending on which country is facing a lockdown at that stage.

“It changes from week to week, month to month which component, which semi-conductor manufacturer, is affected. And, in the end, we need all the components to manufacture a car and that is the difficulty behind it.”