Opinion | Everything to lose

South Africa’s politics has changed, but our policymaking hasn’t kept pace. We are now governed under a new set of political realities, yet President Cyril Ramaphosa still behaves as if one party holds an uncontested mandate to steer the country’s most consequential decisions. While the ANC holds roughly 40% of the national vote, it should no longer control 100% of South Africa’s foreign and economic policy levers.

This leadership failure to grapple with the fundamental question of how we make money, and with whom we make it, has far-reaching consequences, including whether there is cash to fix potholes or fund capital projects so that gogos in the rural hinterland can access water. This power imbalance has fuelled the chaos we increasingly see in our foreign policy, most recently in South Africa’s participation alongside Iran in a naval wargames simulation off the coast of Cape Town. One of the more concerning aspects of South Africa’s conduct during this exercise, which also involved China and Russia, was that our government appeared to become concerned about Iran’s inclusion only because it dovetailed with critical negotiations with the United States and South Africa’s bid to remain in Agoa (the African Growth and Opportunity Act), rather than because of Iran’s deadly crackdown on protesters and the communications blackout imposed on a public demanding serious economic and political reform.

Our country’s growth is nearly stagnant, and it has struggled to break consistently above even the government’s generous 1,5% annual growth estimates. To raise living standards and increase GDP per person by just one percent, we would need growth of about 2,2%. To see real change, we need to start growing at around five percent or more, year-on-year, for at least a decade.

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But between June 2024 and June 2025, South Africa shed 55000 full-time jobs and 174000 part-time jobs. These numbers show no sign of reform. We are alienating Western powers, among the main purchasers of many of our manufactured goods, while cosying up to extremist states and allowing ourselves to be used as a pawn by rising powers. The problem is that the ANC wing of government risks becoming little more than a patsy for Russia and China, while providing a veneer of moral legitimacy to regimes that openly threaten violence against their own people and our trading partners.

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