South Africans are preparing for another election season, which means the country is once again drowning in slogans, promises, outrage and manufactured certainty. Every party insists it has the answer, and every manifesto reads like a glossy brochure nobody will read about a future nobody fully believes in. Every politician suddenly rediscovers potholes, unemployment and corruption a few months before asking for votes.
And yet, beneath all the noise, something interesting has happened to the South African voter: fewer and fewer people seem genuinely convinced by anybody. For optimists, this may be the healthiest political development we’ve had in years.
The old political model depended heavily on emotional loyalty. Liberation mythology, racial solidarity, ideological identity and historical grievance carried enormous electoral power for decades. Many people voted emotionally because politics was still deeply tied to memory, symbolism and tribal affiliation. Some still do. But reality has a way of wearing down mythology eventually. Load shedding, unemployment, collapsing infrastructure, crime, corruption and economic stagnation have forced large numbers of South Africans to become more pragmatic.
People care about whether things work. They want electricity, maintained roads, safe neighbourhoods, jobs, clean municipalities, reliable water and a future for their children. Despite the increasingly dramatic language of political campaigning, very few South Africans appear convinced that any major party possesses a complete or coherent solution to the country’s problems.
I certainly don’t.
Not one of the major political parties in South Africa possess an absolute majority of good ideas, nor will they get an absolute majority of votes. Among our would -be “leaders”, there is a paucity of competent people and realistic solutions. The era of dominant single-party certainty appears to be fading, slowly replaced by messy coalitions, unstable alliances and permanent negotiation. Most analysts describe this as a crisis, but I’m increasingly convinced it may become an advantage.
As someone who believes strongly in individual liberty, limited government and decentralised power, I find myself oddly optimistic about a political environment where no single party can fully impose its will on everybody else. There is something very healthy about political actors being forced to compromise, restrained by rivals and prevented from governing with unchecked arrogance. A fragmented political landscape creates frustration, obviously, but it also creates friction against bad ideas – and South Africa has suffered through enough bad ideas already.
Governments throughout history tend to become dangerous when they acquire excessive certainty, proud ideological confidence and unchecked power. Politicians are very good at announcing ambitious plans, but they are considerably less skilled at predicting unintended consequences. As the profoundly unserious Alexandra Ocasio Cortez said in an interview, recently: “The truth isn’t as important as being morally right!”. Millions of people have died at the hands of those convinced they are morally correct, while remaining economically illiterate.
South Africans seem to understand this instinctively because we live with the consequences every day. Our government appears incapable of delivering basic services, yet many politicians continue proposing larger administrative systems, more regulation, more intervention and more centralised control. Decades of evidence suggest that government competence does not automatically increase in proportion to government size. This isn’t only happening in South Africa – European welfare states are coming to the ugly realization that their financial situation isn’t sustainable. Big government often becomes slow, extractive and detached from ordinary reality.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, ordinary citizens continue solving problems themselves. Private security has filled the gap left by failing policing. Generators and domestic solar panels compensate for collapsing energy infrastructure. Community groups like Afriforum repair roads and public spaces. Independent schools and private healthcare continue expanding, delivering better outcomes than anything in the public sector. Small businesses survive despite government, not because of it. South Africans have become experts at parallel systems.
The Afrikaans saying “’n Boer maak ’n plan” is evident everywhere, and there’s more political wisdom in that phrase than in most legislative white papers. It reflects a population that has learned resilience through disappointment. South Africans are adaptive because they have had no choice. We improvise, negotiate, build informal networks and create opportunity wherever formal systems fail to provide it. Ironically – and to our credit, the failures of the state have produced unusually resourceful citizens.
Naturally, there are limits to how far resilience can compensate for dysfunction. A country cannot tax its productive population endlessly while failing to create economic growth. It cannot regulate businesses into hiring more people. It cannot sustain prosperity while electricity remains unstable, infrastructure deteriorates and skilled citizens quietly emigrate. At some point, competence matters.
And perhaps that is where South African politics is gradually heading. Away from grand ideological narratives and toward a far simpler question: Who can actually make things work? Who can produce value? Who can build functioning institutions? Who can attract investment? Who can create jobs? Who understands incentives, economics, infrastructure and human behaviour in the real world rather than inside policy seminars?
Those people probably won’t emerge from traditional politics, but they’re among us. The old lady running a day-care for township children while their parents work, the man who starts a business repairing shoes next to a busy public road and the unemployed guy using his phone to create a new way of trading commodities.
Countries with weak governments often develop unusually strong civil societies because citizens learn not to wait for permission. They develop entrepreneurial instincts, scepticism toward authority and practical survival intelligence. None of this excuses political failure, obviously, but it does create populations that are often more resilient and adaptable than outsiders realise. We saw this in the KZN riots of 2021, where ordinary men in the suburbs got their guns, set up roadblocks and stopped mobs from ransacking their neighborhoods. Communities have anticipated the lacunae our government are too busy stealing to notice, and they’re ready for whatever happens. Resilience matters enormously in uncertain times, and considering the state of the rest of the world, this will give us an advantage. Under current conditions, societies with flexible, self-reliant populations may prove more durable than highly centralised systems dependent on political perfection.
South Africa’s future will still require serious reforms: We need lower taxes, economic growth, energy stability, functional rule-of-law, improved education outcomes, accountability for corruption and dramatically expanded employment opportunities. None of these problems solve themselves, but perhaps the healthiest political outcome for 2026 is one where no party possesses enough power to dominate everyone else completely. Coalition politics may frustrate investors, journalists and political strategists, but perpetual negotiation also prevents ideological extremism from consolidating too easily – and they’ll be too busy squabbling to pass bad laws.
South Africans, no matter what happens in the election, will keep making a plan long after the speeches are over.
