This first of a two-part essay on South Africa’s potential as an economic powerhouse explores what needs to happen politically for the country to achieve this.
We are currently living through a fascinating time in how countries across the world are thinking hard about how to get rich.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all jumped from Soviet-laden backwaters to rich-world tech hubs in 20 years, largely through entry to the European Union’s vast single market. Namibia is pushing the frontiers of offshore oil and gas technology to extract its untold bounty. The USA is investing trillions of dollars to lead the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race in homegrown supply chains. New cities are being built, from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia.
Norway, meanwhile, assists this new money by helping build foolproof, anti-fragile Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs), from Guyana to Mozambique.
Long walk to economic fortitude
What of South Africa? It could thrive in all of these industries and beyond.
The country is unrivalled in economic potential – Argentinian mineral wealth, Kenyan youthful population, Nigerian entrepreneurial spirit, Indian manufacturing, Singaporean financial sophistication, French agriculture, Italian cultural appeal, Tanzanian tourism and Californian landscapes – all rolled into one.
Encouragingly, achieving a political landscape to facilitate this is closer than many believe. Indeed, quiet developments of recent years have shown SA has avoided the pitfalls which have plagued similar African, post-colonial societies.
The two areas of policy change broadly required are radical liberalisation of the economy coupled with improvement of state capacities.
Long-term prosperity arises when a vibrant and dynamic private sector intersects with a competent, benevolent, ethical state. This I take the liberty to call the law of complementarity.
The former demands scrapping investment-hostile political efforts to expropriate property and race-based legislation in employment and investment. The latter demands appointing competent people to run state-entities.
In July 2023, I wrote a column for BizNews entitled, “South Africa’s Long Walk to Prosperity: How South Africa may yet again confound the critics and not go the way of Zimbabwe.” It was not popular to be bullish on South Africa at that time.
The key ‘checks’ of a free society remain intact in SA as the dominant party loses power: a clean election system, independent judiciary, strong political alternatives.
For a decade leading into the 2024 election, the prevailing narrative was that the African National Congress (ANC) would always team up with the firebrand Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). In standard post-liberation style, that would destroy the economy and run roughshod over democratic safeguards.
South Africa would be sunk for a generation.
When the moment came in June 2024, the once-invincible ANC dropped to 40% and signed a coalition deal with the pro-market Democratic Alliance (DA), which attained 21.81%.
While not instantly unlocking the economy, this prevented a descent into Zimbabwean-style economic collapse. The gravity of that moment should always be remembered.
Politics
But how might the country’s politics reorganise to allow the economy to thrive? Political parties which espouse the law of complementarity described above must collectively attain 51% or above of the national vote.
It is close to being achieved through SA’s system of Proportional Representation (PR), most analogous to Germany.
In time, SA may end up with ‘blocks’ – a 30% centre-right party, and a 30% centre-left party. The DA could broadly occupy the former space. A downsized ANC could occupy the latter.
The two come together to form variations of a ‘broad coalition’ at each election, collectively pushing 70% of the vote.
(This is distinct from Scandinavian PR systems in which parties coalesce around one of those two blocks to form around 51%+, from one election cycle to the next).
So, can SA’s politics get there through political actors that match aspirations of people?
Polling spanning decades confirms South Africans to be pro-market and socially conservative. Veteran analyst Moeletsi Mbeki nuances this, telling The Common Sense’s Gabriel Makin that a successful party in SA must espouse developmentalist ideas. Indeed – high-quality centre-left parties are elusive the world over.
The DA’s absence of well-known state-assistance programmes largely explains its failure to break into swathes of the lower-middle classes.
There is little appetite for liberalism in SA and almost none for libertarianism.
Nicholas Lorimer of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) added to this. In 2025, he wrote a poignant column on how SA lacks a solid centre left party – the DA could rise to 40% by 2029 and still be out of government.
SA’s current GNU marries a Marxist party with a liberal party – ideologies aloof to its citizens.
Post-ANC Future?
Through organisational paralysis, the ANC looks set to slowly ebb away. What might that look like? Might a new, centre-left party arise in the coming years to fill the void?
One possible vehicle for such a realignment is Prince Mashele’s ‘Rescue South Africa (RescueSA)’.
If it succeeds in occupying the developmentalist centre rather than competing directly for the DA’s electorate, it could eventually provide the sort of coalition partner currently missing from South African politics.
Interestingly, Mashele has endorsed the DA – implying that his party will join forces, and not compete with the DA. That implies he also understands the political science of where the party should sit: a replacement to an ANC pursuing harmful economic policies.
Assuming RescueSA bleeds votes from the ANC, and has critical mass, it may well be the c.15-30%-ish centre-left partner for a c.30%-DA that the country needs to be governed coherently.
How the new party will not cannibalise the DA remains unclear to me – the DA does exceptionally well among diverse segments of the country. Mashele chose not to reply to a request for clarification on this matter.
We await the announcement of RescueSA’s recruits in 2027.
At the time of writing, it looks as though it may avoid the dangers of previous political upstarts – grassroots-inspired, depth in talent, a focused political offering, diversified funding. This time it looks set to be launched when the ANC is battling for survival.
Tomorrow, the second part of this essay takes the ambitious assumptions that RescueSA pursues the correct voter market. By the national election of 2029, then, SA achieves a majority political dispensation that espouses pro-market-competent-state values.
[Image: AI-generarted image, supplied]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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