Beyond the abyss: Why Sean McLaughlin still has hope for South Africa

In the midst of doomsday predictions for South Africa’s future, reminiscent of Zimbabwe’s decline, a closer examination reveals a narrative of resilience and potential. Drawing parallels with the EU’s crisis response, South Africa’s institutions show adaptability. While various scenarios, from leftist destruction to a far-right takeover, are plausible, the nation’s robust constitution, political diversity, and independent institutions provide hope. Challenges like power and water issues are deemed fixable, and increased voter engagement could pave the way for a prosperous future. The key lies in unlocking the nation’s untapped potential.

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Why I remain hopeful about South Africa

By Sean McLaughlin

The cliché that SA will go the way of Zimbabwe reminds me of the UK’s EU referendum debate in 2016. Many Brexiteers looked to the continental Europe of the mid-2010s. Structurally flawed, many observers assumed the EU would fall apart within two years.

The complicated Eurozone sovereign debt crisis had Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland in deep financial trouble. The UK needed to jump off a sinking ship, they said.

Except that the European Union is the world’s living example of Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s ‘Anti-fragile’ – ‘Things that gain from disorder’. The crises of the 2010s ironically had the institutions in question notice these problems and reform to avoid repeats. The European Central Bank undertook quantitative easing and Eurozone-level bonds are now issued. Rather than breaking apart, the Eurozone instead added Croatia as a new member in 2023.

There are parallels with SA here – the hysterical media rarely addresses the mundane jigsaws of what holds things together.

At one level, I wonder if the doom-mongering media will be proven right, and if the Zimbabwean story proves merely a dressed rehearsal for the wine farm invasions 2033.

Make no mistake, all the Brenthurst foundation’s scenarios are possible: The Bad – leftist destruction (Zimbabwe); The Ugly – SA fades away (more of the same); The Fistful of Cents – wealthy enclaves (the state-proofed Steyn City idea); The Good (western world inclusive democracy). Many would choose a different one, a far-right takeover implementing martial law and pro-market reforms (Hungary, Rwanda).

Be what may, it seems that the inflection point – in which a liberation movement has lost or is on the brink of irrevocably losing its majority – has been reached. Crucially, in SA that point has been reached with the basic democratic infrastructure and free society pillars, for the most part, still intact. SA has consistently achieved scores of 79/100 on the Global Freedom House index.

Neighbourly comparisons

The Zimbabwean story is unlikely to be repeated, in part because it was uniquely bad. Few countries in the world have lower GDP person today than they did in 1980. People are hungry in a land that previously fed the world UN’s World Food Programme.

There are a handful of advantages SA’s forces of good have over Zimbabwe’s: A robust constitution and political system with three levels of government which is harder to manipulate; strong political participation – think Zanu PF’s five-yearly pretend elections, versus the 200 political parties that will contest the 2024 election in SA.

Other factors include historical fiscal prudence within the ANC; vociferous and voluminous media and civil society pressure groups; geographic-political diversity preventing one party dominance.

SA’s economic diversity protects against external shocks (and Zimbabwe had a single economic-ethnic-political punchbag in the case of white farmers).

In SA, key governmental institutions function relatively independently in the public prosecutor, the constitutional court and vitally, the electoral commission.

And the most under-studied factor of all is the ANC’s inability to capture the army and the police to impose their will on the country by force. Contrast that to Zimbabwe’s North Korea-trained militarised state.

Expectations on SA are very high, to build an inclusive democracy and to transition the skills to run a sophisticated economy within a generation of the contradictory mess of Apartheid.

Hope at the end of the road

SA is the end of the road in a literal and metaphorical sense. The metaphorical sense is that the whole African Nationalist project has been a catastrophe. The literal sense is that despite its well-known problems, c.4million immigrants from these projects further north now reside in an SA that offers hope. On the southern tip of Africa, somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, this is the end of the road.

But above all, three fundamentals leave me hopeful.

The first is that SA’s problems in power and water, are administrative and not structural. They are therefore perfectly fixable. The former is being addressed right now with coal station refits. They are also dwarfed in comparison to the turnaround other countries have undergone in very recent history. Europe lay in ruins merely 80s years ago off the back of the history’s most vicious war. Now virtually every European country is a member of the OECD rich world club and coalitions come together to govern in a largely collected manner.

The second is what could be achieved with greater voter registration and turnout. A recent IPSOS poll suggested that whilst the ANC would achieve around 50% in an election with a 66% turnout, they only represent the views of around 33% of adults eligible to vote in the country (not all of SA’s 42.3 million eligible adults are registered to vote and will turn out). This evidences widespread support for sensible policies.

History is littered with surges in opposition support when faced with the abyss. Think France in 2017, when sensible opposition came from nowhere in Emmanuel Macron one year before the election to defeat the far-right. Similarly, throughout Mugabe’s 40-year wrath, Zimbabwe may have had a way back as late as 2009. A higher margin of victory in the 2008 presidential election for the opposition’s Tsvangirai‘s 47% (vs Mugabe’s 43%), may have been harder to arrest. The human spirit has an enormous capacity to hang on, long after anyone thought that there was anything left to hang onto.

It is very hard to destroy a country completely. Mugabe was one of the few.

And so, 2029 may be the moment voters take up the long-established centrist opposition, or that parties find each other in a unity government of sorts. Support for the ruling party can fall away very quickly when patronage networks dry up and the mafia turns on each other. Similarly, whilst parties come and go, like business start-ups, only one of them needs to fire. A figure who speaks the language of voters could return voter turnout to the highs of the 1990s.

The third factor is that this new unity government, whatever form it takes, will not have to change much to make SA the enthralling emerging market that we all know it should be. The fundamentals of a market-led recovery are in place through existing businesses which, despite everything the government can throw at them, are still growing. It is as though the ANC has held back a dam, which once pierced, we will witness the 21st century’s biggest flow of growth and job creation.

Looking closely at some fundamentals, there are sound reasons to believe that South Africa, the land perpetually on the edge of the abyss, can have a prosperous future.