Listen here.South Africa stands at a political crossroads. In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Frans Cronje unpacks the fragile future of the GNU, coalition chaos ahead of local elections, ANC infighting, and the economic risks of a radical policy shift. From Johannesburg’s crumbling infrastructure to the resilience of South Africa’s private sector, Cronje argues voters are becoming more pragmatic while politicians remain trapped in ideology. He also weighs the prospects of Patrice Motsepe, warns of possible “balkanisation,” and explains why the country may still avoid total collapse..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.00:00:05:15 - 00:00:29:19Alec Hogg:Dr Frans Cronje, the chairman of the board of the Social Research Foundation, the editor-in-chief of The Counterpoint, and an all-round guru that we look to when it comes to anything about politics, is with us this morning for a long-belated catch-up. Lovely to see you.00:00:29:20 - 00:00:40:09Alec Hogg:And since we last spoke, Frans, a lot has happened. Maybe the best place to start is that we now have a local election on 4 November. How are you reading it?00:00:40:11 - 00:01:05:21Frans Cronje:Yeah. What’s going to happen is that, in most major centres - so that’s the metros except for Cape Town, and then perhaps another 50 or 100 urban municipalities - no one is going to win an outright majority. The kind of results you’re going to get are things like the DA on thirty-something percent and the ANC on roughly the same, or the DA on forty-something percent.00:01:05:21 - 00:01:35:21Frants Cronje:And the ANC the same. In KZN, MK will do terribly well, and you’re going to be in a position where, I don’t know, perhaps a hundred municipal areas will have to enter coalition negotiations to determine who governs. But that’s where we are at the moment.You’ll recall that after the May 2024 election, the ANC got about 40% and the DA about 22%, or thereabouts.00:01:35:23 - 00:02:00:05Frants Cronje:And it’s actually been very constant since then. We poll regularly, and apart from some tangential fluctuations, the ANC sits just below 40% and the DA just above 25%. We’ve locked into that very stable picture now, and the local government election results will reflect that.00:02:00:07 - 00:02:07:01Alec Hogg:We have had a functioning Government of National Unity. In fact, it seems to have done a lot of good things.00:02:07:01 - 00:02:30:06Alec Hogg:If you look below the surface - and I know you’re regarded as one of the more optimistic analysts in South Africa, and we can talk about that in a moment - is there any way that the working together we’ve seen at a national level can start embedding itself more expansively at a local level?00:02:30:08 - 00:02:56:17Frans Cronje:You know, the first point on the benefits of the GNU - and we must come back to that, particularly for what I’m about to say - is that I have to stress this carefully.On the future prospects of the GNU, I think the new DA leadership is more ambivalent about its survival than the previous DA leadership, which was vastly more determined to see it survive.00:02:56:19 - 00:03:18:03Frans Cronje:And they may have good reasons for that. At the same time, in what we might call the centrist ANC camp, there’s also a feeling that perhaps the GNU was useful, but maybe it would have been better if they had simply run a minority government and governed the country with 40%.00:03:18:05 - 00:03:45:09Frans Cronje:Then, on the more radical side of the ANC, the rebellion against the GNU is gaining momentum. Gauteng has effectively stayed out of it, and they haven’t formally brought the EFF into government there, but they’ve certainly been talking to them about doing so. So you already have a live example of the opposite of the GNU.00:03:45:10 - 00:04:12:03Frans Cronje:And in the Northern Cape, we think we’re starting to see the same thing happen.So if you stand back from it, you can summarise it this way: you have a DA that is not necessarily going to die on the GNU hill in the way the former leadership might have; you have ANC centrists who think minority government might have been better for them; and you have the more radical ANC faction saying, “Look at us - we’re governing Gauteng with an alternative to the GNU.”00:04:12:05 - 00:04:36:21Frans Cronje:So what actually holds this thing together? You could end up with a hundred coalition negotiations, and remember, each negotiation impacts every other one.00:04:36:23 - 00:05:15:05Frans Cronje:It’s a really interesting problem because you might do a deal in, say, Nelspruit - I don’t know what the exact numbers there look like - but then someone else says, “Well, this deal now undermines the arrangement in Kimberley.” And so that dynamic plays out across the country.You’ll remember that before the election we were very confident there would be a GNU afterwards, and we said the GNU would save the country - which I think it did. And I thought John Steenhuisen played a very good role in that at the time.00:05:15:05 - 00:05:32:22Frans Cronje:But our sense now is that we are no longer saying with the same confidence that this GNU will definitely hold through to the 2029 election. There may well be a period where things become somewhat scrambled.00:05:33:00 - 00:05:50:06Alec Hogg:So, putting your finance hat on: if the GNU were to collapse, or get “scrambled” as you put it, would that have an impact on things like the South African rand, given that ours is such an open economy?00:05:50:08 - 00:06:13:18Frans Cronje:Well, this takes us back to the benefits the GNU brought. There hasn’t been much by way of reform, and the economy is still only going to grow at about 1% this year again, which is roughly a third of the global average. That’s terrible for a developing economy. It’s about a quarter of the emerging-market average and only around 20% of what the rest of Africa is expected to achieve.00:06:13:20 - 00:06:41:07Frans Cronje:So you could certainly say that’s very poor. You could argue that the GNU is hopeless and a waste of time because unemployment remains so high - and you wouldn’t entirely be wrong.But the rand this morning is about 10% stronger than it was a year ago. Throughout the period of the Iran conflict, the GNU held. Then, last Friday, we had ratings outlook upgrades from sub-investment grade to positive because of what South Africa has been doing fiscally.00:06:41:09 - 00:07:19:01Frans Cronje:That’s thanks to the excellent work being done by the Finance Minister, supported by his deputies, Mr Masondo and Mr Sayedali-Shah Rubin, from the ANC and DA respectively.You’re still in a country where a figure like Helen Zille can literally go around swimming in potholes and humiliating the ANC - and she isn’t jailed for it, which is what you would expect in an authoritarian society.00:07:19:03 - 00:07:47:19Frans Cronje:The outlook on debt and the deficit is still focused on flattening the curve and maintaining pragmatism, which is extraordinary if you consider that the ANC is fundamentally a revolutionary nationalist liberation movement with roots in East Germany and the Soviet Union.If such a movement were losing elections and facing humiliating losses in local government, you’d expect them to print money recklessly. But they’re not doing that.00:07:47:19 - 00:08:14:19Frans Cronje:Fixed investment rates remain very low - about 15% of GDP when they should be closer to 30% if we were a normal emerging market. At 15%, you’re effectively only maintaining the economy rather than expanding it. But at least it still means there is maintenance investment rather than outright abandonment.00:08:15:00 - 00:08:46:05Frans Cronje:So, yes, there’s always a conjectural element to this. You can say the GNU is hopeless because growth is only 1%. But I see it differently. I think the GNU has held us in a position from which we can still recover and become a thriving emerging market again.00:08:46:05 - 00:09:15:21Frans Cronje:Had the ANC brought the EFF and MK into government immediately after the election, they would probably have moved aggressively on expropriation and similar policies. Fiscal prudence would not have survived, and the rand certainly wouldn’t be 10% stronger today than it was a year ago.00:09:15:23 - 00:09:52:18Frans Cronje:Instead, we would likely have seen the rand weaken dramatically, interest rates rise, bond markets reprice South African risk, and debt and deficits escalate rapidly. We would have entered a steep downward spiral from which recovery would have become extraordinarily difficult - perhaps impossible.00:09:52:20 - 00:10:04:01Frans Cronje:So, on balance, I think we are in a far stronger position than we otherwise would have been.00:10:04:03 - 00:10:21:09Alec Hogg:There is a perception that, when Ramaphosa goes - and it is “when”, because he cannot stand for a third term as ANC leader - the most likely successor is going to put together that “doomsday coalition” that John Steenhuisen used to refer to.00:10:22:13 - 00:10:48:06Frans Cronje:Yes. Then what happens is this: let’s say Paul Mashatile succeeds Ramaphosa and brings the EFF and MK into government. Let’s say they pursue NHI, expropriation and similar policies, and fiscal prudence is lost.Now, that may not happen immediately, but if it does, you’ll see the currency weaken straight away. You’ll see the bond market move, debt curves start climbing, and investment rates stagnate further.00:10:48:06 - 00:11:17:06Frans Cronje:Living standards for ordinary people would come under immense pressure.But we already have an established record of how this works. Put very simply: in the ANC’s first ten years in government, the economy began growing at around 4%, later reaching 5%, and employment increased rapidly. The ANC effectively doubled employment levels over its first fifteen years in power.00:11:17:08 - 00:11:50:19Frans Cronje:Government debt levels halved during that same period. Protest activity also declined dramatically. ANC support in 2004 was actually six percentage points stronger than it had been in 1994 under Mandela.And the reason was that the ANC governed relatively moderately. Yes, there were still interventions and ideological impulses along the way, but broadly speaking, the economy grew and the party was rewarded with close to 70% of the vote.00:11:50:19 - 00:12:14:15Frans Cronje:Over the following two decades, however, the ANC became increasingly radical. Investment collapsed, growth collapsed, and populist ideas such as NHI and expropriation gained traction.As a result, ANC support has, at times over the last year, fallen to roughly half of what it was in 2004.00:12:14:15 - 00:12:42:18Frans Cronje:And there’s a very good reason for that. Ordinary people are fundamentally centrist, sensible and moderate. South Africa is not a radicalised society.I’ve spent quite a lot of time looking at the Middle East over the past two or three years, and also at the United States. What both have in common is highly radicalised public opinion.00:12:42:19 - 00:13:05:14Frans Cronje:In the US, the divide between Democrats and Republicans has become so deep that many people now effectively see each other as enemies. In the Middle East, when you look at polling data on how Israelis and Palestinians perceive one another, it’s deeply disturbing.We are not like that at all.00:13:05:16 - 00:13:30:02Frans Cronje:In fact, I sometimes make the point that South Africa is not truly a multicultural society in the sense of having fundamentally different value systems.Yes, superficially we may look different, speak different languages and have different cultural reference points, but in terms of values, eight out of ten South Africans occupy essentially the same middle ground - and it’s a very healthy one.00:13:30:04 - 00:14:00:20Frans Cronje:So when the ANC became more radical and living standards stagnated - and then deteriorated, with real per capita GDP declining for fifteen years - people simply began leaving the party.00:14:00:22 - 00:14:29:11Frans Cronje:You can absolutely make the argument that if Mashatile succeeds Ramaphosa and then implements all the policies people fear he may pursue, by the time South Africans vote in 2029 the ANC could be down to 30%, while the DA could be on 40%.00:14:29:14 - 00:14:58:22Frans Cronje:That is one possible outcome. Another possibility - and perhaps we should pause on it because it’s important - is what I would call the “balkanisation” scenario. But that is not necessarily a net negative outcome in every respect.I have said directly to ANC figures who are prepared to listen that, if they go down this route, the balance of probabilities is that they will ultimately destroy themselves politically.00:14:59:00 - 00:15:28:22Frans Cronje:The country would suffer for a period, yes, but it could recover. The ANC itself, however, could completely write itself off if it chooses this path.00:15:29:03 - 00:15:37:17Alec Hogg:But is there much reflection on that within the grouping in the ANC that is effectively running Gauteng and Johannesburg? There doesn’t seem to be much long-term thinking about how today’s actions might damage them in the future.00:15:37:19 - 00:16:02:23Alec Hogg:One would think the balance of power within the ANC would encourage more caution.00:16:03:01 - 00:16:24:05Frans Cronje:They genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. Their view is that, if they become more radical, they can win back the support they’ve lost, because at a superficial level many of their former voters moved to more radical parties.00:16:24:05 - 00:16:50:07Frans Cronje:So the logic becomes: if our voters left us for more radical parties, then we must become more radical ourselves in order to win them back.At a superficial level, there’s an internal logic to that. But it’s fundamentally flawed, because those voters did not leave in pursuit of radical ideology. They left because they were frustrated with deteriorating living standards caused by government policy failures.00:16:50:09 - 00:17:29:00Frans Cronje:If you put radicals in power and conditions continue deteriorating, people will simply move on to another alternative. They are frustrated and angry - but not inherently radical.Take something like the “Kill the Boer” chant. If you ask South Africans in polling whether that is acceptable behaviour, around seventy-something percent say it is abhorrent and has no place in a society like ours.00:17:29:06 - 00:18:01:03Frans Cronje:So the underlying values in society remain moderate.The problem with the radical faction in Gauteng is that they genuinely believe greater radicalism will restore support. But according to our latest numbers in Johannesburg, the ANC is sitting around 30%. They are effectively destroying themselves politically.00:18:01:03 - 00:18:23:23Frans Cronje:Now, there are still good people within the ANC who understand this and who are deeply worried about the direction things are taking. But I don’t think anyone is truly in charge of the ANC anymore.Everyone is effectively allowed to pursue their own agenda.00:18:23:23 - 00:18:47:07Frans Cronje:And the reason for that is structural. People always ask: “What’s the answer?” The answer is the structure itself.The ANC has a governing body 0 effectively a board - like any large organisation. Its National Executive Committee has around a hundred people drawn from every possible ideological perspective, many with deeply conflicting interests.00:18:47:09 - 00:19:18:23Frans Cronje:Some are deeply ideological, some are pragmatic, some fear that if the country were properly governed they might end up in prison.And the chairman of the board, Mr Ramaphosa, tends to try to find consensus before moving ahead.00:19:19:01 - 00:19:43:03Frans Cronje:As it’s often described to me, meetings proceed with everyone expressing wildly different views - from nationalising everything to pursuing closer relations with the United States - and then the chairman says, “Very interesting, perhaps we should reconvene in three months and think about it again.”00:19:43:05 - 00:20:19:12Frans Cronje:Compare that with Mandela. When he inherited the ANC - with essentially the same structure - he understood the risks immediately. He delivered his first economic policy framework before the ANC had even held its first formal economic policy conference, and he had the authority and gravitas to carry it through.00:20:19:14 - 00:20:45:02Frans Cronje:That’s why the radicals today get a little space to operate, while the more pragmatic people get to run institutions like Treasury. Everyone gets to pursue their own agenda simultaneously - and meanwhile the ANC’s support slowly declines.00:20:59:23 - 00:21:19:15Alec Hogg:And if we then look at Johannesburg, because it’s such a specific example of these competing poles: Helen Zille said in conversation last week that she believes the DA needs 45% to have any realistic chance of forming a stable coalition government there.00:21:19:17 - 00:21:37:23Alec Hogg:She said they are polling at around 39% at the moment. Do you see a scenario where they could realistically get to 45%? And if they don’t, based on what she has said publicly, do you see her packing her bags and returning to Cape Town?00:21:38:01 - 00:22:05:14Frans Cronje:I think there is a path. Though it’s always daunting to offer advice to Helen Zille.If you want to achieve regime change - which is effectively what she is trying to do in Johannesburg - then regime change is always a two-step process. This applies just as much in Johannesburg as it does internationally.00:22:05:17 - 00:22:20:04Frans Cronje:Step one is that society comes to believe that the existing regime can no longer protect its interests. That has already happened in Johannesburg.00:22:20:06 - 00:22:55:18Frans Cronje:But then you also need step two: society must believe that the alternative regime actually will protect its interests. And the key word there is “believe” - not “hope” or “maybe”.That second step has not yet fully happened, which is why the DA remains stuck in the 30% to 40% range across much of the country.00:22:55:20 - 00:22:59:02Frantz Cronje:So - 00:22:59:04 - 00:23:36:14Frantz Cronje:There’s an idea I’ve suggested to Helen Zille - though she’s obviously the one in the arena. You can continue swimming through potholes, as she’s done very effectively.I was in Mpumalanga recently and some of the potholes there were extraordinary. If someone had told me a missile strike had hit the road between Belfast and Lydenburg, I would probably have believed them.00:23:36:16 - 00:24:03:03Frans Cronje:Now, exposing the potholes is effective politically, but you also need to demonstrate that you can fix them.So in practical terms, what I would do is get donors or wealthy supporters to finance perhaps ten service vehicles branded clearly as a civic initiative linked to fixing Johannesburg.00:24:03:05 - 00:24:31:11Frans Cronje:You place crews in those vehicles with the equipment needed to fill potholes, repaint road markings and cut grass. Then every morning Helen Zille leads the convoy into major routes across Johannesburg and they physically start fixing things in public view.00:24:31:13 - 00:24:55:18Frans Cronje:So you expose the failure, but then you also visibly solve the problem. That would become a political sensation, and I think it could close much of the remaining gap towards 50%.00:24:55:18 - 00:25:23:11Frans Cronje:A few years ago, together with my colleague Gabriel Crouse at the Social Research Foundation, we conducted a series of focus groups in Soweto because we wanted to better understand the urban ANC voter base.00:25:23:14 - 00:25:47:10Frans Cronje:One participant said something that has always stayed with me: “Show us - don’t tell us.”People are tired of promises. They’ve heard politicians say “we’ll fix things” for decades. What they want now is visible proof.00:25:47:12 - 00:26:10:17Frans Cronje:Similarly, when you ask young people why they often don’t vote, many say politicians are useless. But if you ask what would make them participate again, they often answer: “If we can actually see the country improving.”00:26:10:19 - 00:26:30:16Frans Cronje:Now, sophisticated political observers may say that’s naïve and that citizens should vote regardless. But the fact is: that’s how people actually think.00:26:30:18 - 00:27:10:16Frans Cronje:And the same advice applies to the ANC. There is still a reservoir of goodwill towards the ANC among many voters because, for millions of people, the ANC historically represented dignity and liberation.00:27:10:18 - 00:27:37:14Frans Cronje:Initially, it genuinely did provide that. Which is why it’s now so painful for many voters to watch what has happened.The leader who was meant to clean up the state campaigned on anti-corruption and now finds himself effectively at the centre of the most sensational corruption scandal in the country’s democratic history.00:27:37:16 - 00:28:15:18Frans Cronje:If the ANC returned to pragmatism, chose the right leadership and focused on growth again, I genuinely believe it could recover to above 50%.The growth rate could relatively easily move back towards 3%, and the ANC could once again become a majority party.00:28:15:18 - 00:28:30:06Frans Cronje:Ironically, it’s much easier for the ANC to recover support than it is for the DA to overtake them nationally. But because of the ANC’s fragmented leadership structure - where everyone effectively pursues their own agenda - they are not taking that path.00:28:30:08 - 00:28:32:06Frans Cronje:And that’s the problem.00:28:32:07 - 00:28:54:02Alec Hogg:Just to summarise and pull this together: it sounds to me as though the public has become far more pragmatic and less ideological than the political parties themselves.And perhaps that explains why you remain one of the more optimistic commentators on South Africa.00:28:54:04 - 00:29:13:02Alec Hogg:It’s fascinating because there was a time when many people viewed Frantz Cronje as deeply pessimistic about South Africa. Now, while no one would call you wildly bullish, the data you’re seeing clearly seems to be informing a much more constructive outlook.00:29:13:04 - 00:29:23:05Alec Hogg:But from what you’re saying, the politicians themselves still appear to be doubling down on ideology. What changes that?00:29:23:07 - 00:29:57:07Frans Cronje:Well, parts of the ANC certainly are doubling down ideologically. We saw President Ramaphosa in Parliament about a week ago defending Black Economic Empowerment policies very aggressively.00:29:57:09 - 00:30:16:09Frans Cronje:The DA recently proposed an alternative empowerment framework, which we polled extensively, and strong majorities — including ANC voters — actually preferred the DA’s proposal over the ANC’s policy.00:30:16:09 - 00:30:42:06Frans Cronje:Yet Ramaphosa stood up in Parliament and described current empowerment policy as a great success, citing mining as an example.That was extraordinary because, if you look at the data, real investment in mining exploration is down dramatically compared with 1994.00:30:42:06 - 00:31:01:17Frans Cronje:So there are definitely ideological blind spots inside the ANC. At the same time, though, there are reformist elements too. The party is internally fragmented.00:31:01:19 - 00:31:46:20Frans Cronje:The DA, meanwhile, is broadly pragmatic. But it is also fundamentally a liberal democratic party, not a revolutionary party.That means it believes in institutions, due process and constitutionalism. A revolutionary party would behave much more ruthlessly.00:31:46:20 - 00:32:20:13Frans Cronje:For example, if a revolutionary movement had inherited an opponent as politically weakened as Ramaphosa currently appears to be, it would likely have pursued a vote of no confidence relentlessly and attempted to drive the ANC into total internal crisis ahead of 2029.00:32:20:15 - 00:32:44:06Frans Cronje:But the DA doesn’t operate that way. So you have one party that is pragmatic but institutionally cautious, and another that is capable of ruthlessness but internally chaotic.00:32:44:06 - 00:33:15:22Frans Cronje:Now, even if South Africa enters a period of deeper instability under a future ANC-EFF-MK coalition, there’s another dynamic emerging that people increasingly need to understand.00:33:15:22 - 00:33:51:09Frans Cronje:As the South African state has retreated from fulfilling many of its core functions, private actors have increasingly stepped in to replace those functions.You can see this in logistics, electricity generation, private security and many other areas.00:33:51:11 - 00:34:39:04Frans Cronje:In many ways, what South Africa is now testing is whether the Union formed in 1910 can continue to function coherently without a strong central authority in Pretoria.Historically, the country held together because there was always a dominant authority at the centre - first through force under apartheid, and later through the moral authority of Mandela and the ANC.00:34:39:04 - 00:35:11:12Frans Cronje:What we are seeing now is increasing fragmentation - what I refer to as “balkanisation”. But one part of that fragmentation may involve highly resilient middle-class and entrepreneurial enclaves emerging around functioning local systems.00:35:11:14 - 00:35:34:12Frans Cronje:For highly skilled, globally connected South Africans - particularly those who are entrepreneurial and not dependent on the state - these enclaves could remain remarkably sustainable even in periods of national instability.00:35:34:14 - 00:36:18:23Frans Cronje:And that matters enormously, because it means South Africa could go through a very difficult decade at a national level while still retaining much of its skills base, tax base, capital and entrepreneurial energy inside the country rather than losing it all to emigration.00:36:19:01 - 00:36:41:13Frans Cronje:That significantly reduces the risk of a total collapse scenario such as Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Somalia.It also means that, if a more capable national government eventually emerges, it would still have a domestic base from which to rebuild.00:36:41:15 - 00:37:04:01Frans Cronje:A lot of people struggle with this concept because they remain attached to the older idea that everything in South Africa depends entirely on what happens in Pretoria and at the Union Buildings.00:37:04:02 - 00:37:37:03Frans Cronje:But increasingly, we do not believe that is true anymore. From the perspective of many middle-class South Africans, there is now a viable long-term future in the country despite national political instability.00:37:37:05 - 00:37:59:19Frans Cronje:And I often illustrate this by asking people to imagine what they would have thought fifteen years ago if someone had predicted everything South Africa would go through.00:37:59:19 - 00:38:20:06Frans Cronje:You would have been told there would be rolling blackouts, a pandemic, riots, severe floods, widespread institutional decay and dramatic political fragmentation.00:38:20:08 - 00:38:43:21Frans Cronje:Most people would have assumed that such a sequence of events would trigger complete societal collapse. Yet, despite all of that, many parts of South African society remain remarkably resilient.00:38:43:21 - 00:39:07:18Frans Cronje:You can sit today in highly functional business districts north of Durban, in world-class offices overlooking the ocean, and see a functioning economy continuing despite everything else happening around it.00:39:07:20 - 00:39:42:16Frans Cronje:That resilience is the practical manifestation of what we advise clients about: that many communities and economic systems in South Africa are capable of withstanding extraordinary pressure.00:39:42:17 - 00:40:31:11Alec Hogg:Wow. There’s a great deal there - not only practical implications, but also a profound mindset shift. And your KwaZulu-Natal example really illustrates it clearly, because the reality is far more resilient than many people’s instinctive assumptions about doom and collapse.00:40:31:16 - 00:40:36:19Alec Hogg:But before we go: what probability would you place on some kind of “sobering up” within the ANC leadership against this broader trend of fragmentation and balkanisation?00:40:36:21 - 00:41:02:20Frans Cronje:The majority of ANC politicians probably won’t sober up. But that doesn’t necessarily matter if the party ultimately chooses a strong, executive-style leader at the top.00:41:02:22 - 00:41:38:04Frantz Cronje:Someone like Patrice Motsepe, for example. A leader willing to govern with decisive authority in the way Mandela did - rather than constantly seeking endless consensus inside the ANC’s sprawling structures.00:41:38:04 - 00:42:07:04Frans Cronje:I was sceptical of Ramaphosa from the beginning because I never believed he was fundamentally a reformer.But if someone like Motsepe took charge and governed decisively, I think South Africa’s economic recovery could happen surprisingly quickly.00:42:07:04 - 00:42:20:08Frans Cronje:You would immediately change the tone, restore confidence and alter expectations. Leadership style matters enormously.00:42:20:10 - 00:42:29:03Alec Hogg:But will the ANC actually choose that kind of leader? That’s really the question. What probability would you assign to that outcome versus continued fragmentation?00:42:29:05 - 00:42:31:23Frantz Cronje:Well, we’ve polled Patrice Motsepe extensively.00:42:32:01 - 00:43:00:23Frans Cronje:Even before people seriously discussed him as a potential ANC presidential candidate, he consistently emerged as the preferred option when voters were asked who they thought should lead the ANC.00:43:01:01 - 00:43:35:03Frans Cronje:And once public discussion around his candidacy began accelerating earlier this year, his polling numbers took off dramatically — especially among ANC voters.00:43:35:03 - 00:44:05:03Frans Cronje:We said at the time that the ANC might believe it was still debating its future leadership internally, but in the minds of ordinary voters the debate was effectively already settled.00:44:05:05 - 00:44:23:11Frans Cronje:Any politically rational ANC that cared about self-preservation and respected its own history would move quickly to elevate someone like Motsepe.The economy would likely respond immediately, growth would improve, and the ANC could recover electorally.00:44:23:13 - 00:44:43:02Frans Cronje:The DA would then return to what it has historically done very well: acting as a strong democratic opposition. And South Africa remains a democracy today in large part because of the work of people like Tony Leon and others who sustained opposition politics over many difficult years.00:44:43:04 - 00:44:56:14Frans Cronje:The opportunity for ANC renewal is there. The question is simply whether they will take it. And given the decisions they’ve made over the past several years, I genuinely don’t know.00:44:56:16 - 00:45:05:08Alec Hogg:Dr Frans Cronje, as always, it’s been fascinating speaking with you. Thank you very much for your insights today. I’m Alec Hogg for BizNews.com.