Mailbox: A view on South Africa from an invested outsider

South African politics is fragmenting along a familiar line. Movements built on grievance, whether the ANC's transformation narrative, the radicalism of the EFF and MK, or the insurgent right around figures like Rob Hersov, each begin with a real insight and then stretch it into an explanation for everything. The result is escalating language and a narrowing audience. Ipsos found in March 2026 that 47% of South Africans feel no party represents them, while the ANC sits at 38% and the DA at 22. That unrepresented bloc, wanting both historical honesty and working municipalities, is the country's real political opportunity..By Mike Ash.The Financial Times recently explored an increasingly familiar political phenomenon. Which is that progressive politics consumed by identity, grievance, victimhood and moral certainty, then generates an opposing movement that begins to acquire many of the same characteristics. The ideological vocabulary changes. The political psychology starts to look remarkably similar.South Africa provides fertile ground for examining this process because grievance sits close to the country's political foundations. The historical reasons are obvious. Apartheid deliberately organised economic opportunity, property ownership, education, geography and political power around race. Its consequences remain visible in wealth, employment, health, education and access to opportunity. Any serious account of modern South Africa must accommodate that history.Yet history can also become heavy weight political currency, which is then repeatedly spent without producing enough change in the lives of the people whose grievances it describes.The ANC illustrates the problem along with its spin off parties, EFF and MK. Its case for transformation remains grounded in a genuine historical and economic reality. South Africa continues to experience profound inequality, and the distribution of wealth still carries the imprint of apartheid. The declining capabilities and diminishing voter attraction for the ANC comes from having governed nationally for more than 30 years, embedded corruption and failure to self-regulate and the related ideological attraction of communism and race based blame. Eventually the electorate starts asking what transformation has delivered alongside what remains to be transformed and why are they so bound to institutional failure, cadre deployment in the face of economic decline.The 2024 election provided a fairly clear answer. The ANC only received around 40 per cent of the national vote and lost the parliamentary majority it had held since 1994. MK a spin out party led by a former president with a long history of self-gratification and use of Stalingrad techniques to prevent being held accountable emerged with almost 15 per cent, the DA received 21.8 per cent and the EFF secured just under 10 per cent. South Africa moved from dominant-party government into uncomfortable and ideologically disparate coalition politics.That fragmentation is important because much of the support that left the ANC did not migrate towards a conventional centre-right alternative. Some flowed towards MK, with its mixture of economic radicalism, populism, traditional authority and Jacob Zuma's personal political identity. The EFF continues to articulate anger around land, inequality, unemployment and the distribution of economic power. These movements draw upon conditions that are visible and consequential but propose solutions that have failed internationally, yet to the desperate sound attractive enough to vote for.Their difficulty begins when anger itself becomes the political product.Calls for radical economic change can attract people who feel excluded from the existing settlement. As the language becomes increasingly absolutist, the audience starts to narrow. Every institution can become part of the problem. Compromise begins to look ideologically contaminated. Economic constraints can be interpreted as resistance from vested interests. Practical questions about implementation receive less attention because political virtue has become associated with the strength of the demand.Something similar happens within parts of the ANC. Transformation has enormous continuing relevance. It becomes less useful when it provides an all-purpose explanation for economic underperformance, failing municipalities or weak institutions. Eventually people living without reliable water, safe streets or employment opportunities start measuring government through experience rather than historical narrative and Helen Zille has demonstrated this in her mayoral campaign for Johannesburg exceptionally well.There is a mirror image of this process on the South African right.Rob Hersov is particularly interesting because he articulates several concerns that deserve serious attention. State capacity has deteriorated in important areas. Corruption and patronage have damaged public institutions. Organised crime and tender networks distort parts of the economy. Poorly designed policy can deter capital and investment. South Africa needs higher economic growth, greater institutional competence and a state capable of delivering the functions for which citizens already pay. All of which Hersov articulates within the framing of his personal political views, as well as those of others.However, Hersov's political language has often gone much further. His arguments have included a forceful (and understandable) rejection of the ANC, enthusiasm for Donald Trump and a strong preference for South Africa to locate itself economically and geopolitically within the Western orbit. In April 2025 he described Trump's first 100 days in highly favourable terms and argued that the United States should support the DA-run Western Cape rather than continue treating the ANC-led national government as its principal South African partner. Suggesting that the US should expand its control over the political landscape by using restraining orders on pollical leaders.That position has considerable appeal among South Africans and others who have become exhausted by corruption, racial policy, weak economic growth and the ANC's international positioning. Hersov gives expression to frustrations that mainstream politics has sometimes been reluctant to articulate clearly.His more recent commentary has become more interesting because events have complicated the certainty of some of those earlier arguments.Hersov remains broadly sympathetic towards Trump, yet his recent discussion of Iran, Gaza and American power has started asking harder questions about whether the language of strength is being matched by geopolitical outcomes. Recent commentary around his position describes precisely this tension, with Hersov questioning whether American power is producing the leverage that the doctrine of "peace through strength" implies. Rather than questioning the actual strategic planning or lack of it that Trump so ably demonstrates.The Middle East makes that question unavoidable. The United States retains extraordinary military, financial and technological power. Events across Iran, Gaza and the Gulf have also exposed the real limits on Washington's ability to translate military superiority into stable political outcomes anywhere. The continuing confrontation with Iran, uncertainty around Gaza and doubts among Gulf states about the durability of American security guarantees are changing the regional calculation and the future for South Africa and other western aligned allies.For Hersov this produces an intriguing tension. Trump represented disruption, confidence, Western strength and a willingness to confront political orthodoxies – yet his administration will likely be better known for self-enrichment, strategic waywardness and political isolation. Those attributes sat comfortably alongside Hersov's earlier argument that South Africa needed to break decisively from ANC economics and foreign policy. A more fragmented Middle East complicates the proposition that forceful political leadership necessarily restores American hegemony.The same tension exists in domestic politics.Declaring that the ANC is finished is emotionally satisfying for people who want it gone. The ANC remains South Africa's largest political party. Ipsos polling published in March 2026 placed ANC support among registered voters for the forthcoming local government elections at 38 per cent, ahead of the DA on 22 per cent, MK on 14 per cent and the EFF on 12 per cent.Hersov's latest public assessment appears to recognise more of this complexity. His August 2026 BizNews appearance was presented as a harder assessment of South Africa, acknowledging that the ANC remains politically alive and describing organised crime, tenderpreneurs and entrenched networks as obstacles that make institutional recovery more difficult than a simple change in party leadership would suggest.That adjustment makes his analysis stronger.It also points towards a larger lesson across South African politics. Many competing political movements have identified something important. The ANC is right that the consequences of apartheid continue to shape economic opportunity. The EFF is right to insist that extraordinary inequality and youth unemployment create social and political instability. The DA is right to place greater weight on competent administration, institutional integrity and economic growth. Hersov is right to challenge complacency around corruption, state failure and policies that discourage investment.Problems emerge when a useful insight expands into an explanation for almost everything.This is where the language of "woke" politics becomes useful, provided the word itself does not become another ideological weapon. The deeper phenomenon is a style of politics organised around grievance and group identity. The left has familiar versions involving race, colonialism, privilege and capitalism. The right can develop its own versions around demographic decline, racial preference, immigration, hostile elites, global institutions and the supposed betrayal of Western civilisation and the erosion of white dominated Christian nationalism.South Africa has ample material for both.Some progressive policies have become excessively racialised. Some transformation programmes have enriched politically connected individuals far more successfully than they have transformed poor communities. Criticism of these failures deserves an answer. Equally, large racial inequalities remain measurable facts, and pretending that a formally non-racial policy environment would automatically dissolve them would fail to engage with the structure of South African society.The political space with the greatest potential therefore lies somewhere beyond these escalating certainties.Recent analysis by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation reaches a related conclusion. It describes a fragmented South African political system in which populist movements on both left and right increasingly mobilise through identity and simplified accounts of complex economic problems. It also observes that social, economic and regional concerns are becoming more important as older political identities weaken, particularly among younger voters.That shift matters because the electorate appears increasingly detached from the parties competing for it.Ipsos found in March 2026 that 47 per cent of South Africans believe no political party represents their views. The same research found substantial support for parties cooperating at municipal level. This is a remarkable finding in a country with hundreds of registered political parties. South Africa has an abundance of political organisations and a shortage of political identification.The explanation may be relatively straightforward. Voters can recognise injustice without wanting every political conversation to become an argument about identity. They can support transformation and still demand competence. They can oppose racial discrimination and still recognise the enduring economic effects of apartheid. They can become angry about immigration, crime or corruption without adopting an ethnonationalist view of the country. They can favour markets and investment while accepting that a profoundly unequal society requires some form of active social and economic redress.These positions rarely produce the loudest political voices because nuance performs poorly in environments built around outrage and political blustering, albeit Geordi Lewis presentation at Biz News on the same platform articulated a closer narrative to this proposition, that the Zuma deputy president did for MK.Rhetorical escalation creates another problem. It changes what politicians believe their supporters want from them. Applause, online engagement and the approval of committed followers reward stronger language. Each escalation raises the threshold for the next intervention. A politician who built an audience by saying that a policy is misguided eventually describes it as corrupt – albeit in many cases they can be. Corruption becomes betrayal. Betrayal becomes conspiracy. The constituency listening most closely becomes more enthusiastic as the constituency available for persuasion becomes smaller.The left (where they have articulated policy of credibility) has experienced this repeatedly. Policies intended to expand fairness or inclusion become vulnerable when their advocates treat legitimate questions as evidence of prejudice. The underlying objective then becomes associated with the behaviour of its most doctrinaire supporters.The right is capable of making exactly the same political mistake. Concerns about immigration, crime, economic stagnation, racial preference or institutional decline can attract a large electorate. Loading those concerns with racial anxiety, conspiratorial explanations or civilisational language eventually changes the character of the argument. People who shared the original concern begin leaving the conversation, this appears to be the position Farage is experiencing in the UK, and Trump is in the US.South Africa's political parties are approaching this problem from different directions.The ANC needs to demonstrate that transformation produces material outcomes that can be seen in employment, education, infrastructure and economic mobility. Continued reference to apartheid and racial discrimination cannot carry indefinitely the political weight of failures and corruption accumulated under democratic government.The EFF and MK need to show how anger at inequality becomes a functioning economy and a capable state and employ people and processes that are not bound in personal identity, corrupt people and threats of societal unrest. Radicalism has emotional power. Yet governing requires budgets, institutions, competent people, investment and administrative discipline.The DA faces a different challenge. Its record of administration provides it with an important political asset, particularly in the Western Cape. Its wider growth depends upon convincing more Black South Africans that competence and economic liberalisation which needs clear translation for the unemployed can address structural inequality as well as improve government. An analysis by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung of South Africa’s increasingly fragmented political centre makes a similar point: the DA’s ability to grow nationally depends partly on connecting its case for competent government and economic reform more convincingly with the continuing social and economic consequences of apartheid.Hersov and the insurgent right face another version of the same electoral test. Their criticism of corruption, racialised policy and state failure can resonate well beyond a narrow conservative constituency. Turning that critique into a broader political project requires language capable of including the country that would eventually have to vote for it.Trump offers a useful warning within this South African debate because his political appeal and his geopolitical record reveal different dimensions of power. Disruption can break assumptions. Confidence can shift a political conversation. Strength can deter opponents. Durable power eventually depends upon institutions, alliances, economic capacity and the ability to turn action into outcomes.The changing Middle East makes that distinction increasingly visible. It may also explain some of the frustration entering Hersov's recent analysis. The world has proved more resistant to decisive political narratives than the rhetoric surrounding Trump's return initially suggested.South Africa is proving much the same.The country's political argument will continue to contain race, history, transformation, inequality and the appropriate relationship between state and market. Those questions cannot simply be wished away. Yet the electorate is moving through a much more immediate set of experiences. Can I find work? Is my family safe? Does the municipality function? Can my business survive? Will my children have a reason to remain here? Does the state treat public money as something belonging to its citizens? Will I as an external investor see my assets protected and achieve a benefit.Those questions cut across ideological categories.They also explain why the 47 per cent who feel politically unrepresented may prove more important than the committed supporters dominating political media. These voters are not necessarily centrists in the traditional sense. Many will hold strong views on individual issues. What appears to unite them is the absence of a political home that combines recognition of South Africa's history with a credible account of its future.There lies the opportunity.A successful political movement will have to speak about historical injustice with enough maturity to understand its continuing effects. It will need economic policies capable of generating growth and employment. State institutions have to work. Corruption has to carry consequences. Social redress needs to produce broader opportunity. Political language has to leave enough room for people who disagree on parts of the diagnosis to participate in the solution..Read more:.Simon Carr - The South African present: Grievance theatre vs. accountability.Each part of South Africa's political spectrum already possesses fragments of that argument.The ANC carries the historical case for transformation. The DA has developed a stronger language of administrative competence and institutional governance. The economic left keeps inequality and exclusion in political view. Hersov and other voices on the right force difficult conversations about investment, state failure, political patronage and the consequences of policies that produce poor economic incentives.Their value diminishes whenever those insights become ideological absolutes or tropisms that are spouted out without clear analysis.South Africans have spent decades being told who is responsible for their circumstances. A growing number now appear to be asking a more demanding question: who can change them?The political movement that understands this will spend less time amplifying grievance and considerably more time resolving it..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 every morning on weekdays. Register here. 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Mailbox: A view on South Africa from an invested outsider

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