Je ne regrette rien? France’s warning to South Africa - Robert King

Key topics:France mirrors South Africa’s future: paralysis, debt, and fractured politicsWelfare-state dependency fuels crisis in both France and South AfricaCoalition chaos and budget gridlock threaten South Africa’s national stability.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..By Robert King.South Africa is often described as a harbinger of the West’s future - a mirror in which Europe and America can glimpse their own decline. As Joost Strydom of the Orania Movement observes, “South Africa is simultaneously thirty years behind and thirty years ahead of Europe.” It has become one of the most vivid case studies in what happens when a country becomes welfare-dependent, race-obsessed, and anti-civilisational - when politics trades competence for ideology and the state devours the society it was meant to serve. Yet this time the mirror has flipped. In France’s current political crisis, it is Europe offering South Africa a preview of its own possible future: a fractured legislature, paralysed leadership, and governments collapsing faster than they can be formed. .The Machinery of Collapse .To understand the parallels, one must begin with the machinery itself. France is what political scientists call a semi-presidential republic - a hybrid in which the President serves as head of state and the Prime Minister as head of government, each separately accountable to the electorate and National Assembly. It was designed to avoid precisely the instability of the Fourth Republic, which managed to burn through twenty-one governments in twelve years before finally imploding in 1958. South Africa, by contrast, is a parliamentary republic. Its President is both head of state and government, chosen by the National Assembly rather than by direct popular vote. This fusion of powers produces a peculiar stability - or at least, it did, for as long as one party remained hegemonic. Under the ANC’s long dominance, South Africa endured almost everything except political uncertainty. Like France’s Fifth Republic under de Gaulle, the system was built for strong majorities, not for compromise. Elections were synchronised so that the President would usually command the legislature, ensuring a coherent - if not always competent - administration. That façade of order shattered in Paris last year, when President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly and sent voters back to the polls. The result was a legislature splintered into irreconcilable camps - the far-left under Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Macron’s fading centrists, and Marine Le Pen’s insurgent right - none able to govern, all determined to prevent the others from doing so. In the months since, France has seen four Prime Ministers - the latest, Sébastien Lecornu, resigning after just twenty-seven days before being reappointed. A fifth could yet appear before the year ends. .The Price of Paralysis.At the heart of the crisis lies the budget, and with it the modern European religion: the welfare state. France runs a deficit of 5.8 per cent and boasts one of the most generous pension systems on Earth. Macron’s modest attempt to reform it - nudging the retirement age upward to something resembling reality - provoked street riots and parliamentary fury. Now, with bond markets jittery and whispers of an IMF intervention, France’s political class has entered the final stage of democratic decadence - the stage where everyone knows what must be done, and no one dares to do it. With the 2027 presidential race already looming and Macron term-limited, none of his would-be successors will touch the necessary but unpopular reforms. Each prefers to posture rather than govern, to preserve their own purity rather than the nation’s solvency. In today’s France, liberté means freedom from responsibility, égalité means equal dependence on the state, and fraternité means sharing the debt. The country that once stormed the Bastille now trembles at the thought of touching the pension age. .France’s Present, South Africa’s Future? .In 2029, South Africa may find itself in a disturbingly similar position. The country’s political centre is grotesquely distorted - what passes for “centrist” here would be considered “socialist” almost anywhere else - and yet the polling tells its own story. The ANC could slump as low as 30 per cent, the DA could rise to the same, and the insurgent MK continues to gather momentum. It is not difficult to imagine an election in which the so-called “left” - MK, the EFF, and a constellation of African-nationalist satellites - command roughly a third of the vote; the “centre,” still largely the ANC, take another third; and the “right,” led by the DA, take the rest. Such an outcome does not require imagination. We have already seen the prototype in our metros - Johannesburg most of all - where similar results have produced endless infighting, brittle coalitions, and a revolving door of mayors. What passes there for government increasingly resembles an endless committee meeting interrupted only by its own resignations. At a national level the consequences would be immeasurably worse. When a municipality or even a province collapses, the national government can, at least in theory, step in. But when the national government itself becomes ungovernable, there is no higher authority left to intervene. What confidence can investors possibly retain in a state where the presidency has become a temporary contract? Even with the ANC still hovering near 40 per cent, Parliament has already fallen into a kind of stupor. Legislation stalls, the budget becomes a hostage drama lasting months, and what eventually emerges is not policy but compromise by exhaustion. Yet as the fiscal position deteriorates and the country inches toward the cliff, the demands for deeper cuts will only grow - cuts to welfare, to public salaries, to the entire edifice of dependency that keeps millions pacified. In a country where twenty-eight million people live on state payouts, the surest way to start a riot is to do the maths.The famed French singer Édith Piaf sang about having no regrets; South Africa will - though it will discover them only when the music stops.

Je ne regrette rien? France’s warning to South Africa - Robert King

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