South Africans had lost faith in the old order, Frans Cronje told Alec Hogg, but had not yet found a new one to trust, and Wednesday's vote would not close that gap. The SRF chairman set out the one deal he believed could hold the country together, why he thought voters were already there while the politicians were not, and how the ANC could come back to 55% if it made a choice it had avoided for a decade. He also turned a sceptical eye on the DA's record in Tshwane, Johannesburg and even Cape Town, explained why Helen Zille's Joburg run mattered more for 2029 than for next week, and described a country quietly reorganising itself into enclaves, from illegal miners under Johannesburg's streets to middle-class estates..Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg (00:01) Dr Frans Cronje, the chairman of the Social Research Foundation. He runs the advisory firm Frans Cronje Private Clients, and he's the editor of The Common Sense website, former IRR chief executive, PhD in scenario planning. Not the late Hansie Cronje's brother. He's not a cricketer. He is an intellect. I suppose that's the right way to describe you, Frans?Frans Cronje (00:26) Analyst.Alec Hogg (00:27) Analyst. Yeah, simple.Frans Cronje (00:28) What we do is really simple. We tell people it's the simplest thing. All we do is we get the data, economic, political, opinion; we talk to the people who make decisions; we filter the one thing through the other, and we develop a view. And the view is going to answer three questions: what's happening, why, and what's going to happen next. And if you've got the data and you're talking to the right people, then it actually kind of all falls into place. And so it's not really that difficult to do. It's hard work, you know, and a bit of an investment, but getting it right's not too difficult.Alec Hogg (01:02) So, five days out from the election on Wednesday. What happens on Wednesday? One sentence.Frans Cronje (01:10) South Africa takes another step through the process of regime change, which it's in the midst of. That's the one sentence.Alec Hogg (01:21) Your research from the Social Research Foundation says that 90% of South Africans say we're going in the wrong direction. So I'm trying to understand if that's... and it is the reality. I certainly don't meet too many people who say we're going in the right direction. But who gets punished in these municipal elections because of it? We saw the ANC getting punished in 2024, but we're still going in the wrong direction. So who gets the hit?Frans Cronje (01:49) The ANC is going to get the biggest hit here, for sure. It's going to take another serious step down. You know, how many votes is it going to get? Maybe three to four million. There was a time in the country's past it got 10, 11 and 12 million. And, you know, three to four million votes, say we've got an adult population... 10%, 15% of adults are going to vote for the ANC. They're the side that gets hammered here, and have been hammered, and are going to be hammered again.Alec Hogg (02:30) What about the DA and ActionSA in particular, because they've been running some cities? Are they also going to get hurt?Frans Cronje (02:42) No, they'll be fine. Look, I said regime change at the beginning, so let me explain that. All that's happening in South Africa, and this election is just another step in that process, is a regime change. And a regime change is two steps. The first step is the people lose the belief that the old regime can protect their interests. Now, that's happened to a very significant degree; your figures on the 90%.But step two also has to happen before it's complete, and that is that the people gain the belief that the new regime will defend their interests. And that hasn't happened yet, not to a sufficient degree to ensure that any one political party again takes control of the country. And this election will be a further step in that process, for a party like the DA and for the country, to complete the regime change process.I'm telling everyone we talk to: just take a step or two back. Think about what it takes to not just fix Johannesburg, but fix the country, and in what order one should try and do such things. If you want to fix Johannesburg properly, or a city like Johannesburg, which is representative of so much that's gone wrong, if you want to do that properly, you cannot do that independently of a national solution that gets the rate of economic growth back to emerging-market averages, and therefore job creation and everything else.That national solution, if you wish to make it work at a national, Pretoria level, and hold the union together: there's only one deal that does that. And that deal is the DA brings the middle class to a future coalition negotiation, and the ANC brings the aspirant middle class to a future coalition negotiation. And those two blocs will be 60% of the electorate. And the remaining rural poor are covered in this deal, because they live vicariously through the children and grandchildren who are the aspirant middle class.The DA's growth, to a certain extent, is restricted by the fact that it is a middle-class party. And it's quite a big step, quite a difficult thing to do, and not always an advisable thing to do, to try and bring a second constituency into a political party, because you introduce internal conflict and the like.Frans Cronje (05:03) So as we go through this regime change process, this election will be part of that. But completing it, in the end, is the new regime that I've described to you: the ANC and the DA finding that deal and getting on the same page. Or first both of them getting on the right page, and then on the same page, on the question of reform.Short of that, the regime change process in South Africa will never be fully completed, not in the sense of finally answering the question of who governs the country from Pretoria. And in its place, another dispensation will become dominant, which is the enclave future that we've written so much about.Alec Hogg (05:55) You've also written a lot about the regime change, and certainly your research suggests that the voters want it. The voters want the ANC and the DA to be working together. Why are the politicians not hearing that message?Frans Cronje (06:10) Yeah, well, you know, the people are far ahead of the politicians in terms of the kind of country they want, how they wish for the country to get there, and the political agreement that they want to get there via. We wrote a piece this morning on what South Africans want when it comes to building a school. And the question was: if a school is built, do you want that to be built by the best construction firm, or do you want the state to conduct some experiment in social engineering? And strong majorities of South Africans, as they have always done (I mean, this is the usual result of this kind of polling), say that obviously they want the best and most efficient builder to construct the school, regardless of their race or anything else. Now, that's always true.And South Africans broadly are united on how to fix the country as a consequence. Completely so. They're also completely united on working together. If you ask DA and ANC voters, let's say there's a situation where neither of your parties has a majority in any particular place, isn't the best thing just that you have one big pact, always to work together? And you get a good seven, eight out of ten on both sides saying, yeah, that's exactly what we want. And we've recently tested that to an extreme degree.We took AfriForum and March and March, which, you know, are two pretty extreme sides of society, or are seen as such at least. And if you only understand South Africa at the level of the superficial clichés, then you'd look at those two and say, this is the great divide, and there's no hope, and it's a terrible place, and look at these ghastly people on both sides.But we asked AfriForum and March and March supporters, and South Africans broadly, what do you think about those two organisations coming together to work together? You know, Alec, 80% of people said that would be an amazing and a good thing, and they'd completely support that. Now, that's probably not how the founding fathers saw the Rainbow Nation playing out in the fullness of time, and maybe it's not going to be the most effective means to do it. But the point of it is that deep in the South African psyche...Frans Cronje (08:27) ...sits this thing about coming together to work together around common values. And that's such a powerful countervailing force in favour of the country's success.Why are the politicians not there? Well, because personally they do not agree with that. And you can make examples on both sides. The ANC won't budge on empowerment policy...Frans Cronje (08:53) ...because, in the personal insecurities of some of its leaders, they wish to cling to that policy forever, and of course to ensure the ill-gotten gains that arise. But the same thing happens in corners of the DA. The DA's chief strategist, a guy called Ryan Coetzee, continues to post the most aggressive critiques of the US, and most recently that Rubio should be defeated. When South Africans, black and white, DA and ANC, completely agree that it's critically important for the country to restore ties, and on the terms, in fact, that the Americans have suggested.And so the country's held back by the sort of personal beliefs and convictions, I suppose, of prominent individuals. And not just in politics...Frans Cronje (09:46) ...the same happens in other areas of elite society. Business isn't universally behind the kinds of reforms that South Africans would support. Academia isn't. The legacy media certainly is not. And so South Africa is held back in some respects by the intransigence of its elites. But the people are there already, and that's a very reassuring and valuable and important thing.Alec Hogg (10:15) It's fascinating in the context of the conversation I had with Herman Mashaba less than a week ago, where he said he will not support a DA government in Tshwane with Cilliers Brink, or in Johannesburg with Helen Zille. It's very personal, this kind of stuff. I understand that he said, well, maybe he won't be involved at all, but it kind of reinforces your point. Why are we letting these individuals dictate the future of the country?Frans Cronje (10:47) Well, to an ever lesser extent, I think, if you see how public opinion is shifting. I remember a prominent businessman on nuclear power. We advocate that South Africa should, in the longer term, look to massive nuclear builds, in addition to gas and the like, to secure the power to build an industrial economy. And this chap confronted me, he's a prominent figure, close to the President, and said to me he doesn't like that. I said, why not? He said, well, I don't agree with nuclear power. And I thought, well, you know, that's fine, but the sense of national interest must override.It's missing in South Africa's elites, the sense of national interest. Maybe you get to a point where you're so kind of, I don't know, secure and powerful, and yeah...Alec Hogg (11:38) Arrogant?Frans Cronje (11:40) ...that national interest and your interests misalign. And for ordinary people at ground level, those sorts of people who work for a living, you and I in that, I would think, it's very easy to see the national interest and to say, yeah, obviously we just pursue things that are in our interests.Now, the more voices that are created for that to come to the fore, and the more the legacy political establishment and everything around it sees that it's not gaining sufficient ground in the country, the closer you get to a position where, in the fullness of time, the circumstances are such that an alternative political establishment, or whatever it is, can seize upon public opinion.Should that not happen? That's always the question. Well, the potential's there, fine, we concede that, a critic of mine might say, but what happens if no political group ever seizes upon it? Well, then it starts to happen in a de facto sense on its own, as it is across the country. You know, in every community, people are taking upon themselves responsibility for what were once things that were outsourced to the state. It happens at a macro level: freight transportation, for example, that used to go on the railways has been displaced onto the roads, privately. We know the clichés of electricity. We know about security.And it's not just a middle-class thing. Under my feet, I'm speaking to you from Johannesburg, is more mining activity. And probably you know mining much better than me, and you've got the great mining guy as your regular gues. You ask him when he's on again: there's probably now more mining activity under Johannesburg streets than at any point since... I don't know what he'd say, but a very long time.That's also an enclave. The state nationalised mineral resources, obviously lost control of them shortly thereafter, and now an entire industry has been created that has begun to exploit those resources beyond the authority of the state. It's simply enclave formation. And South Africa will, if a future political establishment doesn't arise to take advantage of this good sense of the country's people...Frans Cronje (14:04) ...they will in a de facto sense establish that society here and there. And these little nuclei of enclaves, from illicit miners to middle-class estates, become the nuclei around which, in the fullness of time and in an organic way, a much more successful South Africa is ultimately created.Alec Hogg (14:32) I can see now why your critics say that the Social Research Foundation, of which you're the chairman, the results that come out of the research are skewed, maybe because of the way you see the world. But the elites will always do that. The way I understand what you've explained to us now is, if I'm a member of the elite, the first thing I will do is try and rubbish the research, or the information that's coming back to me, which says, hang on, I need to change, because the status quo doesn't like change.Frans Cronje (15:12) Yeah, no, it doesn't. I never defend our results. Let them stand on their own feet, and judge them for yourself. I welcome the criticism. We ourselves are racked with self-doubt. It's our greatest strength, Alec, as analysts: we doubt everything.You know, I've got a great friend in America who speaks about the importance of doubt, on the question of Trump, in fact. I asked him once what he made of Mr Trump, early on, I think in the first Trump term. He said he doesn't like him. And I said, why not? And he said he has no capacity for doubt. Now, I do quite like Mr Trump in key respects, but I thought that was very important. And the point he made was that in previous American administrations that have been very successful, there was the ability to doubt the whole time.So the criticism's great and welcome and necessary and important. It certainly causes us to reassess a lot of what we do. But in the end our data must stand on its merits and be tested against the real world. And more often than not it tends to stand up to that scrutiny, which is obviously our aim.Alec Hogg (16:29) Frans, I'd like to focus on some of the metros. You suggested that if Helen Zille were to stand as mayor and become mayor of Johannesburg, it could be the greatest chess move from a political party in, I can't remember how long. I think you might have even said decades. Where are we in that play at the moment?Frans Cronje (16:56) Look, all the numbers put her at under 40, around 40. We haven't forecast Johannesburg, or anywhere else, in fact. You'll recall we forecast 2024 in great detail. And there are many reasons for why we haven't done it this time. One is we haven't done tracking polling, and that's really the only way to forecast. It means you poll every single day for, let's say, 30 days ahead of an election, and then you can pick up the move in sentiment...Frans Cronje (17:24) ...because public sentiment moves. I make the example of the currency. The rand moves from day to day based on sentiment, and voting does exactly the same thing. It moves based on sentiment. So if you last polled two weeks ago, you don't actually have a forecast.Another thing on the cities, unlike the national vote, is there are so few voters involved. Even in Johannesburg, it's just more than a million. So if, like, 50,000 more or less turn out because it's raining, or hot, or the cricket is exciting, or whatever's going on on the day, you know, that's going to give you a three, four, five-point move in the final result.It's still the major chess move because, even if the ANC tries to freeze the DA out, the DA is going to get twice as many votes as the ANC, or thereabouts, in Johannesburg. Even if the ANC then tries to freeze the DA out of government and carry on with its alternative GNU in the city, that sets up 2029. And actually, on the disappointment of that, and the continued kind of... I remember Johannesburg started life as a mining camp. It's reverting to being a mining camp. It's very tough. It will survive us. But on the disappointment of that, the DA gets itself in a position to snatch Gauteng in 2029.So the chess game, as ever, is not about the next move on the board. It's about action, reaction and counter-reaction. And in that, I think she's positioned her party very, very well...Frans Cronje (18:58) ...for the longer term. Whether she ascends to the mayorship now, immediately, or not, I think that's actually less important than the longer-term positioning.Alec Hogg (19:11) If you consider the government of provincial unity in KZN, and of course the Government of National Unity, and the rogue ANC in Johannesburg, or Gauteng, I suppose, being pretty much subdued now, would it not make a lot of sense that the centre of the ANC would put together this coalition that makes Helen Zille mayor? Or am I putting pieces together that actually don't fit?Frans Cronje (19:42) No, that's what they should do. It's the obvious thing. It's the best thing for the ANC as well. Again, the deal that works, forget the parties: the South African deal that works is the middle class makes a deal with the aspirant middle class on a reform agenda for the country. That works because it gives you about 60% of the vote. And the interests of the two groups are aligned: aspirant and established middle-class people have got the same interests, but they sit in different political formations. So you're not fishing in each other's ponds for voters to too great a degree, and you've covered the rural base because of the living vicariously through the children and grandchildren in the cities.That's the only deal. There is nothing else. There is no other route to making South Africa succeed as a unitary state. And succeed means a successful, high-growth economy, in which the Union of South Africa has prevailed deep into the future.And the ANC needs that deal more than anyone else, I'd say, almost. You know, the middle class can succeed in their enclaves. They'll have a great and successful life, I've little doubt of that. But the ANC, to survive, needs this deal. And in fact, if it takes the deal, I think in the fullness of time it actually has the potential to start looking at whether it could develop a national majority again.I don't think that's out of [the question]. If it were to pick Mr Motsepe, for example, and he was half the partnership of this deal, he'll hold it at 40% come 2029. He can make some firm decisions, get growth to two, two and a half percent, do a deal with Geordin Hill-Lewis. We would do that, of course, in the national interest. And with the wind at their backs, a little bit more reform, growth at three, three and a half percent through the 2030s, I think on that the ANC goes back to 55-plus.And that's not a bad thing. People say, well, that's terrible, the country will go backwards. No. It can only do that in a society in which the rule of law has been maintained, as a consequence of securing the economic performance...Frans Cronje (22:04) ...that underpinned its early dominance in the first 15 years of our democracy. So it's not a bad result, even if the DA goes back to the opposition benches, where it was so highly effective and secured, you know, under Tony Leon and later Helen Zille, the principle of opposition and therefore South African democracy. And sometimes I say it out loud, too, that maybe that's even the best result for the country in the fullness of time. It sort of makes sense.So that option is a very good option for the ANC. But as anyone who's observed it for the last decade will know, not least the likes of ourselves that observe it so closely, you and I, it really hasn't taken very many good strategic decisions now for the better part of a decade. And it would definitely be a change in direction if it were to take a good strategic decision in the aftermath of this election.Alec Hogg (23:04) I finally started reading The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman, and, well, folly through history seems to be the norm of governments. But getting back to Patrice Motsepe: you've been talking about him stepping up, and most of the feedback that I've had from people is Frans doesn't know what he's talking about. But lately I'm getting feedback that Frans knows exactly what he's talking about. So where did you get the insight there? Did Patrice whisper?Frans Cronje (23:35) No. And I mean, even if he did, I could hardly say that he did. No, as I said to you earlier on, we are simply analysts. We take the data, we talk to key people, and we read the one against the other, with experience, of course, and a good understanding of history. And there, I'm of the view still that this is an option that is on the table.Frans Cronje (24:03) And the option, to be made real, needs an answer to one question: how do you get it through the ANC conference? And if that answer is delivered, then I think this is a realistic prospect. And if it never happens, if my critics say, it never happened, you were wrong, the reason why it didn't is because that problem was never solved: how to get the chap through what will be a very fraught and corrupt, and even violent, as it's turned out to be for that party, sort of electoral exercise.Alec Hogg (24:52) And here I have a question, because it seems like something big's happened there. The DA was in March at 45%, then 43% in August, 32% now. What's gone on there? What's happened? ActionSA, on the other hand, seems to be improving.Frans Cronje (25:13) Well, there's a little bit of margin of error you've got to put into that data as well. I suppose on those numbers, margin of error must be two or three percent. So has it really moved that much? The way I see it, and in fact Cape Town and Johannesburg: if you go all the way back to 2016, the DA in Johannesburg, I think, got 38%. Still there. In Cape Town in 2016, it had a figure that will probably be stronger than the figure it's going to get in this election. It's come off a bit. In Pretoria, in Tshwane, it's going to have a figure in this election that struggles to rival the figure it had ten years ago in the city.And there are a few reasons for that. One of which people forget is the DA's governed Tshwane before. It's governed it for almost seven years, on and off, in a chaotic fashion at times, and sabotaged by rivals, all of which is true and correct, but nonetheless it was there. And it's governed Johannesburg too, for, I think, two or three years, approaching four years. People forget that. I live a lot of my year, when I'm in South Africa, in Johannesburg. I didn't notice much by way of improvement when the DA was in charge.And it's governed Cape Town for a long time, and it taxes Cape Town's middle class very, very heavily. And the confidence that it's established around the Cape has also bred a degree of complacency. I did an investment dinner in Cape Town earlier in the week, and I just made a throwaway comment that, of course, the question of who commands political control of the Cape isn't assured either. And my audience seized upon that very quickly: well, what do you mean, the Cape isn't secure? And I don't think it ultimately is, either. If South Africa fragments, the Cape goes too.And the DA's performance in national government, Alec, it hasn't shot the lights out, has it? In places it's been disappointing. And hence my caution on rushing into any coalition, the first coalition deal that comes along, and rushing into government.Frans Cronje (27:31) I really think the best thing for everyone to do, serious people who really want to get the country right, is go back to basics. Understand we need a national solution to get the investment and growth rate up, and the later success of the cities will be conditional on that. There's only one deal that does it. It's DA-ANC, in the fullness of time. Do not do something rash in the short term that damages further the reputations of both the ANC and the DA, and starts to put the prospects of securing that deal out of line.So the DA's numbers are a bit flat over a decade, because it's been in government in many of these places for much of that past decade.Alec Hogg (28:15) eThekwini?Frans Cronje (28:18) Zuma is doing very well. MK, they should be the biggest party. I don't know if they can go over 50, but the data has them in and around the 40s, and kind of everyone seems to have them there. And yeah, so what do you do with that? How do you build a coalition? If you try and do DA-MK, I'm not closed-minded to that. I think many things can work in the short term. But now you're contradicting the provincial coalition, and then you're putting the national coalition on the line.And so all this coalition maths that comes in the immediate month after this election must be thought about very carefully. The calculation, not just in terms of what you do in the first month, but what is the effect that's going to have? What is the longer-term strategy here? What is everyone trying to achieve? What I think they should try to achieve is what I've said five times now: the middle class and the aspirant middle class, in a political agreement via two parties at a national level, centred around the core reforms. And trying to do it with rats-and-mice parties in Gauteng, and this one and that one and the next thing, and MK in KZN, it's headless chickens running around. It's not a solution.Alec Hogg (29:43) And I guess...Frans Cronje (29:43) And also, just on this ANC thing. You know, people speak in Tshwane about, you know, maybe the DA and the Freedom Front can get over the line together. It gives me a great sense of discomfort, because it will be to freeze, through its own doing, the ANC's own fault, freeze the ANC out of government in somewhere like Tshwane. And I worry about... there's still millions of people invested in the idea of the ANC. Good people, decent people, with good values. And I worry about the second-order effects of things. If there's now a triumphant government in Pretoria, one that kind of says, well, we've kicked you out, we're going to grind you into the dust, to hell with you, let this lesson be learnt and never forget: I worry about what the second-order effects of that are.And again, therefore, I circle back to the same point. It's that serious people who think about the country and have influence understand that what we have to do now is put this national deal together for the union to hold. And don't worry, if your middle-class union doesn't hold, you live in an enclave future, you'll be fine. But it's so important to do it, just even from a moral perspective, because for the poor it's terrible. There's poverty, and millions of people with no work. They live literally in holes in the ground, in shacks. The moral imperative must be to do this deal, because it's the surest way to help those people, through the next generation, get out of that terrible dependency and poverty, and into a position where at least their children would have a serious shot at the middle class.Alec Hogg (31:27) Do we have the maturity to see that happening after these local elections? And what would the impact of whatever happens next have on the Government of National Unity?Frans Cronje (31:37) Not in the main, no, I don't think so. I think the maturity must be read in the sense of the national interest. And I think, broadly, that sense is, as we said earlier, overridden by people's personal views and senses and sensitivities. And you don't have it at scale in business; you don't have it at sufficient scale in politics. The only place you find it, fortunately, because it's a very important place, is in the views, the minds, the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations of very many millions of ordinary South Africans. That's a powerful countervailing force. But elite society needs to get in line with that.Alec Hogg (32:21) So when we wake up on the 5th of November, what is the best-case scenario for South Africa in this process towards regime change? Something that shows us that the voters are still further ahead of the politicians in that process?Frans Cronje (32:40) Well, I think the best case will be that you read in the data that the people have found it very difficult to deliver a compelling endorsement to any one of the contenders, and that they all have their merits. There are very good people in the ANC who are doing a heroic job of preventing complete meltdown and God knows what. There are fantastic people in the DA who try so hard and do so much good for the country. They save us from worse, much worse, horrors every day.But I think you want a result that causes both major parties to reflect on the fact that neither of them is making a firm move and winning a firm endorsement from the South African public to run the country, and reflect on what the reasons for that are, and adjust accordingly, of course, where needed. And that this pact I speak of becomes the central pursuit, behind the scenes at least.And I think once that's put up... it certainly will have to be under a future leader of the ANC. When that pact is put to the public at a future point, I think it will win with massive public support. And that will be the point from which it's realistically possible to see, even in the short term, the beginning of a real macro-level turnaround for the Union of South Africa, as distinct from enclaves of that.Alec Hogg (34:35) Frans, just to close off with. Ahead of the 1994 election, you spoke about the Chernobyl... in fact, it was after the election, when the coalitions were being discussed: the Chernobyl outcome, an ANC getting together with the EFF and MK and so on. Is there any part of the future that would make that a serious option for some of the metros?Frans Cronje (35:03) Of course, it's a perfectly serious option. I mean, it is the option that governs much of Gauteng at the moment. It's not quite the Chernobyl option anymore. Had it happened in 2024, I think the shock that would have sent into markets, and what the bond market would have done in response, might have laid South Africa low, to a point from which a long-term recovery might have been very, very difficult to secure.And I remain stubbornly of the view that what John Steenhuisen did with his ANC counterparts to strike the GNU at the time saved us. And it was a very good and heroic thing to do, for which they deserve great credit. But now that shock effect has kind of worn out, and expectations in the market have... I mean, South Africa is very aggressively priced at the moment, and perhaps a bit too aggressively. But I don't think the same Chernobyl effect will attach to such a coalition playing out in Gauteng for a time, because the read of that will be slightly more nuanced. And if you do go EFF-MK-ANC, all that you're doing is creating a massive kind of stimulus effect for the further deepening of enclaves.Alec Hogg (36:33) Dr Frans Cronje, chairman of the Social Research Foundation. It's always a great pleasure to have you on BizNews TV. I'm Alec Hogg with your BizNews Edge.