If there’s one subject guaranteed to rile South Africans, it’s a prediction that the country is becoming a failed state. Future scenarios developed by an independent think-tank put the odds of this happening — either rapidly or through a slow-burning descent — at better than even.
Of the four scenarios developed by the Centre for Risk Analysis (CRA), the risk advisory arm of the SA Institute of Race Relations, two result in SA’s decline and two show positive change.
The scenario CRA director John Endres considers most likely, and to which he attaches odds of 40%, is one of the most positive. So his overall message is one of hope — that SA will eventually realise its potential rather than continue to squander it.
The CRA assumes there are two key determinants for how SA’s future is likely to unfold. First, the ANC’s political support either falls below 50% or remains above it. Second, the state’s reform programme either becomes much more effective and far-reaching or remains so tepid that it fails to lift the country’s growth trajectory.
In the first scenario, called "The Buffalo Charges", the mighty ANC buffalo realises it must revolutionise its approach to managing the economy and displays remarkable vigour in choosing to go for growth.
It changes policy direction — which requires a repudiation of its current stance on issues such as the labour market, empowerment, education and property rights, favouring instead the free-market principles espoused by business and advocated by most private economists.
The party implements deep and urgent economic reforms that go further than the current plans on the table, which Endres dismisses as "just tinkering around the edges".
Private enterprise takes the lead as the engine of growth. Business confidence soars. There is a sustained increase in competitiveness, productivity and fixed investment. The upshot is faster economic growth (possibly as high as 5% by 2029), the halving of debt, the creation of millions of jobs and the raising of living standards.
The ANC, as a result, is rewarded with more than 50% of the vote in the next two elections, allowing it to reassert itself as the dominant political force in SA.
However, the CRA attaches only a 5% probability to this scenario being realised — "and that’s being generous", says Endres.
He is deeply sceptical, because such an outcome would require the ANC to throw overboard fundamental ideological beliefs that are an intractable part of its identity. Moreover, he believes the party has become a tired organisation, suffering from a loss of direction, ideas and visionary leadership.
Much more likely, he believes, is the second scenario: "Wild Dogs Make The Kill". Here, the ailing ANC buffalo is taken down by a pack of wild dogs.
Endres says that prior to the 2021 local government elections he thought it would take the equivalent of a lion to challenge the ANC. But he’s subsequently realised that the smaller opposition parties, by working together like a pack of wild dogs, could challenge the ruling party and bring it down.
Together, these parties, excluding the DA and the EFF, won 11% of the vote in the 2016 local government elections but doubled this to 22% in 2021.
Getting these smaller parties to co-operate, elect mayors and committee chairs and pass municipal budgets has proved "as difficult as threading the eye of a needle", says Endres, but it has been achieved in the metros of Joburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane.
Endres thinks the parties will probably keep squabbling and fighting for scraps all the way to 2029. But if they are able to improve service delivery to voters — and if the common purpose of defeating the ANC focuses their minds — their eventual dominance may be possible.
Endres is, however, ambivalent about whether this could happen as early as the 2024 elections. More likely, he says, SA will experience five years of coalition chaos after 2024. By 2029, voters will be fed up with the incoherence of the pack of wild dogs and give coalitions a better mandate. This could even lead to the emergence of an entirely new player (or possibly ActionSA) dominating the coalition.
"The ANC falling below 50% in the recent elections breaches an important psychological barrier," says Endres. "The wild dogs are sniffing this weakness in the older animal; the voters are too. It means we may see more fluidity post-2024 and a lot more coalition politics."
Of the four scenarios, Endres thinks this is the most likely, given the extent to which the ANC is crumbling, the economy is running out of power and the country’s infrastructure and asset base are being run down. He attaches a 40% probability to its realisation.
"It’s too soon to write off the ANC, given the weight of history and the loyalty that sits behind it, but what I’m not seeing is an internal ANC response to the situation," says Endres.
"If the ANC were a company, it would bring in a turnaround specialist from outside and make radical changes — laying off staff, closing underperforming units and reorientating the business. But this is precisely what we are not seeing at the moment."
The next two scenarios suggest SA is heading towards becoming a failed state. In the first, this happens quickly; in the second, SA suffers a slow grind towards becoming just another developing country backwater.
The third scenario is aptly named "The Hyenas Plunder the Carcass". On this view, the ANC is unable to reform and pulls less than 50% of the vote in the 2024 general election. It then forms a coalition with Julius Malema’s EFF to boost its majority and keep the wild dogs at bay. However, because Malema has far greater strategic drive and clarity, his party becomes the dominant partner in the coalition, despite its small size.
The EFF then delivers the populist policies it has long espoused, including the expropriation of land without compensation and the nationalisation of mines and banks. This prompts huge capital and skills flight; the currency plummets and SA experiences a debt crisis, quickly sinking into penury like another Venezuela or Zimbabwe.
Because living standards drop dramatically, an ANC/EFF coalition would be unable to win another election fairly. It would respond defensively with restrictions on movement, the media and free speech.
In short, says Endres, "SA becomes an autocratic state where the assets of pension funds and private property are looted to feed the patronage networks (the hyenas) that need to be fed."
The CRA attaches a low, 20% probability to this scenario, noting that SA does not have a docile population that will easily give up its democratic gains. But the risk of this doomsday scenario unfolding isn’t entirely negligible.
In the final scenario — "The Buffalo Stumbles On" — SA experiences a long glide into a shabby future. This is the steady-state scenario, where the status quo prevails. The state continues to spout the rhetoric of reform, but it is meaningless. The state’s entropy means potholes multiply, the country runs out of electricity, there’s no growth and no investment, and unemployment just keeps climbing.
Things get worse — but very gradually; SA ends more with a whimper than a bang.
Paradoxically, because ANC support is strongest among the rural poor and unemployed, Endres thinks the party may be able to capitalise on their growing ranks to keep its support above 50% in this scenario. Either way, the wild dogs are unable to co-operate to exploit the political opportunities presented by SA’s decline.
The CRA attaches a 35% probability to this scenario. This makes it only slightly less likely than the wild dogs winning the day (with odds of 40%).
"You can’t predict the future, but you can look at a lot of data, and the data I’m seeing makes me think that a tipping point is coming," says Endres. "It will be very hard to sustain the steady state, because many pillars holding up the status quo aren’t looking so strong. If any one collapses, things could shift quite dramatically."
A wild card could be a repeat of the looting and unrest of July last year — something Endres considers "almost inevitable".
This is because the underlying societal conditions of poverty, unemployment and hunger haven’t changed.
Worse, the authority of the state has been undermined by its lack of response to the events of last July. All it would take is a trigger event, he feels, like a steep rise in food inflation — something SA is experiencing thanks to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Prior to the 2021 elections, Endres was deeply concerned about the outlook for SA. But the fact that the smaller parties doubled their share of the vote and took three major metros has made him much more hopeful. Not only is positive change possible, he says, it could also come sooner than expected.
"If something doesn’t change, SA will end up as a failed state. But if we do get political change we’ll also get economic reform and growth," he concludes. "I do think there is a chance, despite all the obstacles. SA has so much potential. It just needs the right conditions and leadership to make the most of it."
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