South Africa’s governance crisis, analyst Justice Malala argues, has moved beyond the point where incremental policy adjustment can prevent collapse. The country is trapped in a cycle of stagnation, cycling through failed policies and discredited leaders while expecting different results. Unemployment remains severe. Economic growth has languished at roughly 1% for more than a decade. The cost of living weighs heavily on households. Political fragmentation runs deep.
This is not a condition that resolves through continuation of existing approaches. Without decisive intervention, accumulated grievances and unresolved crises will push the country toward explosion. Anti-immigrant violence could resurface. Former president Jacob Zuma’s supporters may attempt to resurrect the chaos of 2021. Failures in water provision, electricity supply, or other essential services could ignite fresh upheaval. Too many tinderboxes exist without a positive force to defuse them.
The African National Congress governed effectively between 1994 and 2008, delivering on the liberation mandate South Africans demanded at that moment. The question now is whether it deserves to remain in power given eighteen years of leadership and governance failures since then. The party of liberation was appropriate for 1994. The country has moved beyond that historical moment.
What South Africa requires is a creative revolution, an implementable idea that can fundamentally redirect the nation toward rapid economic growth and political cohesion. Such an idea will not originate from politicians themselves. It will require a visionary and focused leader willing to champion it. The alternative is continued stagnation, which leads only toward destruction.
History offers a relevant example. In 1962, Deng Xiaoping, then vice-premier of China, confronted the devastation left by the Great Leap Forward, a four-year industrialisation campaign that resulted in the starvation and deaths of more than 30 million people. Deng wrote an article titled “How to Recover Agricultural Production” in which he quoted military strategist Liu “One-eyed Dragon” Bocheng: “Yellow cat or black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.”
This “cat theory” became the foundation of China’s reform and opening up policies. Chinese leaders made a courageous choice. They discarded their ideologies, rewired their thinking, and adopted measures that some regarded as capitalist but that suited the country’s needs. These policies generated jobs and development, transforming China into a global economic power now challenging American dominance.
The question for South Africa is whether it possesses similar courage. The country has passed the stage where it has a choice about whether to change. Change can occur slowly or quickly, but inaction leads toward destruction.
The burden does not rest solely with political leaders. Ward by ward and town by town, South Africans who vote face their own version of the cat theory moment. The question becomes simple: does the cat they choose catch the mouse? Does it serve their communities? If South Africans cannot make the leap toward pragmatism, toward selecting what genuinely works rather than what ideology demands, poor policies and bad leadership will persist.
Courage produces results at every scale. New York City faced an entrenched rat infestation for decades. In April 2023, the city appointed Kathleen Corradi to lead its rodent mitigation efforts. Her department received only 3.5 million dollars from billions allocated for sanitation across all city agencies. Corradi made one courageous decision: she challenged the city’s powerful restaurant industry and banned loose rubbish bags on pavements, replacing them with rodent-resistant containers. Rodent complaints and sightings declined by over 15%.
South Africa needs cats that can catch mice. The moment for choosing pragmatism over ideology, results over rhetoric, and implementation over endless discussion is now. Whether the country’s institutions and office-holders are capable of that choice remains the open question.