GHALEB CACHALIA | Political alternatives struggle as societal drift leads to mediocrity

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address (Sona) rekindles a conundrum of our times ― that societies are not falling apart dramatically but instead are adjusting quietly to constraint, normalising shortfalls and lowering expectations by degrees so small they are almost imperceptible — making the temporary feel permanent.

What once provoked outrage becomes routine. Mediocrity, carefully managed in the government of national unity (GNU), starts to resemble stability, but in reality political alternatives offer little. The still-dominant ANC speaks the language of hope, transformation and renewal yet struggles to arrest administrative erosion and public distrust.

The DA trades in competence and fiscal caution but appears technocratic and cautious to the point of political sterility ― unable to reconcile protection of existing assets with the urgency of broader inclusion. Meanwhile, MK and the EFF channel anger and impatience, articulating real grievances yet frequently proposing remedies that promise rupture rather than repair.

None fully bridges the widening gap between expectation and capacity. The result is a kind of political stasis: too much fragmentation for decisive reform; too much mutual suspicion for a new compact. The danger is not imminent collapse it is the steady compounding of drift.

In unequal societies the question of fairness is central. What some have accumulated — wealth, skills, security — they understandably seek to protect. What others have long been denied, they justifiably seek to obtain. Every attempt at redistribution or structural reform is experienced simultaneously as a necessary correction and as a threatening loss.

The ANC has to balance fragile growth and confidence. The DA must juggle institutional competence without appearing to defend existing privilege. MK and the EFF cannot easily mobilise grievance without sowing instability. Between these positions lies a narrowing space for shared definition of what is reasonable.

Meanwhile, society adapts. Citizens and firms make private arrangements to compensate for public shortfalls: panels for power, tanks for water, private security against crime, private schooling against failing classrooms. These responses are rational. Yet collectively they make drift more tolerable and durable. Pressure for systemic repair weakens as private coping strengthens — a balancing act for those with means and those without. Predictably, the political system oscillates between reassurance and rhetoric.

The greatest risk is psychological. Societies decline when they internalise decline. When young professionals stagnate by default, when public discourse shifts from remedy to resignation, when competence is quietly replaced by accommodation, drift becomes destiny and even credible reforms struggle to revive belief.

History suggests that reversal begins with the steady restoration of credibility: fewer unforced governance errors, visible accountability for abuse, predictable administration. Trust, once depleted, returns incrementally or not at all.

The distance between effort and reward must be shortened. When citizens believe work, skill and compliance still lead somewhere, they remain invested.

The protection of functioning institutions is key; courts that command respect, municipalities that work, universities and firms that produce excellence. These islands of competence anchor expectations and preserve capacity for renewal. Drift becomes terminal only when everything decays at once.

The distance between effort and reward must be shortened. When citizens believe work, skill and compliance still lead somewhere, they remain invested. When that link breaks, disengagement follows and extraction replaces contribution.

Promises of imminent growth or sweeping transformation no longer convince. What may persuade instead is a language of competence, fairness and maintenance: a credible commitment to prevent further decline while laying foundations for future expansion. Less grandiosity, more honesty.

It’s not between utopia or disaster. It is between conscious calibration and the quiet normalisation of mediocrity. South Africa’s major political actors each hold pieces of the national puzzle, but none yet offers a complete picture.

Until they do, the country risks continuing along a familiar path, not toward history’s dustbin but toward the far messier trashcan of trouble, where drift accumulates until it becomes indistinguishable from destiny.

• Cachalia, a businessman and management consultant, is a former DA MP and shadow public enterprises minister, and chaired De Beers Namibia.