SA in 2025: Power to the people, but some of the bulbs are still blown

Vasti Roodt

Dean of Letters and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University

What gives you hope for 2025?

The astounding ability of South Africans to bridge major political divides in moments of crisis. The government of national unity (GNU) is the latest manifestation of this, but it has happened repeatedly over the past 30 years.

That we could establish a coalition between former enemies within weeks, and make it work so far – even if somewhat haltingly – is thanks to a combination of naivety, brash assertiveness, pragmatism and self-preservation. I think this collection of traits is part of our social DNA, and in the right proportion, at the right time, it gives reason for hope.

What makes you anxious about 2025? Naivety, brash assertiveness, pragmatism, and self-preservation in the wrong proportion, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time.

Louis van der Watt

CEO of the Atterbury Group

What gives you hope for 2025?

What I definitely see is that people are starting to invest again. I'm involved in two places, at Atterbury, which is a property company, and then at Fledge, which is more private equity, and I see it in both. I see property companies starting to secure land again, rezone. We haven't taken any land positions for 10 to 15 years, and for the first time, we're willing to do it again, because we think there's a chance the economy will turn around reasonably, and if you don't get in early enough, it's too late.

So we've started with residential developments in the Western Cape, we're starting with industrial land here in Pretoria, we have commercial land in quite a few places. That's on the property side, and I see it with other property developers too. For the first time, they're willing to do what we call “land banking," where you have land ready for development. For the last 15 years, if I didn't have a specific tenant, I wouldn't buy a piece of land because I didn't want to sit with that land. Now I'm willing to sit with land, because there's an expectation that I'll get the tenants.

It's largely because politics has changed a bit that the economy has improved a bit. The fact that Eskom is no longer cutting power makes a huge difference. You know, we have many retail outlets and restaurants in our portfolio, and I can see the difference it makes to profits, not necessarily to turnover - people were going to restaurants a year ago and they're still going to restaurants now, but the restaurants’ expenses have decreased significantly because they now have power again. They don't need to constantly buy diesel for their generator anymore.

So I can see from the retail figures, how much money people are spending per square metre in stores, how it has increased in the last year. All our retailers are doing better than they did a year ago, and the moment they do better, we're more willing to buy land to build shopping centres.

Lees hierdie artikel in Afrikaans

Take storage space too. We recently had a conversation with one of the biggest citrus farmers in the country, and it was a huge problem for him to get his product to the ports, but now that they're starting to privatise railways, trains, he's willing to invest a lot of money in a so-called siding, where he can load his product onto the rail where he owns the trains that will now get that product to the ports. All those types of things have started happening in the last year.

We're starting to get calls from people saying: Wow, we're willing to invest again, let's look at opportunities. And it's not just on the property side, I see it on the private equity side too.

What makes you anxious about 2025?

We can do as much as we want, but at the moment the government has incredibly large debt, and that debt must be serviced. It doesn't help if they only get enough income from the tax base to service the interest on that debt. It also doesn't help if the economy grows and it's just enough to pay the debt. You must eliminate that debt, and you eliminate it through the investment I'm talking about now.

The other thing. Let's go back 30 years to the apartheid years where you had a bunch of companies that worked very closely with the government, that got lots of contracts, and they used those contracts to build large businesses. Most of those businesses still exist today, you know. I think of the old BKS (consulting engineers – now part of AECOM) which has changed its form several times but is still one of the largest firms out there.

There are many businesses that were built with favours from the government in the previous regime, but there were proper businesses built that exist to this day and provide an incredible amount of employment and they are capable and skilled. The same thing happens today – there are many businesspeople who are very close to the government and get many soft contracts, but none of them develop into sustainable businesses. Those businesspeople who move close to the government and let's say get the “Broederbond contracts" are just in it for themselves. You know, I don't see businesses being built. I hear about all the contracts and you hear who won them, and then the next day you hear the guy drives three Ferraris and he drives a Porsche but no jobs are being created, even though someone gets very rich from it. It's a pity that after 30 years, the penny hasn't dropped yet.

It's like this all over the world that certain people move close to governments and get the contracts, but the question is what you do with it. Do you build businesses, create jobs, or do you just make yourself rich? I don't see in our country that the top businessmen who move close to the government are building businesses.

Peach van Pletzen

Musician, music producer, actor

What gives you hope for 2025?

Despite all South Africa's flaws and problems, there's no other place I want to be. I love this country and its people, and each year creates a new opportunity to try to improve on the previous year – to look after yourself and each other more beautifully.

I believe in our people and that warmth that I don't encounter anywhere else in the world. Our struggles and problems are also the thing that makes us strong and unites us. My wish for the year is that we shift from a “me mindset" to a “we mindset" because I am you and you are me, and in that unity lies our greatest strength.

What makes you anxious about 2025?

Every day we're confronted with things that make you feel anxious and sad, from the potholes that will soon need to be given names, to the homeless people trying to direct traffic at broken traffic lights. Ironically, they perhaps contribute more to the country's daily functioning than our own president.

When I drive on the highway between Pretoria and Johannesburg, and large sections of the road have been dark for six years, I wonder: Why hasn't this been fixed yet? It should be the simplest thing, to just make light again.

It sometimes feels as if there's a deliberate preference to keep us in the dark. The darkness creates a perfect hiding place and camouflage for underhanded things. Someone up there needs to please just turn the lights back on, because if we stay in the dark too long, it will continue to seduce and destroy us in ways we don't even see coming.

Quinton Adams

Educational psychologist and CEO: The Shackbuilder

What gives you hope for 2025?

What gives me a lot of hope for South Africa is the development and growth of civil society. Civil society has finally begun to engage in the struggle to launch meaningful initiatives. This sector has emerged from the shadows after a very long silence and absence, waiting for the government to take the lead and improve the welfare of the people.

The large-scale corruption and state capture have re-activated civil society. From academics to the ordinary person on the street, people have begun to raise their voices and take action. The Covid epidemic was a demonstration of the significant role that civil society can play. Without this sector, there would certainly have been hunger uprisings due to the large-scale food shortages for people who could not go to work during the lockdown period.

Civil society has begun to address the challenges at grassroots level on a much larger scale. This gives me greater hope and courage for 2025.

And what makes you anxious?

Our politicians become entangled in the international political landscape and forget to actively address local issues such as youth unemployment. It is a ticking time bomb. It is a humanitarian crisis. Youth unemployment causes people to turn to the criminal economy and illegal activities.

Economic growth and investment must improve so that job creation can take place for youths who are not in school, post-matric graduates, and young graduates. There is no strategy to prepare the youth for employment. These “bread and butter" issues are completely ignored, and there is a restless nation fighting for survival in this country. The growing youth unemployment makes me anxious.

Amelia Morgenrood

Wealth manager at PSG Konsult

What gives you hope for 2025?

It gives me hope that sentiment in South Africa is dramatically better than a year ago. Sentiment and emotion play a very big role in people's decision-making. We're coming from a very low base and we need economic growth.

Despite all our challenges, South Africa is a country full of opportunities, and any improvement in economic activity can make these opportunities look even more attractive.

What makes you anxious?

I become extremely anxious about everything I read regarding the decay of infrastructure, especially water infrastructure. Furthermore, the violent crime we experience in SA, and especially now in the Western Cape, is a major concern for me.

Roelof Botha

Economist at the Optimum Investment Group

What gives you hope for 2025?

The economy is slowly but surely preparing for a new growth phase. An impressive number of economic indicators are pushing upwards, with the increase in new job opportunities of nearly 300 000 during the third quarter particularly impressive.

The main reason for optimism about achieving a growth rate of around 3% in 2025 is that interest rates have started to decline, even though it's hopelessly slow. With inflation below 3%, the Reserve Bank's monetary policy committee has no choice but to further reduce interest rates, which will stimulate consumer spending and capital formation.

Increased government spending on infrastructure renovation and expansion should also (with the help of the DA group in the GNU) lead to significant job creation, which will broaden the tax base.

What worries you about 2025?

Concern about South Africa's future lies in the apparent unwillingness and/or inability of the government to fix the country's municipalities, a problem that originates from cadre deployment and has led to unprecedented incompetence in local government management. Unless the government substantially improves service delivery at municipal level through official co-operation with the private sector, sociopolitical unrest will continue to threaten.

Duma Gqubule

Research fellow at the Social Policy Initiative

What gives you hope for South Africa in 2025?

When I spend time with my son Khalo who is studying music at Wits University and his friends, I have great hope for the future of South Africa during 2025. They are so different from my generation in the way they see issues relating to race, gender, politics and society. Therefore, I was so excited that the class of 2024 achieved the country’s highest ever matric pass rate of 87,3%. A record 337 158 learners received a bachelor’s pass rate that allows them to go to university.  This was more than three times higher than what was achieved by the class of 2009.

Since there were only about 240 000 first-time entrants into public higher education institutions during 2022, according to the Council for Higher Education, I hope that every member of the class of 2024 is enrolled in a university during 2025.

Education is a human right and must be free for everyone. We must take profit out of education and double the size of the tertiary education sector. South Africa still had a relatively low tertiary enrolment rate of 27,2% in 2022 compared with an average of 78,8% in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

A decade after the start of the #FeesMustFall movement, about 50% of the 1,8 million enrolments in public higher education institutions and technical and vocational education and training colleges receive financial assistance from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme and the National Research Foundation. It will cost about R50 billion to achieve free tertiary education for all. We must not take shortcuts and must invest in our youth's future.

Cilliers Brink

Former mayor of Tshwane and DA councillor

What gives you hope for 2025?

What gives me hope isn't so much the GNU itself, but the character of South Africa's people. The outcome of last year's election as well as polls conducted as late as December confirm that South Africans reject radicalism and racial politics. The EFF is falling apart, and ordinary people don't want what Jacob Zuma is peddling.

What makes you anxious about 2025?

What worries me is that the ANC appears to still be in denial, and they want to govern the country as if they did nothing wrong before 2024 or 2019. For the GNU to succeed, it must turn the ship of state around, which will require substantial policy changes that encourage private investment. We can't indefinitely coast on good sentiment. Yet the ANC, including the president, acts as if the DA and other GNU parties are a fourth member of the ANC/SACP/Cosatu alliance, and as if they're governing with an outright majority.

Fanie Naudé

Writer and lawyer

What gives you hope for 2025?

South Africa needs a radically reimagined set of values, perhaps even a new democratic revolution that will sweep away not just the remnants of old South African conservatism, but also the brutal indifference and crass self-interest of the corrupted liberation organisation that has governed us over the past decades. And yet, in the absence of such a turnaround, the modest degree of pluralism that the formation of the GNU has brought gives one hope.

So far, the counterparts to the previously monolithic ANC in the GNU haven't been palpably effective, but time – 2025 – will tell. South Africans can certainly also be grateful that load-shedding darkness, and the associated rapid economic destruction, have been (temporarily) lifted. South Africa's salvation, if there is one, will come from a nongoverning pool of talent and entrepreneurial spirit, a growing and demographically diverse group of South Africans whose tireless search for solutions, despite lacking political will, could ultimately be decisive.

Writers and artists also give one hope. Unlike politicians, who focus on false promises for the future, they are focused on the ethics of the present.

What makes you anxious about 2025?

The biggest threats to South Africa in 2025 remain the aforementioned indifference and self-interest of the ANC. Corruption, unaccountability, an enormous cadre-packed civil service, and policy approaches that continue to benefit only a small ruling elite, entrench poverty ever deeper and continuously increase the risk of violent social uprising.

Geopolitically? The rapid shift of the US towards a fascistic theocracy, governed by adult toddlers who stamp their feet and want to grab others' toys, also poses considerable threats to the world. The wave of populism sweeping over the West isn't sparing South Africa. Our new right wing, in the form of MK's ethnic nationalism (with homophobia and xenophobia mixed in), is the clearest equivalent.

But don't forget that conservatives routinely appear in online news forum comment sections thinking Trump will restore their old South African notions of masculinity. Ironically, it's precisely these anonymous commentators, and indeed all South Africans, whose economic interests in 2025 will be undermined by their heroes Trump and Musk's reckless power games.

Wandile Sihlobo

Chief economist, Agbiz (Agricultural Business Chamber)

What gives you hope for 2025?

I spend my time working in agriculture and rural affairs. We had a challenging 2024 due to the mid-summer drought (February to March) that led to a 23% decline in summer grain and oilseed harvests (to 15,4 million tonnes), as well as animal diseases. This year, we are seeing a recovery from the drought and receiving excellent rains that support agricultural production.

We are also making progress in controlling animal diseases. I am optimistic about the prospects of the South African government and private sector finally implementing the agriculture and agro-processing master plan, which could lead to job creation and growth in the sector. The South African government has 2,5 million hectares at its disposal; releasing this land this year with title deeds would be likely to help us achieve long-term growth, inclusion, and job creation.

Prof. Johann Kirsten and I have a new book coming out in February 2025 that may provide further guidance on how to grow South African agriculture inclusively and manage resources effectively. 

What makes you pessimistic about 2025?

We are an export-oriented agricultural sector. We export about half of our agricultural products, amounting to about $13,2 billion in 2023. The rise of protectionism worldwide and the hawkish trade policy in the US worries me. I am already seeing EU farmers calling for increased protection. This is a concerning issue, and South Africa must work to ensure we continue to have access to various export markets.

We must also strive to access more markets in BRICS and other regions. Additionally, we must fully utilise the resources of the World Trade Organisation and South African representatives to help us engage more effectively with the world in our ambition to grow South African agricultural exports.

Carina Stander

Writer, poet, journalist and visual artist

What makes you anxious about South Africa?

Apart from the horrific rape statistics, especially of children, and the fact that the EFF is so popular at universities, I am concerned about the state of publishing in South Africa. When I started writing travel articles in 2004, magazines were bulky like doorstoppers. Now, publications, publishing houses, newspapers, magazines are hit with a windscreed like a swarm of locusts on the long road through the Karoo. You just see stuff splattering, and people scattering. 

Who can actually afford to write in South Africa? Are there people who can keep writing because they can do it for self-fulfilment? I am definitely not one of them. Writing is a craft for me, and if I want to realise myself, then I barbecue in the garden with friends or I work in the garden. When you have kids heading to university and you have to pay for that, then it is very difficult to justify continuing to write for a living.

What gives you hope for 2025?

It is interesting for me to see how many other citizens from other countries are currently choosing to come and stay in South Africa. We have good friends who sold their house in the countryside in the Western Cape last year, and they said that 80% of the people who came to look at their house were from America and Europe.

Our child's class has about 50 children, and there are parents who come from Poland, Ireland, Russia, Moldova, a Portuguese father, a French mother, two children with German parents, and of course a bunch of South African parents as well, and this is just in one grade of a small school. These parents are of our age, say between 40 and 55, and they came here while their children were small – this was during the time of Zuma and when load-shedding was at its worst.

Now that things are going so much better, they are totally thrilled with the country. Their people are following them here – families from places like Switzerland – because they are becoming scared of the political situation in Switzerland, of all places. They say with Russia and Ukraine, it is starting to feel like World War 2. But most came here long before the Ukraine war.

They say their children can still be kids in South Africa and they see potential for new businesses here. They say the lifestyle is wonderful – to have such large gardens and good weather.

They find South Africans are curious and engaging and not so private, much more community-oriented, which I think is true because a community is very important in a country where a government is not going to take care of you anymore, and where people are more reliant on each other, so they want to offer their children that alternative view of the world.

This is, of course, wonderful for the country’s economy because they bring their businesses and euros; they bring expertise and help build the country.

Then I also read recently that South Africa is higher on the passport index than it has been in a decade. We can visit 106 countries visa-free. This means the international community has greater trust in South Africa. Our own tourism has also exploded with the US and Europe being at a political tipping point between Trump and Putin. The high cost of living there due to the higher fuel crisis and housing crisis makes people want to come here just to travel.

I know it’s a cliché, but it is simply true that South Africa is a world in one country. I have been to more than 30 countries and it makes so much sense for a tourist to come to South Africa. We have all the diverse cultures and coastlines, biomes, mountains, savanna, forests, and semi-deserts.

I know people complain about the Kruger National Park falling into disrepair, but I have done a series of travel articles about Sanparks and Cape Nature in the past five years. We have stayed everywhere and the facilities were excellent everywhere. The sink in the kitchenette of the Karoo National Park was so shiny that you could mascara your eyelashes in it.

For the pessimists who think everything is just going to fall apart, I will put it bluntly. No one we encountered in Cape Nature or Sanparks, or who handled our bookings or welcomed us, was lily-white anymore, but everyone was extremely professional and so warm and welcoming that I was incredibly proud that overseas tourists and South Africans could get to know this lovely side of our country. You just had the feeling that this is what the country looks like when it flourishes.

The last thing that excites me about South Africa are the young entrepreneurs. Unlike their grandparents, they know there will be no government to take care of them, and unlike their parents, they don’t work themselves to death. They believe in working hard and playing hard, and this is so much more sustainable.

With all the uncertainties, I now have much more hope for the country than I have had in years. With the new government and less load- shedding and also how things look on the ground level. I walk into Checkers and the women at the tills have beautiful braided hair; they celebrate their identity, they feel positive, and they look me in the eyes as if I'm someone they can trust. That’s something that didn’t exist a few years ago; there was more anger in the air, there was more resentment, and that has changed.

I don’t want to live anywhere else. The time I wanted to emigrate because of crime is over. There was such a time. The time my husband was left for dead in a brutal house burglary. I can understand why people have no hope for South Africa; I can understand the darkness that comes over someone, but right now it feels like the light is shining in the dark and as if the darkness couldn’t completely put it out.

♦ VWB ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.