There was little room for creative policymaking for 30 years
For thirty years, South Africa has carried the weight of a governing party whose ideological commitments proved stronger than its capacity to adapt. The 2026 Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index finds that the ANC's doctrinal rigidity and factional warfare have not merely slowed development — they have structurally prevented the flexible, responsive policymaking that poverty, inequality, and unemployment demand. A new coalition government, born of electoral necessity in 2024, offers a rare opening, but history and the fragility of broad alliances remind us that openings can close as quickly as they appear.
- Three decades of ideological orthodoxy have left South Africa without the adaptive policymaking tools needed to break cycles of poverty, inequality, and rising unemployment.
- Internal ANC factions repeatedly hijacked economic direction, producing policy whiplash that prevented any single strategy from taking root long enough to generate inclusive growth.
- State-owned enterprises have collapsed, corruption has gutted institutional capacity, and a proposed VAT increase signals a government running out of fiscal options while citizens run out of patience.
- The 2024 loss of the ANC's parliamentary majority forced a ten-party coalition into existence — a potential ideological reset, but one analysts warn may be more about neutralizing rivals than genuinely sharing power.
- Should the coalition fracture, the EFF and MK Party wait in the wings, both showing limited commitment to constitutional constraints and capable of channeling popular frustration into a less democratic future.
The 2026 Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index delivers a structural verdict on South Africa's stalled development: the African National Congress, in power since 1994, has been less undone by incompetence than by its own ideological rigidity. For thirty years, the party's doctrinal commitments left almost no room for creative or adaptive policymaking, even as poverty persisted, inequality deepened, and unemployment climbed. When circumstances demanded new approaches, internal orthodoxy prevented them from being tried.
Compounding this was the ANC's chronic factionalism. Competing internal power blocs seized control of economic policy in turn, each imposing its own priorities, none sustaining a coherent direction long enough to produce results. The country experienced policy whiplash rather than strategy. Economic decisions became instruments of factional survival rather than national need.
The ANC did achieve real things — a social grants system that kept millions from absolute destitution, basic infrastructure that reached underserved communities. But the BTI report frames these as crisis management rather than transformation. They bought time without changing the underlying structure. Now that time is visibly running short: state enterprises in energy and transport have been mismanaged into dysfunction, debt servicing crowds out productive investment, and the government is contemplating a VAT increase that would squeeze already-struggling households.
The ANC's loss of its parliamentary majority in May 2024 forced an unprecedented reckoning. A ten-party coalition government, formalized in June 2024, brought in the Democratic Alliance, the Inkatha Freedom Party, and others — theoretically introducing competing perspectives and enabling pragmatism. But analyst Zakheke Ndlovu questions whether this represents genuine power-sharing or a strategic absorption of rivals. Governance expert Andre Duvenhage goes further, arguing that transformation as a top-down ideological project is itself the problem: economic systems need room to adapt, to fail, to learn — not to be engineered from above.
The coalition now faces a near-impossible task: meaningful reform within a budget that offers almost no room to maneuver, while populist forces outside government — the EFF and MK Party, both skeptical of constitutional constraints — wait for the coalition to exhaust itself. What unfolds in the next few years will determine whether South Africa can finally break the cycle, or whether it deepens it.
The question hanging over South Africa's future is whether the ruling party can break free from three decades of ideological constraint. The 2026 Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index—a biennial global assessment of democracy and development across 137 countries—offers a blunt diagnosis: the African National Congress's rigid adherence to its own doctrines, combined with relentless internal power struggles, has systematically starved the country of the flexible, adaptive policymaking required to address its most pressing crises.
Since taking power in 1994, the ANC has presided over genuine democratic gains. Voting rights expanded. Basic services reached millions. Yet the party has failed to deliver on its central promises. Poverty persists. Inequality remains entrenched. Unemployment continues to climb. The BTI report identifies the root cause not as incompetence or bad luck, but as something more structural: a party so committed to its ideological framework that it lost the capacity to innovate. "There was little room for creative policymaking for 30 years due to the constraints imposed by the ANC's ideological dogmatism," the report states plainly. What this means in practice is that when circumstances demanded new approaches, the party's internal orthodoxy prevented them from being tried.
The problem was compounded by the ANC's internal fractures. Rather than a unified government setting coherent policy, the party became a battleground where competing factions seized control of state resources and economic direction in turn. Each faction imposed its own priorities. None lasted long enough to see policies through to completion. The result was a kind of policy whiplash—constant shifts in macroeconomic strategy, none of them sustained long enough to produce inclusive growth or break the cycle of low-wage, low-productivity stagnation. Economic policy became hostage to whoever held temporary power within the party, not to what the country actually needed.
The ANC did manage some genuine achievements. A social security system built on pensions and grants, launched in the 2000s, kept millions from absolute destitution. Basic infrastructure provision, where it occurred, provided some foundation for development. But these successes, the report suggests, were defensive measures—ways of managing crisis rather than solving it. They bought time but did not transform the underlying structure. Now that time is running out. Corruption has hollowed state capacity. Tax collection remains narrow. State-owned enterprises in energy and transport have been mismanaged into crisis. Debt repayment consumes resources that should flow into growth-enabling infrastructure. The government is contemplating raising the value-added tax to 17 percent—squeezing consumers already struggling to survive—because few other fiscal options remain.
The ANC's loss of its parliamentary majority in May 2024 forced a reckoning. For the first time, the party could not govern alone. It assembled a ten-party coalition government, officially formalized in June 2024, that includes the Democratic Alliance, the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Patriotic Alliance, and smaller parties. The BTI report acknowledges this as a potential opening for change. A coalition government, in theory, could break the ANC's ideological stranglehold. It could introduce competing perspectives, force compromise, enable pragmatism. But the report also warns of danger. If the coalition fractures—and broad coalitions often do—the space could open for more unified populist movements. The Economic Freedom Fighters and the MK Party, both outside the governing coalition, show little commitment to constitutional democracy. MK explicitly favors returning to parliamentary supremacy, where legislative will would override legal constraints. Should the coalition collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, these movements could find their moment.
Political analyst Zakheke Ndlovu argues the coalition itself may be a mirage. By absorbing rival parties into government—the IFP, Patriotic Alliance, United Democratic Movement, Freedom Front Plus—the ANC has neutralized opposition rather than genuinely sharing power. The transition looks meaningful on paper but leaves the ANC firmly in control. Ndlovu calls for a fundamental shift in the electoral system itself, one that would make representatives directly accountable to voters rather than to party machines. Governance expert Andre Duvenhage identifies a deeper problem: transformation as an ideological framework assumes you can engineer society from the top down, a principle borrowed from socialist experiments. But economic systems, he argues, resist this kind of control. They need room to operate, space for adaptation, permission to fail and learn. Thirty years of trying to manage everything from above has left South Africa with an economy that cannot grow, a state that cannot deliver, and a political system that cannot reform itself.
The coalition government now faces an impossible task. Meaningful reform requires immediate sacrifice—cuts, restructuring, hard choices—in a budget so constrained there is almost no room to maneuver. The GNU will face criticism from outside groups. In the longer term, the report suggests, this could create an opening for a new alliance between the ANC, the EFF, and MK—a more unified but potentially less democratic force. What happens in the next few years will determine whether South Africa can break the cycle that has defined the last three decades, or whether it slides deeper into it.
Notable Quotes
There was little room for creative policymaking for 30 years due to the constraints imposed by the ANC's ideological dogmatism— 2026 BTI Transformation Index report
Economic systems don't like being controlled from the top. They like rooms to operate in— Professor Andre Duvenhage, governance expert and political analyst
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
The report says the ANC's ideology constrained policymaking for 30 years. But ideology is what parties are supposed to have. What made this particular ideology so constraining?
The difference is between having principles and being unable to adapt them. An ideology becomes constraining when it becomes dogma—when the framework matters more than the results it produces. The ANC couldn't say, "This approach isn't working for poverty reduction, let's try something else." The ideology had to be defended, even as poverty persisted.
And the internal factions—the report mentions they hijacked economic policy. How does that actually work? Who were these factions?
The report doesn't name specific factions, but the mechanism is clear: whoever held power within the party at any given moment could impose their preferred economic direction. So you'd get one macroeconomic strategy, then a shift in internal power, then a completely different strategy. No continuity. No time for anything to actually take root and show results.
The social security system seems to have worked. Pensions and grants kept people from destitution. Why couldn't that model expand?
Because it was defensive. It managed poverty without addressing the structures that create poverty. You can't build inclusive growth on welfare alone. You need jobs, productivity, investment. The grants kept people alive but didn't transform the economy. And now the government can't afford to expand them because debt service is consuming the budget.
The coalition government—is it actually a solution, or just a delay?
It's both. It breaks the ANC's monopoly on decision-making, which could allow pragmatism to replace ideology. But the report warns that if it collapses, something worse could emerge. The EFF and MK don't believe in constitutional limits on government power. A unified populist coalition could be more dangerous than the current stalemate.
So what would actually need to happen for South Africa to break this cycle?
The report suggests you'd need to move away from trying to engineer society from the top down. You'd need to let economic systems have room to operate, to fail, to learn. You'd need representatives accountable to voters, not party machines. And you'd need to accept that real reform requires immediate sacrifice. The GNU has almost no budget room to maneuver, so whatever it tries will hurt someone. That's the trap.