Power without honour: The moral collapse of South Africa’s political class
South Africans must cease believing that those in power will voluntarily reform. They will not. Their interests are opposed to reform, transparency, and accountability.
Written by: Eustace Davie
Thirty years of unbroken ANC rule have delivered a comprehensive moral and economic failure. The political elite inherited a nation full of promise and goodwill and systematically squandered it. They did not merely govern poorly; they governed dishonestly, governed self-centredly, governed immorally. They have overseen the deliberate erosion of institutions, and the calculated dismantling of constitutional safeguards designed to limit power and protect liberty.
Consider the facts. Unemployment is at record highs, with over twelve million jobless, most of them young, desperate, and hopeless. Economic growth is stagnant, sabotaged by ruinous policies. State enterprises, from Eskom to Transnet, lie in ruins, hollowed out by corruption, incompetence, and theft. Municipalities fail to provide water, sanitation, electricity, and security, not occasionally, but routinely. Infrastructure is crumbling visibly before our eyes. Yet the ruling party denies any need for meaningful reform.
What kind of people do this?
These are not misguided idealists. Nor are they naïve or confused. They are individuals who knowingly sacrifice the prosperity and wellbeing of millions for their own gain. They know exactly what they are doing. Their agenda is calculated and explicit: to monopolise power, to extract wealth, and to cement their grip on the state.
Something profoundly immoral lies at the heart of this conduct. It is the deliberate inversion of right and wrong. It is the purposeful replacement of moral responsibility with brazen opportunism. It is the substitution of principled governance with a politics of plunder.
Frédéric Bastiat described the moral decay we witness today in The Law, published in 1850:
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
This is precisely what has happened in South Africa. Laws are drafted to reward theft, to protect thieves, and to punish producers. Those who loot from the public purse are not disgraced; they are celebrated, shielded, and promoted. Those who demand accountability are vilified as enemies of transformation.
There is no longer any room for equivocation; the political elite’s conduct is morally abhorrent. They claim to govern in the public interest while systematically enriching themselves at the public’s expense. They talk of justice yet impose racial discrimination through statutes reminiscent of apartheid. They speak of equality yet destroy opportunities by imposing laws that deny the poor access to jobs.
It is tempting, perhaps comforting, to dismiss this as incompetence. But incompetence does not adequately explain the persistence, scale, and audacity of the destruction. Because the destruction is deliberate, intentional, and entirely immoral.
What is required now is not better politicians, but fewer powers for politicians to abuse. The task ahead is clear and urgent. Limit government strictly. Dismantle laws that grant discretionary power to bureaucrats and politicians. Abolish race-based policies that perpetuate division and corruption. Restore the rule of law, blind and impartial.
South Africans must cease believing that those in power will voluntarily reform. They will not. Their interests are opposed to reform, transparency, and accountability. Citizens must insist on a restoration of genuine freedom, a government constrained by constitutional limits, and an economic environment driven by voluntary exchange, not political dictate.
The ANC has had three decades to demonstrate its intentions and values. It has done so emphatically. South Africans can no longer afford illusions about the character of those who govern. They have made it clear that their loyalty is not to citizens, the constitution, or the nation, but to themselves alone.
The truth is unavoidable: a government that refuses reform even as the nation collapses around it has surrendered any legitimate claim to moral authority. The moral collapse is complete. The time for tolerating it is over.
Eustace Davie is President of the Free Market Foundation and author of Unchain the Child and Jobs for the Jobless.