Wishful Thinking By South Africa's Ruling Elite

For too long, grand intentions have been used to excuse failure, distract from collapse, and sell voters a future that never arrives. South Africans deserve leaders who turn promises into results.

Photo by Jade Koroliuk on Unsplash

Written by: Piet du Plessis

We are confronted daily by large-scale deterioration, and even total collapse, in almost every sector of society where the state is involved. This is bad enough, but even worse is the wishful thinking of our politicians, especially the ANC politicians who ought to have been in control of state affairs over the last 30 years.

That wishful thinking, however, was, and still is, publicly presented with great fanfare as “gospel”. In other words, the ANC leadership in particular offers promises of many things that they themselves often know, deep down, will not materialise.

There are far too many examples of wishful thinking by the ANC’s “rulers” to mention. I will therefore highlight only a few broad examples here.

The “New Dawn”

“This is the year in which we will turn the tide of corruption in our public institutions... We are building a nation defined by hope and renewal.”
(President Cyril Ramaphosa, inauguration address, May 2019.)

Bullet trains and smart cities

“We must imagine a country where bullet trains pass through Johannesburg while travelling from Cape Town to Musina... We want a South Africa that has no footprint of apartheid’s spatial design, where the dream of a new city, a smart city, is possible.”
(President Cyril Ramaphosa, State of the Nation Address, June 2019.)

However, we all know that the New Dawn turned into a solar eclipse instead. To refer to just two indicators in that regard, the New Dawn gave birth to record unemployment levels of 32–35%, and even higher among the youth, while economic growth averaged less than 1% per year.

Where are our bullet trains and smart cities? We know of smart neighbourhoods that materialised because of private initiative and funding. We know of ministers whose blue-light convoys reach the speed of bullet trains on our highways, and even on our potholed roads. But absolutely nothing came of the bullet trains.

And just to make sure we are exposed to fresh wishful thinking, President Ramaphosa recently expressed the “wish”, through his newsletter, “From the Desk of the President”, and in a subsequent speech on Monday, 4 May 2026, marking the start of Africa Month, that the wealth of former colonial powers, “which was built on the exploitation of Africa’s people and their resources”, must be redressed.

My feeling on that? Dream on, Mr President! The new “reparation dispensation” is now transactional. It is no longer just “give”, but “give and take”. After decades of African liberation from the grip of historical colonialism, historical guilt no longer carries the same moral leverage. This also applies to the ANC’s wishful thinking regarding apartheid injustices, which they believe can be used forever as an excuse for self-inflicted failures.

Our left-liberal academics and media naturally also continue to promote wishful thinking. One example is the so-called “decolonisation of education”. Since the #FeesMustFall movement in 2015, which most of us will still remember, there has been an almost left-liberal “consensus” in academic circles that the “decolonisation of the curriculum” is the key to social justice. It was argued that removing “Western” frameworks would unlock African potential.

That warped thinking has now also found its way into our school education system in the form of proposals regarding alternative history syllabi. More Afrocentricity is obviously not the problem, but serious doubts are beginning to emerge about what is being left out of the syllabi, or about the unbalanced way in which it is planned to be written into prescribed history textbooks.

Our education system has far greater problems than a “need” for an amended history syllabus. To illustrate, the 2023 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) showed that 81% of South African Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning. The “wish” for decolonisation overlooked the reality that the foundation of educational practice, primary schooling, does not even provide basic literacy. Surely that is what must be addressed first, and with great speed.

To wish that amended syllabi, which have nothing to do with basic literacy, will improve our educational outcomes in the area where it matters most is starting to sound like evidence of deeper psychological issues. As the popular saying goes: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a sign of insanity.” By the way, for those who do not know, it was not Einstein who said it. But I will say more about that later.

Now also think with me about the thousands of other instances of wishful thinking that our ANC government leaders blatantly trumpet every single day, in every developmental sphere imaginable: law and order, justice and policing, education and schooling, health, municipal service delivery, and so on. These are serious matters that have a defining impact on our well-being as citizens.

What I want to address, however, is not what we all already know and feel to our core, and to our personal detriment. I want to try to explain how the ANC’s wishful rhetoric is starting to look more and more like a mental health condition, or at least like the behaviour that underlies one.

In psychological terms, I understand that this is referred to as “future faking”. This is when someone paints a beautiful picture of the future to win someone’s favour or cooperation in the short term, while knowing that it is never going to happen. It often happens in order to avoid conflict. Some people promise anything just to escape a difficult conversation in the moment.

To me, this sounds very much like what often gives rise to our “leaders’” outspoken wishful thinking. It is, however, a serious behavioural problem. It needs therapy.

I would think and hope that the best “therapy” might simply be to vote the wishful thinkers out. Now that we know the date of our national election in November, let us try, within our own spheres of influence, to create an understanding of one of the main reasons why we must get rid of the wishful thinkers.

For quite some time, they have begun to disguise their own lies as wishful thinking because they have a deep psychological need to believe themselves. And there is proof that people are more than capable of believing what they want to believe, regardless of its lack of factuality.

It is tragic, but it is this kind of wishful thinking that is still being hawked to voters by our politicians as political “capital”. We must help the people who still cannot, or will not, see it. We deserve a country where intentions and wishes are converted into tangible results.

Piet du Plessis is a retiree with a long history of applied socio-economic development. He is a liberated Afrikaner who has moved beyond self-flagellation and believes that he has been freed to live out his cultural pride and values, and to proclaim them openly when appropriate.