The rain was coming down hard — and so was I.
Wipers squealed uselessly across the Mazda Rustler’s windscreen as the car veered right, as it always did when I braked. Only this time, I wasn’t sober enough to correct it. My knuckles clenched the wheel. My breath fogged the glass. Somewhere behind me, the neon lights of a Grange party still pulsed in my head.
I was 20, drunk on whisky and bravado, speeding down Commercial Road with a girl in the passenger seat and a heart still thumping from the cold barrel of a gun pressed against it just an hour earlier.
Red robot.
I slammed the brakes.
The Rustler screamed — tyres hissing, chassis groaning — and leapt the centre island like a wounded animal. It spun once, then twice, and smashed nose-first into a green electrical box outside McDonald’s. The bonnet erupted in smoke. My forehead cracked the dash. Somewhere, the girl screamed.
I stumbled out barefoot onto the wet pavement. The air smelled like burnt rubber, oil and something inside me I couldn’t name – panic, maybe. Or shame. A crowd gathered. Blue lights sliced the mist. I reeked of liquor.
“Have yuuu bien drienkieng?” the officer barked in that heavy Afrikaans growl.
I nodded.
He twisted my arm behind my back. The cuffs clicked shut.
That was the night I learned what it feels like to be behind the wheel without vision, without clarity, without control. You think you’re getting somewhere — until you’re spinning out, jackknifed on the pavement, smoke rising from everything you built.
Years later, watching South Africa’s democracy swerve down familiar roads, I realise I wasn’t just drunk that night — I was rehearsing something much bigger.
We’re all behind the wheel now — and we’re all at risk.
A dazed nation behind the wheel
We are a country barrelling forward with no seatbelt, no working brakes, and no map. Intoxicated by slogans. Distracted by factions. Driving harder – not wiser.
Last year’s national election delivered a chaos of choices — over 50 political parties, from Afrikaans revivalists to Marxist revolutionaries, from throne-and-tradition parties calling for the return of the amakhosi, to spreadsheet technocrats promising dashboards and delivery. The result? A “unity” government stitched together with nervous smiles and ideological glue.
Now another skid mark on the road — Floyd Shivambu, all but ousted from the MK party after being removed as secretary-general, is reportedly preparing to launch the Mayibuye Movement. We keep changing drivers — but the car keeps swerving into the same ditch.
I trained the election officers
In 2009, I worked in the Independent Electoral Commission’s engine room as an Electoral Project Coordinator and Provincial Electoral Trainer. I trained hundreds of presiding officers and area managers — most of them school principals, the very people who opened their classrooms as polling stations.
There was structure. Protocol. Civic dignity.
Even then, the ballot was crowded. But this year felt different. The fragmentation wasn’t a sign of flourishing freedom — it was a symptom of fracture.
South Africa now has over 300 registered political parties — yet fewer than 10 have national traction. We’re not voting for progress. We’re voting ourselves into paralysis.
The curse of constant change
At its best, democracy delivers leaders with conviction, vision, and staying power. Ours has delivered musical chairs in council chambers. Coalitions without cohesion. Tenders without delivery.
When I worked as an auditor at the Auditor-General’s office, one control weakness showed up again and again — like a cracked windscreen: leadership instability.
Even after I left in 2017, the pattern only worsened. By 2021, more than 60% of municipalities had acting CFOs or municipal managers — a staggering sign of churn. Leadership turnover was so high that institutional memory evaporated. People weren’t leading — they were placeholders in a revolving door.
As of the 2023-24 financial year, municipal finance units had a 19% vacancy rate. One in five municipalities lacked a permanent Chief Financial Officer. At those with disclaimed audit opinions, CFOs averaged just 39 months in office.
No staying power. No accountability. No traction.
You can’t drive straight when someone new grabs the wheel every few kilometres. And you can’t deliver clean audits with a finance team that’s understaffed, underqualified and under siege.
Loot first, plan never
Insecure leaders aren’t just ineffective — they’re dangerous. When leaders don’t believe they’ll last, they don’t plan for the next decade. They loot for the next weekend.
We see it in rushed appointments. Inflated procurement. A feverish obsession with “eating” before the next reshuffle. Public office becomes less of a calling — and more of a countdown.
A democracy with no traction doesn’t crawl — it slides. And then it crashes.
Kigali was different
In October last year, I landed in Rwanda en route to Kenya. Even at the airport, I felt it. The floors gleamed. The lights worked. Staff moved with purpose. There was no fear — only focus.
Yes, Rwanda has flaws. Authoritarianism must never be romanticised. Civic space is tight. Dissent is risky.
But Kigali has achieved what our metros have not: clean governance, functional infrastructure, digitised services and national coherence. They’ve done more with less.
We have more media freedom. More mineral wealth. More civil society. But far less traction.
What kind of democracy do we want?
South Africa doesn’t need more parties. It needs more purpose.
If democracy is to survive here, it must be reimagined — not copied from the West, not just shouted through loudhailers. We need a democracy driven by direction, not just defended by default.
Here’s what that looks like:
- Vision-led coalitions — not stitched-together survival pacts.
- Electoral reform — with thresholds and constituency-based candidates.
- Longer-term mandates — built on delivery, not popularity.
- Technocratic support — that reinforces, not replaces, political will.
- Civic education — that teaches power, responsibility and constitutional literacy.
Even America — democracy’s supposed gold standard — is now cracking. Trump’s return, institutional gridlock and mass polarisation prove one thing: liberal democracy slows collapse — but rarely drives renewal.
If that’s true for the US, what hope do we have — a nation still weighed down by inequality, broken institutions and a leadership culture built on loyalty over competence?
Sona: the president in the passenger seat
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s latest State of the Nation Address laid bare this dysfunction. Behind the gloss of unity stood a driver propped up by passengers with different destinations.
A coalition government with no shared GPS cannot drive straight. It jerks, stalls and veers under the strain.
Ramaphosa, hemmed in by factional warfare and surrounded by ministers entangled in scandal, increasingly relies on commissions of inquiry to do the work leadership should. But commissions are like substitute drivers — they steer the headlines, not the country.
Graveyards of good intentions
Shivambu’s split from MK isn’t just a subplot. It’s a symptom.
A democracy without vision produces factions, not futures. And when ambition replaces clarity, the people bleed — in potholes, broken classrooms, understocked clinics.
South Africans are tired.
Tired of manifestos with no memory. Tired of leaders with no compass. Tired of being asked to vote with hope — and rewarded with heartbreak.
The final bend
That night in Pietermaritzburg, after the crash, I sat slumped on the curb, the rain mixing with the sweat on my face. I remember thinking: How did I get here?
I had no map. No plan. Just a tank full of ego, a broken suspension and enough alcohol to believe I’d make it.
That’s where we are as a country — behind the wheel, dazed, swerving between ideology and improvisation. The warning lights are flashing. The tar is slick.
And unless we sober up — politically, morally, strategically — we will just crash again.
And this time, we may not walk away. DM