Global political trends reveal mounting pressure for systemic economic reform, particularly in capital distribution.
While capitalism persists because of globalisation’s unifying effects, the disorganised opposition of socialist movements and temporarily sustainable labour reproduction, its long-term stability in its current form hinges on whether it can adapt to rising demands for structural equity — or risk upheaval.
Mounting discontent among the working poor, rural populations and disillusioned youths signals deepening systemic strain.
Despite weathering repeated shocks, global growth remains sluggish at under 3.2%, well below pre-pandemic levels, while inequality intensifies — 71% of humanity now lives in countries where disparities are widening. Although the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development pegs unemployment at 4.9%, youth joblessness persists at an alarming rate — 12.4% — exacerbating a palpable erosion of living standards.
This daily reality of squeezed wages, fractured opportunities and generational alienation is fuelling a volatile disconnect between economic structures and those they fail to serve.
Around the world, discontent is manifesting in demands for radical political-economic overhaul — often targeting liberal democratic institutions as failing guardians of prosperity.
This wave has fuelled a nationalist resurgence, with states like the US, Austria, Germany, Argentina and India pivoting toward more centralised, sovereignty-driven economic models. The message is clear — trust in incremental reform is eroding and the appetite for state-centric solutions is rising.
Yet these reformist waves carry a dangerous undercurrent — the rise of far-right movements cloaked in nationalist economic rhetoric. The US under President Donald Trump exemplifies this risk.
His protectionist agenda threatens to erode dollar hegemony, disrupt global trade and trigger domestic unemployment and inflation. Such policies risk exacerbating capital accumulation and distribution, ultimately worsening the very inequalities fuelling today’s discontent.
South Africa’s political economy has, for now, avoided the radical reform shocks seen globally, instead navigating a more conventional — if volatile — political realignment.
The ANC’s decline, driven by internal fractures and poor performance in government, enabled the emergence of an ANC-Democratic Alliance (DA) coalition of modernists, but its faltering momentum of late suggests deeper upheaval might loom.
The uMkhonto weSizwe factor, alongside fading hopes for national unity, risks igniting a far more destabilising demand for systemic change — one that could erupt into unrest in the nation’s most politicised regions — Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
A few stats underpin this understanding. Weak growth forecasts over the next three years (1.8%), deindustrialisation and eroding state capacity converge with skyrocketing youth unemployment, rural marginalisation, and inflationary pressures.
Political hotspots like Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal simmer, with dwindling social cohesion, while urban apathy and electoral disengagement signal deepening disillusionment.
This combustible mix of economic stagnation and social fragmentation suggests the country could be nearing breaking point, where the demands of the disenfranchised youth, working poor and rural populations could ignite the reform shock South Africa has so far avoided
The ANC-DA political paralysis exposes a fatal miscalculation by moderates — their cautious bargaining ignores the explosive undercurrents for systemic change. Each delay in cooperation fuels further public disillusionment, radicalising the growing ranks of the disenchanted. The choice is stark — urgent, transformative collaboration and meaningful reform or collective irrelevance as more hostile forces fill the vacuum.
Siseko Maposa is the director of Surgetower Associates Management Consultancy. He is a regular writer on political economy, both in South Africa and internationally.
