Going nowhere: President Cyril Ramaphosa had once again weathered an internal push to unseat him before
the end of his term in 2027. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
This was the year that was — South Africa’s chequered 2025, a year that ends not with resolution, but with reckoning.
As the political elite retreat into festive excess — sumptuous meals, premium liquor and Cuban cigars — the country limps toward year-end burdened by unresolved crises and looming choices.
Soon after the celebrations fade, the semi-ruling African National Congress will once again face the nation on January 8, offering its annual statement of intent — a ritualised blueprint projecting confidence into 2026 and beyond.
Yet beneath the rhetoric lies a harsher reality: grinding poverty, entrenched unemployment, fragile governance and a population of 64 million increasingly impatient with political symbolism unaccompanied by service delivery.
Looking back from one January 8 Statement to the next, the elephants in the room have multiplied — domestically and globally. The year 2025 exposed how far South Africa has drifted from political certainty, ideological coherence and diplomatic comfort.
A political order in fragmentation
One of the most consequential developments of the year was the effective collapse of the historic tripartite alliance. The South African Communist Party’s decision to contest elections independently was less an act of renewal than an admission of irrelevance.
Analysts were quick to describe the move as a lame-duck mission, disconnected from an electorate no longer animated by ideological nostalgia but by immediate needs: water, electricity, healthcare, housing, roads and jobs.
For voters, particularly the young, jobless graduates and the urban poor, the language of struggle has lost its mobilising power. Performance, not pedigree, now shapes political loyalty.
The festive season offered no respite from this reality — especially in KwaZulu-Natal, where political instability once again spilled into public spectacle. A chaotic session of the provincial legislature in Pietermaritzburg, broadcast to a weary nation preparing for holiday shutdown, revealed how brittle democratic norms have become.
Amid death threats against members, a row over a no-confidence motion against IFP Premier Thami Ntuli, which he survived, descended into disorder after the Speaker refused a secret ballot.
The instigator was the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, now the largest bloc in the legislature with 37 of 80 seats — flexing its ambition to govern a province once dubbed the “killing fields” of ANC-IFP violence. The symbolism was unsettling: old ghosts, new players, familiar instability.
Governance failures in plain sight
Elsewhere in the province, tragedy laid bare the cost of institutional decay. The collapse of a Hindu temple construction project in Verulam, killing five people including community leaders, shocked the nation. Municipal authorities confirmed that the project had not been approved. Comparisons were quickly drawn with the George building collapse, marking this as one of the country’s worst construction-related disasters.
Even as MECs, MPs and ministers jostled for airtime, the underlying message was clear: state capacity has eroded to the point where basic compliance, oversight and safety can no longer be assumed.
Meanwhile, a Zimbabwean national was arrested with 500 fake passports and large sums of cash allegedly destined for corrupt Home Affairs officials — a reminder that porous borders, corruption, human trafficking and organised crime continue to intersect with alarming ease.
Ramaphosa’s survival as strategy
At the centre of this unsettled terrain stands President Cyril Ramaphosa — a study in political survival.
By mid-year, Ramaphosa had once again weathered an internal push to unseat him before the end of his term in 2027.
Deputy President Paul Mashatile publicly shut down speculation, insisting the president was “going nowhere”. At the ANC’s National General Council, Ramaphosa dared his critics to confront him openly rather than plot in “dark corners”.
His survival reflects mastery of factional management, control of institutional levers and narrative discipline. Cabinet reshuffles were less about renewal than containment — marginalising rivals while rewarding loyalists just enough to preserve equilibrium.
But survival is not success. The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into political interference in policing, along with parliamentary probes, became arenas of factional contest rather than instruments of accountability. Calls to release interim findings were rebuffed; only final reports, the presidency insisted, would be made public.
The ANC itself has acknowledged long-term decline. Having lost its outright majority in 2024, it now governs through a Government of National Unity that functions more as a ceasefire than a project of reform. Policy boldness has been sacrificed for coexistence; urgency diluted by fear of rupture.
Diplomatic humiliation — and recovery
Globally, 2025 unfolded as a study in contrasts.
The year’s lowest diplomatic point came early, when Pretoria was subjected to an unusually public dressing down from Washington. The trigger was a toxic mix of ideological mistrust, foreign policy divergence and inflammatory claims by Donald Trump — echoed by AfriForum — alleging “genocide” against white Afrikaner farmers.
The allegations were absurd but the damage was real. They crystallised how far South Africa’s standing with key Western partners has frayed. Moral language without strategic leverage, in a transactional global order, proved costly.
The conspicuous absence of Trump’s administration from subsequent engagements only highlighted how fractured Western consensus has become — and how expendable middle powers can appear.
Yet the year did not end in humiliation.
South Africa’s hosting of a decisive G20 Leaders’ Summit on African soil marked a strategic recovery of note. Despite earlier boycotts and diplomatic headwinds, Pretoria delivered a well-run, substantively grounded summit with strong Global South participation and continental support, a classic coup de grace.
Africa was not an afterthought but the setting. Development finance, debt relief, energy transition and global governance reform were framed through African realities. South Africa rediscovered a role it understands instinctively: bridge-builder in a multipolar world.
The upshot was unmistakable — a diplomatic win that transcended party politics and reaffirmed national capability.
The limits of external success
But diplomacy cannot indefinitely compensate for domestic drift.
The G20 success exposed a persistent paradox: South Africa performs best internationally when insulated from its own political noise, yet struggles to replicate that coherence at home. Institutional discipline abroad dissolves into coalition bargaining domestically.
The negatives remain stubborn:
- Economic stagnation and deepening inequality
- A GNU still finding its feet amid ideological incoherence
- Policy uncertainty unsettling investors and citizens
- Persistent tension between moral foreign policy and economic self-interest
Voter sentiment reflects this unease. Polling suggests opposition parties, particularly the Democratic Alliance, gaining traction. The ANC itself admits that corruption, governance failures and organisational decay continue to erode trust.
The next local government elections, likely in late 2026 or early 2027, hover in a constitutional grey zone — a technical uncertainty that mirrors deeper democratic strain.
A year of reckoning, not renewal
In sum, 2025 was not a year of triumph, but of survival and recalibration.
South Africa entered the year bruised, doubted, and diplomatically exposed — and exits reminded that while its power is no longer assumed, it can still be earned. The country no longer enjoys automatic respect abroad, nor patience at home. Influence must now be built through competence, clarity and delivery — not rhetoric.
The G20 showed what is possible. Whether that confidence travels from conference halls to Cabinet and from diplomacy to daily life, remains the unresolved question.
However, Pretoria, barred from the Sherpas meeting, will not call on G20 member countries to boycott the USA G20 and each member could condemn SA’s blackballing from the gathering in Miami, Florida in November.
South Africa’s diplomatic rupture with Washington in 2025 did not occur in a vacuum. It was the direct consequence of Pretoria’s decision to take Israel to the International Court of Justice, accusing it of committing acts of genocide in Gaza — a move rooted in international law but freighted with geopolitical consequence.
Closer to home, Durban-raised and now retiring National Director of Public Prosecutions Advocate Shamila Batohi faced sustained criticism from political parties and civil society over perceived weaknesses in prosecuting high-profile corruption and violent-crime cases, with some openly calling for new leadership at the NPA. Yet she remained proactive and assertive in confronting internal prosecutorial failures, driving the Andrew Chauke inquiry, which she reported to the president, as a test of institutional accountability. The probe has become a high-stakes legal and institutional reckoning — not only of Batohi’s leadership, but of broader public confidence in South Africa’s embattled prosecutorial system.
If 2025 taught South Africa anything, it is that nostalgia is no longer a strategy. Not in global diplomacy, not in domestic politics, and certainly not in governance.
Indeed 2025 stripped away illusion. What remains is choice. At the Crossroads, Quo Vadis, Cry, the Beloved Country: A haunting reflection on a nation’s enduring struggles, reminding us that the questions of yesterday still echo in the heart of South Africa today.
Marlan Padayachee is a seasoned former political, foreign and diplomatic correspondent in the transition from apartheid to democracy and is a freelance journalist, photographer and researcher.