On Sunday evening, almost eight years after supplanting Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation to tell South Africans that “South Africa faces persistently high levels of unemployment, especially among young people. Too many families are struggling to make ends meet. Too many communities are experiencing poverty and inadequate access to opportunities. In such circumstances, frustration can easily be directed at those perceived to be competitors for jobs and resources. Yet we must recognise that illegal immigration is not the cause of all our economic challenges. The answer must be faster economic growth, greater investment, industrial expansion, infrastructure development and the creation of millions of new jobs.”

That is exactly right. If only someone were in a position of power to do any of that…

Again, rightly, he went on to say, “The basic principle, on which we all agree, is that every person within the borders of South Africa should be here legally. Every person who works in our country must be legally permitted to work. Every person who runs a business here must be legally permitted to run a business. The challenge we have is that some people have migrated to our country irregularly and are here illegally. South Africa has a right to implement policies and measures that prevent irregular migration.”

It really should implement those policies.

Isn’t that all just such a perfect exposition of what has gone wrong in his presidency and why his party lost power? It is almost as if he has taken on the persona of an economic and political analyst talking about a society far away that he has never visited and only ever read about, or perhaps even as if he were the leader of the opposition, in how he comments on what the people in charge should do.

Certainly, “peak Ramaphosa” is behind us now. You get the sense of that clearly as you talk to people.

In America, “peak Trump” is likely behind us too. He’s stuck in Iran learning the lesson that, while Western political culture sees negotiation as an effort to reach an accommodation and lasting pact, in non-Western culture the purpose of negotiations is to weaken your enemy. Only a unilateral set of decisions will get him out of Iran, and each day he stays, he looks weaker. Consider that, whereas overall support among Republicans for his handling of the Iran war holds up strongly, a majority of Republicans now wish for him to wrap it all up quickly. And he’s now been countermanded by Congress with regularity on the War Powers Act, a proposed $1 billion security-funding package linked to his White House ballroom project, and his proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponisation” fund. That will, of course, inspire the Iranians to push harder, and very quickly a negative spiral is set into motion, at the centre of which are warnings from oil firms that, as inventories run down, prices could spike well over $100, and that would not help the midterm outlook.

Is “peak DA” also past us? It is a surprising question. It hasn’t been stellar, from retaining John Steenhuisen in the Cabinet, and there are things that will still crawl out of the woodwork there, to its appalling history curriculum decision at the education ministry, to its xenophobic flirtations on social media last week, to its squabbling with the FF+ over parole. Ask serious people what the DA’s vision for the country is, not the esoteric vision, the serious one. What must be done to lift the investment rate? Usually, they say they don’t really know. And how does the DA adjust that plan for the fact that the enclave phenomenon is overriding the traditional centrist model of governance that has determined what happens in South Africa for over 100 years, and thereby the relative importance of politicians in directing the state and the economy?

There’s a nastiness to the DA that shouldn’t be there. In the agriculture ministry, it has often been contemptuous of farmers. Not just simple frustration under pressure, but mocking contempt. The same in Cape Town. Just this week, the Pinelands Residents Association urged residents to object to de facto state seizure, dare one say expropriation and nationalisation, of the Mowbray Golf Club. In response, the DA’s de facto CEO under leader Geordin Hill-Lewis, Ryan Coetzee, took to X to mock the residents, writing, “You can’t complain about property prices being too high and also object to new housing developments. You cannot want better public transport and also object to densification. You cannot want a city that attracts investment and also object to urbanisation.” Then, fully embracing Marie Antoinette, he told the residents, remember these are his party’s voters and the city’s ratepayers, “You can’t, in short, have your cake and eat it.”

That is just plain contempt for the people who make the city the great place that it is. The DA has done well to administer it, but the kudos have gone to their heads, and it needs to be reminded that it is not the emperor of Cape Town.

Worse than just being contemptuous of residents, the statements made against them are wrong. They are false. Rising property prices are good for residents, given what an important role homeownership plays in developing the wealth of South Africa’s middle classes. Public transport has nothing to do with eliminating green spaces. When the ANC built the Gautrain in Johannesburg, a really wonderful thing, it didn’t nationalise the parks and green spaces. In fact, throughout the world, great cities have had to tunnel to provide public transport. The city is doing very well to attract investment without destroying its public recreation facilities, and suggesting that there is a payoff between the two, and that the residents are thereby holding back investment, is just a cheap political trick.

So, a shoutout to the Pinelands Ratepayers and Residents Association: you fight them with all you’ve got, and we are rooting for you, because what you are doing is so important and the very heart of what it is to be a free society governed by a caring administration. If you have any doubt, you can go and talk to 1 000 senior ANC figures who will tell you that what went wrong there was that their party took people for granted, and they didn’t stand up to stop that when they might have, and now it has all gone so terribly wrong for them.

The DA, from the agriculture department to the education department to the City of Cape Town, forgets that it should act in the service of people. It is a life of service. That is what people want, and what the government should be. To speak down to people as if they are petulant children is a terrible omen for the DA. The demographics of the Western Cape are split against it at 50% coloured, 30% black, and the balance white, a split out of which you can infer the broader middle-class split that determines DA voting patterns. A party that treats its core middle-class base with contempt is one that is never going to win the respect of the aspirant middle class.

What happens when South Africa passes both peak CR, and by extension peak ANC, and peak DA? Well, the enclaves tell the answer. The relative importance of the politicians recedes as private and non-state actors, rich and poor, take more control of what happens in the country and why it happens.