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The Common Sense has written at length on the enclave future and two weeks ago published a set of scenarios for South Africa to 2034 setting out how that future would evolve. Having set out what may happen it is now moving to the practical advice of what South Africans should do to succeed in those scenarios. That advice is to create as many options as possible around four things: your assets, means of income, children, and geography.

Start with a brief recap on what enclaves are. An enclave is not simply a middle-class security estate. It exists wherever the authority of the central state weakens and regional or private institutions increasingly appropriate the state’s functions.

For the middle class, this can mean private estates, schools, healthcare, security, and infrastructure. These protections often form layers, like an onion. The ultimate manifestation might be a family living in the Western Cape, within the Cape Metropole or Stellenbosch, then within a well-organised suburb in one of those areas, and finally within a private estate within that suburb. The more layers to the onion, the better.

In the broader economy, the same process of enclavisation is accelerating as the formal business community, realising that its bet on President Cyril Ramaphosa did not really pay off, increasingly provides its own electricity, water, infrastructure, security, logistics, and communications.

This is arguably happening to an even greater degree in the illicit economy, which is itself a key case study of what we mean by enclavisation. We have written at length about the rise of the illicit economy and the shadow state being created beneath it. The illicit mining industry, for example, is an industrial behemoth that operates its own labour systems, security, distribution networks, and political intermediaries, beyond the regulatory authority of the state.

The economy developing around middle-class and business enclaves could easily become one of the world’s fastest-growing emerging markets over the next 20 years, even if South Africa’s broader economy continues to underperform.

In poorer urban areas, enclavisation is also at work. Authority over social order in these areas is increasingly passing to gangs, vigilante groups, taxi organisations, and corrupt political networks that exist to extract wealth through tenders.

In rural areas with strong commercial farming footprints, farmers, the taxi industry, and local business kingpins are assuming responsibility for everything from local schools and roads to infrastructure maintenance and law and order. Meanwhile, the same corrupt political rackets that exist around the cities are extracting wealth from small towns. In former homeland areas, traditional leaders are playing an increasingly definitive role in governance and the ordering of society.

The Common Sense’s most probable scenario rests on the judgement that this phenomenon will deepen and become the single most important trend shaping South Africa’s future.

What should businesses and middle-class families do to take advantage of this and secure a prosperous and fulfilling future in the country?

They should consider a strategy that divides their lives and futures into four parts. Each requires a strategy of its own, but together they raise the odds of a resilient future in South Africa.

The first part concerns your money, assets, and investments. The rule is to diversify across asset classes and jurisdictions. The exact mix will depend on each individual’s circumstances and life stage, but the objective is always the same. No single political decision, currency shock, or economic downturn should be able to wreck your financial future. Instead develop exactly the opposite position where, if SA Inc. sinks, your net worth rises, and if SA is a great success, you likewise have a very prosperous outlook.

An ideal position may be a hedged one in which, if South Africa falls into severe macroeconomic trouble and its currency tanks amid populist policy, your offshore exposure ensures that your net position does not worsen and may even strengthen.

But the hedge must work both ways. The Western world is on the back foot relative to China. If, in your lifetime, the United States (US) currency loses its status as the global reserve currency, the US economy will crash. China, meanwhile, as this newspaper reported last week, is running a deficit that is, in practice, twice its economic growth rate.

The one-way bet against South Africa’s currency over the past 20 years is therefore not as certain as it once was, especially if South Africa gets a reformist government, which remains a minority possibility, or if private enclaves outperform the broader economy.

The second part concerns your business or career, which generates the cash needed to sustain your lifestyle and build your investments and assets. The advice is to build a career that is as mobile as possible and subject to as little regulation as possible.

This is not a hard-and-fast rule. Capital-intensive businesses can still have strong prospects if you have hair on your teeth, are tough, politically astute, and very well informed. But insofar as there is a choice, favour a career built on skills, knowledge, relationships, reputation, and intellectual property.

Wherever possible, work for dynamic, smaller private clients in South Africa and abroad. Avoid becoming dependent on state contracts, political relationships, a single client, or a very large corporation, especially one in a heavily regulated sector.

An ideal position is to live and spend locally in South Africa while remaining capable of earning anywhere. Working out of Cape Town while earning in hard currency is very much the pinnacle of that ideal. And more and more options to do that will emerge. South Africans are in demand globally. The West has severe skills shortages and vast staffing and living costs. Paying an expert web designer, or social media strategist, or accountant, or radiologist, or attorney in South Africa to do work in the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East – while paying them in rands – is a win-win option and may become a staple model for South Africa’s younger middle classes. And it is one the rent-seekers and black economic empowerment grifters may struggle to tap for cash.

The third part concerns your family. People will find it much easier to build a future in South Africa if they know their children have options. Their children therefore need to attend a school that is, in practice, under private control, either a state school run by its parents and community or a fully private school.

Children should leave school and university with qualifications, skills, and networks that allow them to study and work locally or internationally, positioned for the kind of careers described above.

This does not mean they must leave South Africa. It means the opposite. They will have the choice to live in the country because it offers them a better life than they could find in much of the rest of the world. We strongly argue that this may become the case as a consequence of enclave formation, especially when set against what is happening in much of the West and how hard, expensive, and restrictive life there has become.

But make sure the main asset you bequeath your children is the intellectual property to think. That is the one thing the government cannot expropriate.

The fourth part concerns physical location and the ability to change it quickly if needed. Consider the layers of the onion and place as many of them as possible between yourself and whatever a regulator or minister in Pretoria may decree.

The right sort of location does not have to be wealthy or fashionable. Its greatest asset will be a high degree of community organisation, capable local leadership, enforceable rules, social trust, local investment in infrastructure, security, education and healthcare, and residents willing to protect standards.

In the end, the degree of country risk you face in South Africa will be inversely proportional to the number of choices you have created across these four areas. If you have very few choices, you face a much higher degree of risk.

Create several choices in each of these four areas, maintain an alert and informed mindset, and secure access to good information. You will then be able to navigate around icebergs well in advance while taking advantage of the many opportunities an enclave future will present.