Regime change, what South Africa took another step through yesterday, is often misunderstood as electoral events. One governing party loses power, another takes office, and a new political order is declared. But replacing politicians does not necessarily replace a regime. More important is whether the institutions and concentrations of power that defined the old order survive.

South Africa’s old regime, in place since 1910, rested on the proposition that a central state would organise national life. It would provide infrastructure, maintain security, deliver services, and determine the conditions under which businesses and households operated. Control of the political centre was therefore the great prize of electoral politics.

That arrangement has been breaking down for about 20 years and took a further step in that direction yesterday.

Consider a business that has invested in its own electricity generation, security, water supply, and logistics. Or a residential community that maintains its own infrastructure and public spaces. Or the zama-zamas under Johannesburg’s streets. None has their lives and futures defined by the actions of the state to the extent that was the case for the first 100 years of South Africa’s union. Multiply those examples across thousands of businesses, communities, farms, and institutions, and a historic redistribution of authority becomes apparent; one into which the votes won or lost by politicians and parties become less significant in key respects than they once were.

South Africa is not moving through a conventional political decentralisation, where powers are transferred from national government to municipalities. It is something more organic. Practical authority is being acquired by those capable of exercising it, regardless of what the formal political arrangements prescribe.

South Africa is consequently evolving towards an enclave society, in which the quality of life and economic prospects of households depend increasingly on the institutions, relationships, and capabilities they can construct around themselves.

There are considerable advantages to this transformation. Independent institutions are often more responsive, efficient, and accountable than distant bureaucracies. They allow communities and businesses to preserve prosperity even when the state fails.

And the process is unlikely to reverse, even in the event that a capable future state were in time to emerge. Such a government, were South Africa ever to see something like it again, will not persuade businesses to abandon their electricity systems or communities to surrender their independence. Instead, it will have to accommodate and work with the capacity society has created.

Could yesterday be a step towards such a government? That is what this newspaper very much wants, but the answer is likely not, at least not in the short term. Neither current Government of National Unity partner has a reform strategy capable of uplifting the investment rate by the requisite 10 percentage points  to get the rate of economic growth up to 4%+, which is necessary to bring the unemployment rate down within a generation to levels that are the norm in other emerging markets. Each party has aspects of that, but not the whole thing, let alone the bipartisan agreement on what the whole thing needs to be. Nor do their leaderships unanimously agree on the principle of cooperation, even before getting to the details of policy.

Hence, as much of the record shows since May 2024, the African National Congress (ANC)/Democratic Alliance (DA) governing arrangement in its current guise will be ever more the CINO this newspaper warns against elsewhere on these pages this morning: a Coalition in Name Only. And DA/ANC CINOs in the big cities is a risky idea as it may discredit the DA and further discredit the ANC and therefore discredit the whole idea of the two coming together to work together. And if that idea is fully discredited, then there is no other apparent way to secure the Union because there is no other formulation, as we have argued at length, that brings the middle and aspirant middle classes together in the government.

A lot of work must be done still to develop the grounds for that formulation to be aligned into a truly sustainable national pact.

Only where they are aligned politically and on policy, and that policy is capable of really turning living standards around, does the DA/ANC arrangement continue to serve the country’s interests. Counterintuitive as it sounds, it is safer now not to risk the public’s trust in that arrangement further until the deeper conditions necessary for its success are more firmly in place.

What to do for the interim? It is for people to carry on. Eight in ten South Africans say people are coming together in their community to work together to do what the government does not. That is good, as it means the centre is holding, at least relatively, even as the political leaderships remain misaligned. And most wonderfully, South Africa’s people are aligned on the ANC/DA deal; it would be foolish to risk that common hope on a premature gamble around the cities now.