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South Africa is not only the sum of its politicians. It is not only the slogans shouted in Parliament, the threats made on campaign stages, or the reckless ambitions of people who believe that the state exists to be captured, divided, and consumed. Beneath that noise there remains a society that is often wiser, steadier, and more decent than its political class. That fact is too easily forgotten in moments of political anxiety, but it may yet prove one of the strongest reasons why the country can still avoid the worst versions of its future.

The great mistake in much South African analysis is to assume that the direction of the country is determined only from the top. If a radical faction gains ground, then the country must become radical. If a destructive coalition is formed, then society must simply submit to its logic. If the succession battle produces a worse leadership group, then national decline becomes inevitable. That is too simple. Bad leaders can do great damage, and South Africa has suffered enough of that damage to know it well. But political projects do not unfold in a vacuum. They meet the instincts, habits, resistance, and preferences of society itself.

On that score, South Africa is stronger than many people think.

The evidence is not sentimental. It is there in the polling. South Africans across race, class, province, and party repeatedly give answers that show a deep reservoir of common values. They want work, safety, order, opportunity, decent schools, functioning municipalities, and a government that does the basics well. They are not, in the main, revolutionaries. They are not primarily animated by racial vengeance or ideological fantasy. They are practical people trying to build lives in a country where the state has too often failed them.

That distinction matters. The political class may often speak the language of division, but ordinary South Africans much more often speak the language of survival, aspiration, and common sense. That is why polling on some of the country’s most contentious questions produces results that run directly against the clichés.

In polling conducted jointly by the Social Research Foundation and The Common Sense, respondents were asked whether, after all the country’s difficulties, it might be better for whites to leave, and 75% of all South Africans disagreed. Among black South Africans, 76% disagreed. Among African National Congress (ANC) voters, 84% disagreed. Among Democratic Alliance voters, 87% disagreed. Even among Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) voters, 76% disagreed.

That is an extraordinary finding. It shows that the loudest racial rhetoric in the country does not necessarily reflect the deeper instincts of the public. South Africans do not, in the main, want to destroy one another. They do not wish to empty the country of those with whom they differ. They understand, often better than politicians do, that the future must be built together or not at all.

This is why the anxiety around a Mashatile, EFF, and uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) succession should be real but not paralysing. Such a combination would pose serious dangers. It could place greater pressure on the Constitution, property rights, fiscal discipline, public institutions, and investor confidence. It could accelerate the politics of patronage and racial incitement. It could weaken the restraints that still prevent South Africa from falling into a deeper form of state failure. No serious person should dismiss those risks.

The most important contest over South Africa’s future is therefore not only between factions inside the ANC. It is also between the destructive instincts of that political class and the constructive instincts of ordinary South Africans. It is between those who seek to extract from the country and those who still seek to build it.

That is why the good sense of ordinary South Africans matters so much. It is not a soft virtue. It is a hard strategic fact. It restrains extremism, sustains institutions, keeps communities functioning, and preserves the possibility of recovery.

It is perfectly plausible that, should Mashatile succeed President Cyril Ramaphosa and bring an ANC/MKP/EFF administration to power, the good sense of ordinary people will lead them to do to that coalition what it has already done to the ANC. The MKP and the EFF grew not, as many in the Mashatile camp believe, because of the appeal of their radicalism, but because of frustration at how ANC policies has stalled the improvements in living standards South Africa experienced in the first decade after 1994.

Turning the ANC even more radical and incorporating its two splinters will crush living standards so much further that, far from reversing the tide and uniting majority support behind a radical ANC, the effect may be to so alienate pragmatic public opinion that the broader ANC is splintered into shards from which it never recovers.