In South African politics, the "Third Force" was the name given to a covert network, allegedly operating primarily during the late 1980s and early 1990s, that sought to destabilise the transition from apartheid through violence, intimidation, and political manipulation.

The term has both a specific historical meaning and a broader political usage.

During the transition to democracy, there was widespread violence, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal and the townships around Johannesburg. While much of the violence was between supporters of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), evidence later emerged that elements within the apartheid security establishment had secretly encouraged and supported some of the conflict.

The existence of covert operations during that era not seriously disputed.

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented numerous covert operations involving assassinations, destabilisation campaigns, the supply of weapons to proxy groups, and clandestine funding of political organisations and activism.

However, historians continue to debate how centrally coordinated these operations were, whether there was a single command structure, and how much of the violence the country experienced at the time resulted from local dynamics rather than covert direction.

The idea therefore was that the events and political change South Africa went through in the 1980s and 1990s were not simply between two sides vying for political influence. Instead, there was a hidden third actor secretly encouraging conflict to reorder the balance of power in the country while remaining largely invisible.

Hence the phrase "Third Force".

Today the phrase is often used much more loosely.

Politicians sometimes accuse unnamed interests of being a "third force" whenever they believe unseen actors are manipulating events through media campaigns, disinformation, funding, legal actions, or political and policy activism.

In this modern sense, "third force" is often shorthand for an organised but largely hidden network attempting to influence political outcomes.

That brings us to a most interesting set of trend lines that stood out so starkly from recent polls conducted by this newspaper in association with its partner, the Social Research Foundation.

The first is that public opinion on Phala Phala has laid waste to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s reputation. By a margin of four to one, South Africans who have made up their minds on the matter think he is a criminal. That is devastating for the ANC, as his image as a reformer who would clean up the rot of state corruption was where the bulk of his political value lay for that party.

The second is public opinion on illegal immigration. As this newspaper has reported, South Africans have become so swept up in anti-migrant sentiment that two thirds believe it would be right for the public to take the law into their own hands and expel migrants because the state, and by extension the ANC around Ramaphosa, has been too lax and the migrants have "stolen" South Africans' jobs.

Like a vice, the ANC has been trapped between these two trend lines and, in the minds of the public, is on the wrong side of each. The result is the extremely low 34.0% national poll number the party is currently recording. Perhaps the starkest way to think about that number is that among black voters MKP now has two thirds of the support that the ANC has.

The history of how the Phala Phala allegations came to light is well known. And there has been considerable planning and coordination around inflaming anti-migrant sentiment in the country. The question is whether the actors behind both those projects are associates of each other, and if they are, then how high that association goes, and whether it reaches beyond the borders of South Africa.

Assuming they are associates, and that the two trend lines did not therefore emerge and intersect through organic happenstance, they have done very well politically to undermine Ramaphosa and the credibility of his government.

Their actions in manipulating public opinion around Phala Phala and migration are not illegitimate or unlawful, as those of the Third Force of old often were. They did not invent the Phala Phala allegations. They brought them to public attention after the ANC tried to bury them and used that bringing to light to discredit the clean-government credentials of the Ramaphosa party leadership. And the unemployment rate that underpins anger at illegal immigrants is also real, and remains so as a consequence of the decisions taken by ANC policy-makers of the Ramaphosa era.

Squeezed in this vice, and thereby discredited on both its corruption and economic reform platforms, the Ramaphosa administration became ripe for a takedown. The party was already on the skids because of the economy – that is what drove the longer-term dive in support levels. The Phala Phala and migration campaigns just accelerated that – and may deliver the coup de grâce. Driving activism around such issues to secure that would qualify as routine political practice anywhere in the free world.

For the Ramaphosa ANC to complain that it is being undone by a coordinated campaign is therefore to say nothing more than that it lost the politics. It had every chance to head that off if it had cleaned house and driven reforms to draw investment, raise the growth rate, and create jobs. It might even have got away with just the latter actions, as, if living standards were climbing steeply, South Africans would be less worried about migrants and care less that the politicians were corrupt. But it did not do any of that, and now it faces the consequences.