The first of these cards is South Africa’s political system. The country’s democracy works. It has undergone two successful democratic transitions in the past 30 years, and in both cases, the electoral system functioned exactly as it should. When the government falters and political and economic elites fail to act, ordinary people unite to demand change. This often goes unnoticed and is taken for granted. This means that, unlike the balance of post-colonial African emerging markets before it, South Africa stands out as a developing economy that changes peacefully and not violently.

The second card is that voter behaviour in South Africa is driven by material circumstances rather than ideology or radicalisation. In the decade following 1994, as job creation and services surged, so did support for the African National Congress (ANC), accompanied by a reduction in political violence.

The ANC never got the credit it deserved for what happened in that era. Economic growth lifted to hold at levels of 5% between 2004 and 2007 – the first time that had happened for four consecutive years since the first half of the 1960s. As a consequence, the number of people in employment roughly doubled from 1994 to 2008. Government debt levels were cut in half, and the interest bill savings were redirected to the social welfare programme that, together with job growth, did a great deal to lift millions of households out of the worst poverty. The deficit was reversed, and the first multi-year budget surpluses since the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 were recorded. The murder rate was halved between 1994 and 2008. The share of families without electricity fell from almost 50% to below 20%.

As a result, by 2004 its support was six percentage points up on that of 1994, while the share of protest actions that were violent had halved.

However, over the past 15 years, investment levels fell as government policy turned populist. In response, living standards declined, and as that happened, ANC support collapsed to where, as was the case again last week, support for the party stood at under 40% in a poll jointly produced by the Social Research Foundation and The Common Sense.

The most important takeout is perhaps this: that if voting behaviour were driven primarily by ideology, fixing the country through the ballot box would be far more difficult. In South Africa, improving people’s material circumstances is the key to gaining votes.

A third card is that public opinion in South Africa is centrist and pragmatic. Our polls consistently show that around eight in 10 South Africans agree on the necessary steps to grow the economy. That includes:

• •Strong support for shoring up property rights and near unanimous opposition to expropriation without compensation.
• •Strong majority support for changing labour laws to price poor people into jobs.
• •Strong majority support for recasting empowerment policy to focus on socio-economic disadvantage and need, while exempting firms that create jobs and pay taxes from onerous empowerment box-ticking exercises.
• •Strong majority support for privatisation.
• •Strong majority support for pragmatic energy policies.

It is quite untrue that the government cannot move on the reforms necessary to grow the economy because the public is in opposition. The opposite is true, and the ANC polls below 40% because it does not move nearly fast enough on those reforms.

The fourth card is that South Africa doesn’t have an energy cap on economic growth. By using the existing power stations and grid infrastructure, South Africa could potentially quadruple its economic growth rate over the next decade – without building a single new station or extending the grid. South Africa is not a colony of Brussels and should not be holding back in the best interests of South Africa’s people because of pressure applied by European governments.

Finally, South Africa’s geopolitical positioning is a major asset. As the Iran war has demonstrated most forcefully, in a multipolar world countries that control the most strategically significant maritime chokepoints have vast power – and South Africa should control that which links the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions. If it did that it could extract vast trade and investment concessions from the world’s great powers. All that is needed is to get serious about national interest. Stop the ideological grandstanding on foreign policy and take up the American offer of a vast new trade and investment pact, then, with that in the bag, head to Beijing and do the same deal there.

The effect, especially in conjunction with the refitting of the coal fleet and the re-orientation of empowerment policy and property rights policy, will be to lift the fixed investment rate to where the rate of economic growth can be multiplied.

Last year, South Africa grew at just a third of the global average. Follow the reform pipeline set out above, and that number will triple in the short term. As a consequence, South Africa’s economy will be delivering on the living standards expectations of its people, which will lock in support for its democracy. Not many post-colonial societies were dealt such a strong hand, and as easy a pathway to national success, after their first post-colonial government fell.