Drawing from their three years together as director both of South Africa's Social Research Foundation (SRF) and the advisory firm Frans Cronje Private Clients, Frans Cronje and economist Bheki Mahlobo, together with a team of peers, argue that an overwhelming majority of South Africans stand united by common sense and shared values - a foundation that The Common Sense, the new tech-driven media company they have launched, pledges to amplify in public debate.

South Africa’s public conversation is dominated by conflict, division, and what Cronje and Mahlobo call “the echo chamber of extremes.” Yet as they step into new roles at the The Common Sense their time together have made them believe more strongly than ever that South Africa's prospects hinge not on fringe voices but on the silent majority whose moderate, pragmatic values stretch across race, class, and geography. “If you look past the noise,” Mahlobo says, “you find a country more united by common sense and practical ambition than any headline would have you believe.”

The priority for The Common Sense, is to place this centrist consensus - the real “centre of gravity” of South Africa’s society - at the heart of national debate. “There is no greater service a news organisation can do right now than to amplify the voice of the majority,” Cronje says, “because it is their shared values, not the populist provocations, that offer the credible path out of crisis and decline.”

Not wishful thinking

Their assessment is not rooted in wishful thinking. It is built on a formidable archive of public opinion data gathered by the Social Research Foundation (SRF), one of the country’s only institutions to track attitudinal trends in granular detail. What emerges from that data is “an extraordinary well of goodwill and common sense.”

Take, for instance, the question of the GNU. Gabriel Makin who has run operations at the SRF for the past 3 years and who has joined The Common Sense as its executive producer, and will host its flagship weekly podcast Makin' Sense, reveals SRF data to show even before the 2024 election that strong near 70% majorities of both black and white South Africans were very positive about the idea of the ANC and the DA coming together to govern the country jointly. The idea that the two sides’ supporters are split down hateful racial lines is quite wrong he says.

“Relationships between South Africans remain remarkably sound and marked by mutual respect and common values” according to Makin For example, in response to a poll testing if whites or blacks want to carry on in South Africa without the other – perhaps the foundational question of whether the country can succeed as a unitary state – Makin says both sides strongly hold to the idea that they need each other to succeed.

The same common ground extends to even the “hottest” areas of public policy, Makin explains. For example, over 90% of South Africans want only the best candidate to jobs regardless of political loyalty or any other factor. This sentiment persists across party lines with 83.7% of ANC supporters, 91.3% of DA voters, and 83.6% of EFF voters backing this approach.

Same sentiment

The same sentiment applies to public procurement policy. Almost 80% held that businesses that paid tax and created jobs should be free to operate in South Africa regardless of their shareholding.

“The message on public policy from the centre is simple,” Cronje says. “South Africans want fairness and delivery, not dogma.”

That pragmatism runs deep. Over 8-out-of-10 voters are open to South Africa’s labour laws being relaxed if that would make job creation easier. Cronje and Mahlobo are quick to add, however, that they are sceptical of the merits for job creation of cutting basic labour market protections and that the data here should instead be read to reveal just how open the public is to major policy reforms. "The idea that the government cannot move on policy because public opinion resists reform is plainly wrong," Mahlobo says.

Over 6-out-of-10 say taxes should be as low as possible so that people, not politicians, make the key decisions about wealth and opportunity. Amongst ANC voters tax increases are opposed by a margin of 2 to 1.

These numbers are not the isolated result of one poll or moment. “The single most consistent finding in our work at the SRF is the underlying decency and rationality of the South African public,” Mahlobo notes. “Despite decades of attempted racial mobilisation, people respect each other and want success for their neighbours. The real gap is not between black and white, or town and township, or even ANC and DA, it is between the values of ordinary South Africans and the extent that these have been betrayed in the political class."

That gulf is especially visible when radical policies are put to the test. As the ANC tried to rally support through expropriation without compensation, NHI, or divisive rhetoric on the hustings, the public has moved firmly to the centre. “The people have moved,” says Mahlobo. “The politicians haven’t caught up.”

Centrist consensus

The depth of this centrist consensus is even more remarkable in a country with South Africa’s complex history. “Deep in society exists an extraordinary well of goodwill, a comment as ever on the magnanimity of so many South Africans,” Cronje wrote in a 2022 address. “The never-met challenge of South African politics is to unite that majority, to build the bridge between the ideologies and fears that have historically divided South Africa's people". To that end he stresses that The Common Sense editorial team, under media and think-tank veteran Marius Roodt, will stress "the bridge issues that unite South Africans and not the wedge issues that divide them".

So why is this centrist reality so hidden in mainstream discourse? Roodt is blunt: “Media, activist, and party-political incentives reward those who shout the loudest, not those who build the broadest coalitions. The country is not a series of angry factions. It is a practical nation hamstrung by ideological politics.” The result is what he calls “the illusion of division,” a false narrative that undermines reform.

By breaking that narrative it becomes a lot easier to drive reform and that when that occurs South Africa may rapidly accelerate into a steep upward cycle marked by rapid prosperity and increasing stability. Mahlobo, an economist by training, shows that data produced by his and Cronje's advisory firm shows that had South Africa simply continued to track average emerging market growth rates since 2008 then South Africa would today be almost twice as wealthy on a per-capita basis than it is whilst the unemployment rate would be nearer 10% than the actual figure of over 30%. "That result is perfectly possible for South Africa to achieve over the next two decades is the government heeds the sense of the country's centrist majority", he says.

One of the main priorities at The Common Sense is to use news and analysis to challenge the “mythology of polarisation.” Cronje believes that media can - and must serve the public by making the voice of the moderate majority impossible for politicians to ignore. “If we succeed, it will change the balance of power in the country,” he says. “Public opinion, when united, is the one force politicians cannot resist.”

He calls this the “Vietnam principle”- referencing how the Americans in South East Asia were defeated not by battlefield losses, but by public opinion: “[a war] lost in America’s living rooms and on the streets of Washington.”

Evidence of history

The evidence of history supports this view. South Africa’s greatest periods of upliftment, from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, came when government policy converged with public sentiment for growth, merit, and inclusion. The “pragmatic turn” of the Mandela and early Mbeki years produced job creation, rising living standards, and a strengthening middle class. Later, as policy drifted toward statist ideology, economic and social performance deteriorated.

“The lesson is clear, where government works with the grain of the moderate majority, progress follows. Where it resists, the centre will ultimately reassert itself, though at great cost,” says Cronje.

Shane Melnick, who has worked on two previous tech-based start-ups has been drafted in to run the business side of The Common Sense, says the ultimate objective is to place the centrist consensus at the heart of the national conversation, giving ordinary South Africans the data, arguments, and moral confidence to insist that politics catch up to society. “Our job,” he says, “is not to editorialize but to empower with information: to show with evidence that the real South Africa is not a country tearing itself apart, but a country waiting, impatiently, for its leaders to catch up to the common sense of its people.”

If that job is done, the country may yet rediscover a politics of hope and ambition. If not, the dangers of division will grow. The choice belongs not to the noisy extremes, but to the ordinary majority whose shared values may yet prove the country’s greatest asset. A lens on this launch highlights the power of data and evidence to reshape national debate.