South Africa's Democracy Faces Urgent Repair, Former Finance Minister Warns

Trevor Manuel’s diagnosis of South Africa’s condition is unsparing. The country, he argues, suffers from a profound inertia, a self-inflicted paralysis that has cost ordinary citizens decades of industrial opportunity and economic momentum. Speaking in Cape Town, the former finance minister, who held the portfolio for 13 years and remains the longest-serving democratic finance minister in South Africa’s history, frames the problem not as a temporary setback but as a structural failure of governance and oversight that demands fundamental repair.

For the broad public, the consequences are concrete. Lost manufacturing capacity means fewer jobs. Collapsed local government means failing services. A parliament unable to scrutinise police budgets means communities left without adequate protection. These are not abstract governance concerns; they are the daily reality for millions of South Africans.

The roots of this stagnation, in Manuel’s view, trace directly to the African National Congress’s 2007 Polokwane conference, a political turning point that marked what he calls a distinct break between “before Polokwane” and after. That conference, where Jacob Zuma defeated Thabo Mbeki for the party presidency, triggered a cascade of abandoned projects and lost economic possibilities. An Airbus defence airlift contract that would have anchored industrial development never materialised. The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor stalled. The hydrogen economy initiative faltered. The Joule, an early electric vehicle developed at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, was abandoned. Each represented not merely a missed contract but a lost pathway to sustained manufacturing capacity and job creation for South African workers.

“We had reached an agreement; Airbus was going to build a series of massive aircraft for defence airlift and South Africa contracted into it,” Manuel recalls, the frustration still evident. “We had the opportunity to contribute a significant part of that plan, and we were keen on it because of the industrialisation that follows. Polokwane terminated that.”

Manuel’s concerns extend far beyond economic policy into the functioning of the democratic institutions citizens depend on. He identifies a critical erosion of parliamentary capability and oversight as a core vulnerability. Shortly before leaving government in 2014, he approached then-President Jacob Zuma with a proposal to design a technical training syllabus for members of parliament. The rationale was straightforward: many legislators lacked the basic capacity to read department gazettes, analyse expenditure trends, or monitor public cash flows. The offer was declined, with officials preferring to engage expensive corporate consultants instead.

The consequences of that institutional weakness are visible in parliament’s daily functioning. “What passes for debates in parliament is actually a complete sham,” Manuel says plainly. He points to the police committee as a concrete example. Parliament should be scrutinising the fact that South Africa’s police service has been decimated, he argues, yet members of parliament lack the technical knowledge to do so. “Some of them can’t switch on a computer. So, they go to the department and ask people … and that’s basically what happens.” Citizens who rely on policing, on public safety, on the basic expectation that their taxes are being spent wisely, are the ones who bear the cost of that gap.

Meanwhile, Manuel identifies structural flaws in South Africa’s electoral system itself. The proportional representation system, he argues, has stripped politics of direct constituency accountability, severing the link between elected representatives and the communities they are meant to serve. At the local level, governance has collapsed entirely, with councillors routinely bypassing supply-chain rules for personal gain. These failures operate across multiple levels of the state, creating a system where oversight mechanisms that should protect public resources and ensure service delivery have effectively ceased to function.

“I think our democracy needs a lot of repair work,” Manuel says. The statement carries particular weight coming from someone who helped architect South Africa’s post-1994 economic framework and witnessed firsthand the macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline that once characterised the nation’s early democratic years. That period of growth and stability now exists in sharp contrast to the inertia gripping the country today.

Manuel, who stepped down from the Old Mutual chairmanship on 5 June, is now directing his energy toward continental challenges. He is spearheading work on an African Borrowers Club and developing an Atlas of Economic Complexity aimed at reforming global debt structures and rebuilding regional industrial trade. As he prepares to leave the conversation, he offers a final reflection: “Knowledge is valuable when shared.”

Whether South Africa’s democratic institutions can absorb that lesson, and act on it before further ground is lost, remains the open question.