Military rule for South Africa?

3 November 2025 – Why are South Africans supporting military rule? Could the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government fall? What is the impact of foot-and-mouth disease on South Africa’s economy? How did the US and China arrive at a trade truce?

Military rule for South Africa?

The latest survey by Afrobarometer, a pan-African, non-partisan research network, shows that support for military rule in South Africa rose from 28% in 2022 to 49% in 2025.

However, 42% of respondents opposed a military takeover and 49% believed democracy was preferable to other government systems. This represents a 9-percentage point increase from 2022, the lowest recorded level.

The Afrobarometer survey was conducted between June and July 2025. It coincided with KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s 6 July press conference, where he wore camouflage uniform, was surrounded by masked police officers bearing semi-automatic weapons, and accused then-Police Minister Senzo Mchunu of ties to criminal gangs. Amid public disgust with corruption, this spectacle by General Mkhwanazi made him a national folk hero, possibly skewing survey data.

The Afrobarometer survey further revealed 70% dissatisfaction with how democracy functions in South Africa, highest among the poor (79%), middle-aged respondents (77%), and the unemployed (76%). This aligns with the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2024 Democracy Index, the latest available, which ranked South Africa 43^rd globally with a score of 7.16, citing weak political culture and classifying it as a “flawed democracy.”

The results of the Afrobarometer survey should not be misinterpreted as a desire on the part of South Africans to give up their hard-won democratic freedoms wholesale. Instead, it is an expression of frustration with limited socio-economic progress and a hankering for more effective leadership.

South Africans want prolonged government failures in economic growth, job creation, clean governance, and the provision of basic services to be addressed. The longer this is not done, the more their dissatisfaction places at risk the Government of National Unity’s legitimacy as a vehicle for reform.

South Africa’s democracy faces no immediate threat of a coup. However, growing voter unhappiness will find other outlets, including support for radical and populist parties, as well as ongoing social protests and occasional flareups of violent unrest.

Political trouble ahead in KZN

Political trouble is brewing in KwaZulu-Natal as Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) mounts an aggressive push to seize control of the province. The party tabled a motion of no confidence in the provincial premier, Thami Ntuli of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), on 23 October.

The KwaZulu-Natal Government of Provincial Unity (GPU) consists of a precarious four-party alliance. It is made up of the IFP, the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the National Freedom Party (NFP). Altogether, the coalition controls 41 of 80 seats in the KZN legislature.

The MKP controls 37 seats. If it can convince the NFP with its one seat to switch sides and also bring the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) with its two seats on side, it would create an even 40:40 split in the legislature and deprive the current GPU of its majority. The GPU’s control of the legislature would evaporate.

In that case, the IFP-ANC-DA bloc can survive a no-confidence vote only if it remains perfectly unified and disciplined. The tiebreaker vote of the speaker, Nontembeko Boyce of the ANC, might temporarily preserve Mr Ntuli’s premiership, but the province would likely become mired in legislative deadlock.

A split legislature would prevent legislation or budgets from being passed with the required simple majority, all but paralysing governance requiring legislative action.

Such paralysis could invite national intervention. Under the Constitution, prolonged dysfunction in a provincial government allows the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, currently led by IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa, to step in. In an extreme case, a rerun provincial election could follow, an unprecedented event in South African politics.

The fractious KZN government

The immediate danger to the GPU comes from the recent shifts in the NFP’s stance. Both the NFP president and the party’s deputy secretary-general have publicly signalled their willingness to back the MKP’s motion against the government they helped establish last year, citing frustration with the GPU’s performance. They have also expressed their readiness to cooperate with the MKP in government “if our development priorities align”.

Concurrently, the MKP is said to be courting disaffected ANC figures, promising to retain some MEC positions in exchange for their support of the no-confidence motion. Yet the ANC remains generally cautious of any such collaboration, cognizant of the MKP’s enduring hostility toward President Cyril Ramaphosa’s national leadership of both the country and Mr Zuma’s former party.

Well-placed sources from within KwaZulu-Natal politics have further indicated to the CRA that ANC factional tensions stemming from the start of the Zuma split from the ANC in 2021 are increasingly a source of concern for the IFP and the DA as GPU partners of the ANC.

This precarious balance of forces leaves KwaZulu-Natal on a political knife edge: one vote away from either unprecedented institutional crisis or the first provincial rerun election in South African history. If it persists, the political instability is likely to feed through into government performance, service delivery and social stability in the province.

The biosecurity risk to SA’s economy

As of mid-October, South Africa was dealing with 274 unresolved outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) across five provinces. The disease is a highly contagious viral illness affecting livestock like cattle, sheep, goats and pigs.

Should South Africa fail to gain an adequate handle on the outbreaks, the country’s farmers and meat exporters could face meat export bans by other countries. Along with rising costs incurred in preventing and managing outbreaks, as herds are culled farmers’ profits shrink, increasing their own financial pressures and threatening their commercial viability. Further down the line, higher costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

While the latest round of outbreaks started in April 2025, South Africa first lost its FMD-free status in 2019. The recurring outbreaks are compounded by vaccine shortages and lax controls on animals outside commercial farming operations.

The chair of the Southern African Agri Initiative, Theo de Jager, described the situation as follows: “Take it out of a dysfunctional department, out of politics, and fight it with the best available expertise and technology. The state has not been able to do this for a very long time.”

An uneasy trade truce between the US and China

The leaders of the United States (US) and China, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, got what they needed from their latest meeting: a lowering of trade and geoeconomic tensions. Following their meeting in South Korea last week, Mr Trump said: “I guess, on a scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was at a 12.”

As part of a set of mutual concessions, the US will pause port fees on Chinese ships, pause the Commerce Department blacklist of companies prohibited from buying US technology, and lower the fentanyl-related tariffs it levies on Chinese goods from 20% to 10%. The deal also averts the threatened 100% tariff on Chinese goods.

In return, China will resume its purchases of US soybeans, thereby muting loud complaints from US farmers, a key Trump constituency. It will also suspend or lift all retaliatory non-tariff countermeasures taken against the US since 4 March, many of which affected a vast range of US agricultural products, and suspend the highly disruptive proposed export controls on rare earths and related products for a year.

This gives the US more time to firm up alternative mining and processing agreements, similar to deals Mr Trump announced with Australia before he met with his Chinese counterpart. Meetings with key US allies Japan and South Korea were also vital in this regard.

The South African government’s inability to reach a deal with the US – even while Australia, Cambodia, China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam are able to do so – is becoming increasingly noticeable.

The positive tenor struck by both leaders squares well with Mr Trump’s ongoing endeavours to build a legacy of trade, investment, and peace deals. An underlying risk is that an overly optimistic assessment takes US pressure off the Chinese economy, giving it more time to build supply chains with countries hit with high US tariffs while dulling US focus on its chief geostrategic rival.