These are boom times for the prophets of doom. South Africa has gone pear-shaped. The economy is wading through the treacle spewing from a growing bureaucracy as the ANC dithers, unable to choose a direction.Business, caught in the twin headlights of mounting regulatory demands and growing uncertainty, quietly drags itself into the dark, pulling its bags of money offshore, where it sits idly in the vaults of the First World.There is a general loss of credibility as wave upon wave of institutional abuse neutralises the prosecuting authorities, the police and independent institutions such as the public protector. As the criminal justice system teeters, the hyenas find themselves more and more in their natural habitat. The state destroys, the carrion mounts, as the shameless red-mouthed feast rolls on.This is an easy article to write and I've written it many times. All you have to do is start with one small snowball of bad news, roll it through the deep drifts of angst and watch wide-eyed as it morphs into a giant ball of dirty snow.And yet. And yet. Something else is happening. Slowly, bruised by years of abuse and covered in layers of accumulated grime, democracy is trying to dust itself off.I say "slowly" because a week might be a long time in politics but 21 years is the blink of an eye in the span of a nation's history.Let me make my case. As of last week, Nelson Mandela Bay has a new mayor. The football boss Danny Jordaan, one of the ANC's more credible administrators, was sent in as a late substitute for the dithering and ineffectual octogenarian Ben Fihla.This was a moment rich in symbolism and promise.It was the moment that political competition finally forced the ANC to make an appointment based on competence rather than the management of internal party dynamics.For 21 years the city was subjected to political appointments reflecting the party's internal dynamics as party czars clambered over each other to access the wealth, power and privilege that came with ruling. The result was a decline in service delivery and a failure to address the concerns of voters that has resulted in a drop in electoral support for the ANC.So much so that it has been widely speculated that a coalition of opposition parties will unseat the ANC in next year's local government elections. Faced with this prospect, the ANC brought in Jordaan to refocus the administration on serving voters.There can now be one of two outcomes: either Jordaan will succeed and turn around the administration, retaining power for the ANC, or he will fail and a new administration will take over. Both outcomes will result in an improvement for voters as they - and not the party hacks - become the most important political players.The Jordaan example shows how, slowly, inexorably, the democratic system put in place in 1994 forces the government to address the needs of voters or face the consequence at the polls.And it's not just in Port Elizabeth that this is occurring. The administrations of Johannesburg and Tshwane are also feeling the hot breath of political competition on their necks as they seek to win the confidence of voters. Why else would the Johannesburg budget include the upgrading of freeways without the imposition of e-tolls, which have been rejected by the city's voters?At provincial level there is more evidence of political competition at work. Gauteng premier David Makhura has made it plain that the province does not support e-tolls because he knows it will cost his party votes in the next election. That the national government does not recognise this and is hanging him out to dry is a curious phenomenon, perhaps explained by the fact that the Gauteng ANC does not support the faction of President Jacob Zuma.Nationally, the ANC government has responded to criticism of its poor local government performance by appointing Pravin Gordhan as local government minister with the express task of ensuring an improvement in service delivery. Why? Because it knows that it will lose municipalities if something is not done about local-level corruption and inefficiency.All of these actions are evidence that rising political competition will either produce a better quality of ANC local government administrations or lead to their replacement by rivals.There is more evidence of rising political competition. There is renewal on the national stage. The emergence of Julius Malema and Mmusi Maimane as the key players in opposition politics firmly places the youth at the centre of national politics. The ANC has little choice but to elect a next-generation leader when Jacob Zuma's term of office expires in 2019 - if not before then.The rising role of the youth and its impact on politics is symbolised by the DA's shock victory in the Fort Hare student representative council elections. This was yet another moment of profound change as the ANC watched its heartland turn to the opposition for leadership after decades of neglect by the ruling party.Scratch beneath the surface and you will see that you live in a country quietly undergoing dramatic political renewal as the competition hots up. And it has only just begun.Now take a deep breath and believe...