To be a South African is to, at any given moment, navigate multiple maelstroms. It is to be pummelled by an endless stream of bad news, so that if you were not well-travelled you might believe the country was indeed falling apart.
The truth, though, is that we have our fair share of both bad and good news.
Undoubtedly, there is foot-and-mouth disease, crime, floods, unemployment, water taps running dry, failing infrastructure, thieving politicians, top cops for hire, food poverty, and so much more.
However, we must not miss the silver lining when it appears, and we start this year on a positive note. South Africa has just been removed from the EU’s list of high-risk third-country jurisdictions. We were added to this register following our greylisting in August 2023 by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The consequence of our removal from the FATF greylist and the EU high-risk list is reduced transaction burdens and improved conditions for trade — which have become very important given our precarious relationship with the world’s biggest economy. And here I am referring not to the self-inflicted harm that might befall us as a result of the South African Navy’s own goals in Simon’s Town and False Bay.
Speaking about the Western Cape, the clocking of an astonishing 11-million visitors to Cape Town in 2025 surely indicates a strong recovery and growth in the local tourism industry. Given our stubbornly high unemployment rate, we should be taking advantage of all the opportunities to create jobs. Some countries less generously endowed with mineral wealth than we are have focused on tourism, creating jobs and sustaining livelihoods instead of cultivating despair. That is why it’s a shame to hear stories about beach-water contamination in eThekwini, one of our country’s tourism jewels. It was heartening, though, to see that security had been improved around Durban’s beaches this festive season — though the city still has a long way to go when it comes to taking care of its infrastructure.
The situation in the country could be worse. Load-shedding and the hopeless André de Ruyter could still be with us
The release of last year’s matric results also came with tear-jerking stories that reminded us of why we are such a great country. As we report elsewhere, some school principals, such as Ramokone Molepo, did everything in their power to ensure their special-needs pupils got a fighting chance at life by performing well in their matric exams. The Sowetan, our sister paper, told us about Lerato Ramabodu, a 31-year-old teacher from Qwaqwa in the Free State, who has secured for her pupils a 100% pass rate in physical science for nine years. If only our politicians could learn from some of these civil servants. The truth is, there are many teachers across the country who are responsible for bringing about dramatic turns of fortune in schools that previously performed badly. Teaching is a calling for these professionals and, while their successes are good news for us all, we must not suck the life out of them and fail to reward them appropriately.
On the sporting front, individual and team sports have gifted the country some breathtaking moments. And while Bafana may not have progressed beyond the last 16 teams at the African Cup of Nations — which ends today in Rabat, Morocco — they did not disgrace us.
And, of course, good news is not just positive news stories. The arrests of those who robbed the poor are also plainly good news. In a similar vein, the much-anticipated departure of Shamila Batohi, the disastrous head of the National Prosecuting Authority, must be loudly applauded. It is an indictment of all of us that someone so hopelessly incompetent managed to fool us for 10 years, pretending that prosecutions of political kingpins were around the corner when in fact she was at sea when it came to her work.
The other good news is that South African voters can’t be fooled by politicians any more. Slowly but surely, the electorate is beginning to see the ANC for what it is. Voters know the difference between talking about renewal and actually making it happen. They’re also now able to see through the DA’s pretence when it comes to redress, even though transformation is a constitutional mandate. Ordinary citizens can tell when a communist “speaks left but lives right” — which does not mean living the right type of life.
South Africans also know that haughty indignation and inaction achieve nothing. They have given us the government of national unity, which is like a drunk uncle on his way home from the bar who is about to fall over but staggers on nonetheless. And that, too, is good news of a kind.
Yes, the situation in South Africa could be worse. Load-shedding and the hopeless André de Ruyter could still be with us. Transnet could still be stubbornly throttling jobs. The truth is that progress is in the offing, and our country, despite its polycrisis, is not falling apart. We are not anything like Uganda, though a Museveni lurks under the skin of some of our leaders. What with anyone who crosses swords with DA leader John Steenhuisen having to leave the party, or the family Morabaraba that is the MK Party changing its leaders like undies.
If Ramaphosa was a Museveni of sorts, Julius Malema, like Bobi Wine, would be under house arrest — if not on Robben Island — each time there were elections. Yet here we are, chugging forward, slowly but surely. As the year begins, there is much to be hopeful for. The South Africans doing great things are too numerous to count.
The many small actions of teachers, sportsmen and sportswomen, and municipal employees — who get security right in eThekwini, work to improve Cape Town’s tourism numbers and rescue flood victims in Limpopo and Mpumalanga — remind us of the following words of Martin Luther King Jr: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” They suggest we should not ask others for good news but rather, through our own actions, create pockets of optimism.
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