Month: February 2026

Why We’re Not Hearing Our Own Success Story: SONA 2026 and the Battle for South Africa’s Narrative

Given SHINGANGE | 15 February 2026

I wasn’t planning to listen to Panyaza Lesufi’s conversation with Mbuyiseni Ndlozi. TikTok changed that. A clip landed on my feed — Panyaza talking about medical aid, private education, and private security. His argument hit differently: if the state functioned properly, we wouldn’t need these private alternatives. That premise alone was enough to make me press play on the full podcast.

I listened while on the treadmill. No more gym music that does nothing for my energy levels — this is my new routine. Get the body and the mind working at the same time. And I must say, I found myself nodding along to most of what Lesufi was saying.

Then came SONA 2026 on 12 February. President Ramaphosa started on a high note. I could almost feel the discomfort of the naysayers as he listed achievements: South Africa removed from the FATF grey list, 238 consecutive days without load-shedding, economic growth gaining traction, and tourism numbers at record highs. Even I wondered if it was too good to be true — which probably says more about how I’ve been conditioned to expect failure than it does about the President’s credibility.

Both these moments — Lesufi’s podcast and Ramaphosa’s SONA — forced me to confront something uncomfortable. When you’ve accepted the narrative that everything is corrupt, that the ANC has destroyed the country, that black leadership equals failure, then hearing about actual progress feels wrong. It triggers cognitive dissonance. Your brain rejects it.
But here’s what I’m learning to recognise: we have a messaging problem. Panyaza put it perfectly. And it’s not just a political party’s problem — it’s ours.

The Progressive Mistake vs The Perfect Paralysis

Lesufi makes what I call “progressive mistakes.” He’ll promise to employ 1 million people and deliver 3,000 jobs. The critics pounce on the 997,000 “failure.” But I’m looking at the 3,000 families who now have income. Behind each of those 3,000 people are at least two others who benefit — children who eat better, rent that gets paid, dignity restored.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying promise the impossible and claim victory when you deliver a fraction. What I’m saying is that in the absence of perfect execution, progress still matters. Those 3,000 jobs are real. They count. They should be celebrated while we hold leadership accountable for the gap.
The President mentioned deploying 10,000 agricultural extension officers to support farmers and improve productivity. This excited me particularly because I learned about Ethiopia’s extension officer model back in 2009/2010 during a visit where the late Prime Minister explained their approach. It’s taken us this long to adopt it, but better late than never. The question now is implementation — and whether we’ll actually hear about the successes when they happen.

The Correctional Services Story No One’s Telling
Minister Pieter Groenewald is doing something remarkable at Correctional Services, and you’d barely know it unless you’re paying close attention. Since taking office in July 2024, he’s launched prison bakeries that saved R13 million in just two months (April-May 2025) by producing bread in-house instead of buying from external suppliers. Since July 2024, officials have confiscated 33,874 cellphones, 20,577 sharpened objects, 232.16 kg of drugs, and over R394,000 in cash from facilities. He’s pushing for government departments to procure furniture made by inmates, creating skills development while reducing costs.

This is a minister from the Freedom Front Plus — a party many dismiss as representing only minority interests — making tangible improvements in a portfolio that directly affects public safety. The work speaks for itself. Yet where are the viral clips? Where’s the TikTok algorithm pushing these stories?
It’s worth noting that much of Groenewald’s work is covered in Afrikaans media, which points to another dimension of our messaging crisis: language and audience fragmentation means good work in one sphere doesn’t penetrate others.

The Algorithm Doesn’t Want You to See This
After SONA 2026, I scrolled through social media looking for clips. I expected to see snippets of Ramaphosa’s key announcements circulating: the infrastructure investments, the digital ID rollout, the systematic approach to gang violence in the Cape Flats, and the massive foot-and-mouth disease response. Instead? Silence. No drama, no viral moments, no algorithm boost.

That’s not accidental. Social media platforms prioritise engagement, and rage drives engagement better than good news. But more concerning is the possibility of deliberate narrative suppression. When positive stories about South Africa systematically fail to gain traction while every scandal trends instantly, we have to ask: who benefits from South Africans believing their country is uniquely broken?

This is where my work on influence operations becomes relevant. We need to recognise when we’re being targeted. Foreign and domestic actors with vested interests in South Africa’s instability don’t want you to know that we’re making progress. They profit from chaos, from capital flight, from brain drain, from a population convinced their country is unsalvageable.

What Lesufi and Ramaphosa Both Understand
Both leaders, in their different ways, are pointing to the same reality: South Africa is not as bad as we think. We’re making progress. We’re fixing things. Slowly, imperfectly, but measurably.

Lesufi highlighted what makes South Africa unique globally: our social grants system, free basic electricity and water, progressive policies that other countries don’t even attempt. Ramaphosa pointed to no load-shedding for 238 days, infrastructure deals being finalised, and digital transformation accelerating.

These aren’t propaganda. They’re verifiable. But they don’t fit the dominant narrative, so they get drowned out.

The Urgency of Counter-Narratives
As we approach local government elections, the information environment will become even more weaponised. Misinformation, selective reporting, and emotional manipulation will intensify. Citizens will consume narratives designed to demoralise them, to convince them that voting is pointless, that corruption is inevitable, that South Africa is beyond saving.
We cannot outsource the telling of our own stories. Not to the international media that applies different standards to African nations. Not to social media algorithms optimised for outrage. Not to political actors whose interests don’t align with national progress.

This doesn’t mean uncritical cheerleading. We must remain vigilant against corruption, incompetence, and delivery failures. But we must also actively share and amplify what is working. When a school gets built, when jobs get created, when infrastructure gets fixed, when policies get implemented — we need to make noise about it.

The destructive narratives win by default when the rest of us stay silent.

Locating Ourselves in the Success
What struck me most about SONA was Ramaphosa’s invitation to locate ourselves in the achievements. It’s not enough to hear that the country is improving — we need to ask: how did I contribute to this? Where do I fit into this progress?

That’s the shift from passive consumption to active citizenship. From spectator to participant. From victim of circumstances to architect of solutions.
Ethiopia’s extension officers worked because communities believed in and participated in the model. Our agricultural transformation will succeed only if farmers, young people, and communities engage with the 10,000 extension officers being deployed. The digital ID system matters only if citizens adopt it and use it to access services. Infrastructure investment translates to growth only if businesses and workers capitalise on improved logistics.

The Choice Ahead
We stand at a fork. One path leads to continued acceptance of narratives that South Africa is failing, corrupt, hopeless — narratives that become self-fulfilling as they drive away investment, talent, and belief in collective action.
The other path requires work. It demands that we critically evaluate information sources, share positive developments, and hold media and algorithms accountable for what they amplify and suppress. It means celebrating the 3,000 jobs while pushing for the million. It means acknowledging Groenewald’s bakeries while demanding accountability across all portfolios. It means recognising SONA’s achievements while scrutinising Budget 2026 to see if the funding backs the promises.

This is celebratory, yes. Because we have things worth celebrating. South Africa is making progress. We are not as bad as we were yesterday.
But celebration isn’t passive. It’s active recognition that we are responsible for protecting and amplifying the truth about our own country. The influence operations targeting us count on our silence, our cynicism, and our willingness to believe the worst about ourselves.

Don’t give them that victory.

SONA2026 #SouthAfricanPolitics #MediaNarrative #InfluenceOperations #PolicyAnalysis #LocalGovernmentElections #PanyazaLesufi #CyrilRamaphosa #SouthAfricanProgress #CriticalThinking

Why I Voted the Way I Did in 2024 (And Why That Should Worry All of Us)

Given SHINGANGE

I could not vote on 27 April 1994. I was not yet 18. The same thing happened again in 1999 — election day came, and once more I was underage, even though I would later vote in that year’s local government elections. Like many South Africans of my generation, my political consciousness was formed long before I was legally allowed to participate. That distance between lived politics and formal participation has never really closed — and it matters more now than it did then.

When I finally did vote in 1999, I voted for the ANC. At the time, that choice required no justification. The movement still carried moral authority, historical legitimacy, and overwhelming public trust. But what is less often acknowledged is how quickly discomfort set in afterwards. From the national elections that followed, I never again voted for the ANC — not because another party persuaded me, and not because I had disengaged from the country’s future, but because something already felt misaligned. Even then, it seemed that the story and the reality were starting to drift apart.

Around 2010, while I was living in Bloemfontein, I shared my frustration with my mentor, AZ. His response was direct and necessary: it is easy to criticise from the sidelines; eventually you have to decide whether you are prepared to get involved. I took that seriously. I attended branch meetings. I tried to engage. What I encountered, however, was a political language and culture that felt disconnected from the problems I believed we should be confronting. I walked away, not in anger, but in quiet disappointment.

My political exposure did not come only through voting. In 2008, after resigning from the SANDF, I joined Sebra, a construction financing company owned by Kobus van Loggerenberg — KvL to those who knew him. He was a progressive white Afrikaner, a former SRC president at the University of the Free State in the 1980s, and someone shaped by difficult political choices during apartheid. He was also a principled man. May his soul continue to rest in peace.

At the time, the UFS was dealing with the Reitz 4 incident, where black workers were humiliated by white students in what became a national scandal. Sebra’s shareholders decided to support non-white student formations contesting the SRC elections, and my first real task at the company was to manage the campaign funds. What I witnessed during that period was instructive: fragmented organisations — SASCO, the YCL, and the ANC Youth League — had to be pushed to work together just to stand a chance.

They did not win the SRC presidency that year. But something important shifted. For the first time, these formations believed that institutional power was not permanently closed to them. That belief mattered. The following year, in 2009, that groundwork paid off. The same collective went on to win the SRC elections, and Moses Masitha became the first black SRC president at the University of the Free State.

That outcome reinforced a lesson that has stayed with me: politics is rarely about immediate victory. It is about coordination, persistence, and understanding the environment you are operating in — especially when institutions are stacked against you.

Around the same period, AZ invited me to be part of a delegation visiting the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The group consisted of academics and professionals selected for what they were doing and what they might still contribute. The visit was not ideological. It was about exposure — about observing how other states thought about development, power, and sovereignty. I returned home with a broader lens and a deeper unease. South Africa, to me, appeared increasingly unprepared for the kind of world it was entering.

For years after that, I remained disengaged from ANC electoral politics.

Then came 2024 — and with it, a rupture that cannot be explained through traditional political analysis.

By then, the country had effectively lost control over its information environment. Social media was no longer just a platform for expression; it had become an operational domain. Disinformation, misinformation, coordinated influence campaigns, algorithmic amplification, and deliberate cognitive manipulation were no longer abstract concepts. They were observable, measurable, and increasingly sophisticated. What concerned me was not ordinary political contestation, but the erosion of South Africa’s information sovereignty.

This was not one party out-campaigning another. It was something more corrosive: sustained efforts, amplified through digital platforms and media ecosystems, aimed at eroding trust, inflaming division, and normalising instability. Many of these narratives did not originate organically within South African society. They were engineered to exploit our fractures.

I have explored these dynamics in depth in a recent series on this blog focused specifically on influence operations. That series looks at how these campaigns are designed, how they spread through digital systems, and why societies like ours are particularly vulnerable. This article is not a repetition of that work. It is a personal reflection shaped by it.

I voted for the ANC in 2024 not because it had suddenly become virtuous, competent, or deserving of renewed loyalty. I voted defensively. “Better the devil you know” is an uncomfortable phrase, but it captures the logic. Some of the forces shaping our political environment do not care about governance, service delivery, or justice. They care about disruption. A lawless, fragmented South Africa serves interests that are not our own.

The outcome — a Government of National Unity — should not reassure us. If anything, it should alarm us. What we witnessed was a probing exercise. The gaps were identified. The vulnerabilities mapped. And the campaigns for the next electoral cycle have already begun.

This is not a message to the ANC. It is a warning to all political parties and to society at large. Influence operations do not target parties; they target populations. They exploit grievances, identities, historical wounds, and economic pain. In a hyper-connected society like ours, no political formation is immune.

Our failure is that we are still thinking in outdated terms. We celebrate connectivity but ignore content. We talk about democracy while failing to grasp algorithmic warfare. We rely on old institutional structures to confront threats that are hybrid, asymmetric, and cognitive in nature. We are trying to solve twenty-first-century problems with twentieth-century tools.

The most dangerous failure, however, is not technical — it is intellectual. We are not honest enough to admit that we are out of our depth. Influence operations and cognitive warfare are specialised domains. They demand expertise, humility, and the willingness to listen to people who understand how these systems work.

That is all that is required of us right now: honesty about our limitations, and the courage to let those who know what they are doing help us think clearly. Anything less is not neutrality. It is negligence.