The Common Sense

02/09/2026

There's a recurring theme in comments across our podcasts and social media: frustration with our repeated caution against grinding the ANC into the dust.

We've written at length about the ANC's real successes in government, and argued a return to a 50%-plus majority wouldn't be that hard for the party if it dropped its worst advisers, and might even be the best outcome for South Africa if it wants to remain a unitary state. Most of the ANC's remaining voters are good, decent people.

What concerns us most isn't the party's decline. It's the risk of walking into South Africa's future without its remaining base on board, abandoned and stigmatised rather than brought along.

Whatever side of this you're on, stop and consider how extraordinary it is that South Africa has reached a point where people outside the ANC now have to think seriously about what to do with it as it falls apart. The balance of forces has shifted more than most people realise.

02/09/2026

South Africa's White Population Is Disappearing

02/09/2026

The question over what to do with the ANC as it falls apart shows just how far and how fast South Africa has changed.

02/09/2026

Jordan Griffiths writes on potential coalition agreements ahead of the local government elections.

02/09/2026

Nobody Can Destroy the ANC Better Than Itself

02/09/2026

There's a cliché that white South Africans support Trump's refugee programme and black South Africans revile both Trump and America. It's exactly wrong.

New polling by The Common Sense found that black South Africans are three times more likely than white South Africans to say they'd move to America as refugees.

Once you get past the clichés, it makes sense. Black unemployment sits far above white unemployment, over 50% among young black South Africans. Black society is less middle class, meaning fewer institutional and business ties keeping people here. Fewer black South Africans have the family networks or emigration pathways many white South Africans do. Black communities face serious criminal violence without the private security many white households rely on. And black South African society is often deeply conservative, aligning more naturally with the Christian conservative culture in Washington than many liberal-leaning white South Africans do.

The data is damning for Pretoria, thirty years after democracy, this is what many black South Africans think of home. And it's a missed opportunity for Washington, which has framed South Africa's problems as black versus white, poisoning the goodwill it could have built with black South African society.

02/09/2026

The Common Sense went looking for an answer to a simple question about South African domestic workers and their household finances. What emerged instead was a remarkable story about the resilience of the human spirit and how people survive when, on paper, the numbers suggest that they should not.

The Common Sense went looking for an answer to a simple question about South African domestic workers and their household finances. What emerged instead...

01/09/2026

Large majorities of black South Africans, ANC voters, and MKP voters agree South Africa would be worse off if white South Africans left the country. Even a plurality of EFF supporters agree.

New polling from The Common Sense and the Social Research Foundation found that overall, 17% of respondents said the country would be better off if all whites left, while 72% said it would be worse off.

The finding holds even among EFF supporters, more of whom believe the country would be worse off without white South Africans than believe it would be better off.

This tracks with earlier polling from the SRF and the IRR, which has repeatedly found that South Africans across race lines generally get on with each other and understand how much the country's communities depend on one another. The politics of racial division is loud, but the data suggests it speaks for far fewer South Africans than its prominence implies.

01/09/2026

"Weakness is provocative." Last week the DA voted with the ANC to save its speaker in Parliament, even as the ANC in Parliament accused the DA of helping "defraud" South Africa of R4 billion. The DA's response? A tweet about brand infringement over the ANC using its logo.

Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube then told News24 the DA has "an ethics and malfeasance problem," that "some people are unethical, some people should not be trusted to lead," without naming a single one.

Meanwhile, private political donations in South Africa come down to essentially three people: the Oppenheimer family, Michiel le Roux, and Martin Moshal, giving amounts that collectively wouldn't buy much more than a nice London home. Formal politics, funded this thinly and behaving this meekly, is increasingly not where the real action in South Africa lies.

Compare that to AfriForum and March and March, who recently met and opened with prayer, black and white hardliners praying together for the country's future. That's strength. That's what draws people in.

Gwarube says the DA needs to show more compassion to grow. In that moment, the gap between South Africa's political elite and the people on the ground has never looked wider.

01/09/2026

An Underrated Win for the ANC