With unemployment sitting at 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026, 345 000 fewer people are employed and youth unemployment climbed to 45.8%, South Africans are not merely struggling; they are surviving in desperation.
Yet against this bleak backdrop, the country has enjoyed front-row seats to the brazen looting of what often appears to be a limitless national credit card.
Billions disappear while ordinary citizens stretch cents between bread, transport and electricity.
This cannot be dismissed as accidental governance failure or administrative oversight; it reflects a reckless disregard for the ripple effects felt by the layman.
Poverty, in many ways, has become politically convenient. A desperate population is easier to pacify with empty promises, easier to manipulate through stomach politics and easier to keep dependent on systems that fail them.
Politics has increasingly become synonymous with looting and outright theft in the eyes of many South Africans.
From party leadership to ground-level operatives, the perception persists that political affiliation is no longer rooted in service, but in access, access to influence, contracts, protection and ultimately wealth.
The lines between governance and self-enrichment have become dangerously blurred.
Politics now seems to be the quickest route to a financial breakthrough, less a calling than a path to the gravy train.
This perception is made worse each time corruption scandals emerge, public funds disappear and accountability remains selective.
Amid deepening poverty and unemployment, the image of politics as a gateway to privilege increases public anger and erodes trust in democratic leadership.
How do we expect the nation to grow when personal enrichment has superseded the well-being of the country?
It no longer seems to trouble anyone that one person has 17 properties and seven luxury vehicles, while another, at just 36 years old, boasts a fleet worth between R14 and R22 million. This was enabled.
A political head looked away, signed off, protected, excused or allowed it to continue and that silence has become part of the corruption itself.
A woman in her 70s is still a domestic worker because the looting robbed her dependants of the opportunity to carry the baton forward.
So, when those accused of corruption stand before commissions and courts, their actions must be measured not only in rands stolen, but in lives diminished.
