MANDY WIENER | 2025 South Africa’s quarter life crisis

A quarter life crisis is an existential crisis involving anxiety and sorrow over the direction and quality of one’s life. It is defined by clinical psychologist Alex Fowke as "a period of insecurity, doubt and disappointment surrounding your career, relationships and financial situation and often it strikes in your late twenties and early thirties.

At 31 years old, South Africa is experiencing a quarter life crisis.

In his State of the Nation address last year, President Ramaphosa used the analogy of Tintswalo at 30.

Well, Tintswalo is now 31 nearing 32 and she is being forced to self-reflect and decide if the path she is on in life is the one she wants to be on and if she has made the right decisions regarding the quality of her life and the people she has chosen to surround herself with.

South Africa is not the girly she thinks she is. She lives in Midrand, has no furniture because she drives a GTi, and is deep in debt. She orders one drink because she knows others will buy her more.

She is friends with all the right influencers on Insta, except the big bullying star, and what she posts is not her reality. Now it’s time for her to make better choices, grow up and be mature.

The reset in relations with the United States this year has been a seminal moment in defining our diplomatic position and who we are aligned with. Ramaphosa’s sit down moment with Donald Trump in the White House was character shaping and it has forced us to introspect on our allegiances.

The subsequent diversification of trade partners to Asia and Europe has demonstrated a willingness to step away from the established, well-worn corridors.

We also had to show the world who we really are and this was a transition into real adulthood. The time for play-play was over. Time and again the leadership of the country has had to demonstrate its resolve and stand up to Trump, without the protection of other more mature democracies.

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The hosting of the G20 was an opportunity to do that and expert diplomacy and handling of the US boycott was a coming of age moment.

However, many argued it was papering over the cracks and I even suggested we were putting lipstick on a pig. We hid away our massive debt problem, service delivery failures, horrifying crime statistics and widespread poverty.

If Tintswalo is going to fix her life, she is going to have to come to terms with her reality. She needs to find employment and real economic growth quickly.

The teetering GNU that was frequently rocked by various crises from the budget standoff to the firing of Deputy Minister Andrew Whitfield, is another example of how South Africa at 31 is desperately seeking stability but is finding it hard to achieve.

The government has displayed the anxiety, insecurity and doubt of trying to find its own identity. It’s confused about policy, particularly international and economic policy, and is being torn in different directions. This is largely because the relationship is foundationally rocky and the parties are only stuck in a relationship because they fear the alternative.

The second half of the year has been a profound period of self-reflection as the country has been compelled to confront its dark and dangerous side and the worst of what is has become. Between the Madlanga Commission and the Ad-Hoc Parliamentary Inquiry, witnesses have come forward to testify about deep rooted corruption, bodies being disappeared and money changing hands in exchange for protection and influence.

We have been forced to come to terms with the criminalisation of politics and policing and the failures of our democratic state. We have had to ask ourselves serious questions about whether we truly want to be on this path and if we are willing to do the work to correct it.

To extend the analogy, Madlanga is the sensible uncle who makes the considered input after mulling a crisis, Parliament is the aunty who thinks she knows everything and Ramaphosa is the absent father who is always travelling for work to put food on the table.

At 31, it’s time for South Africa to stand up and adult and make better decisions. We need to be clear about who we are, what our identity is and live up to our potential. Our financial situation, our relationships, our path into the future need to be rooted in confidence, clarity and intention.

In a far more erudite and incisive analysis than my own, researcher Terence McNamee has written about how South Africa’s origin story was ‘squandered’. In essence, we have lost sight of who we are.

“Some of Mr. Mandela’s successors became disillusioned with the founding story. Others neglected it. Or even undermined it. Few saw it as especially useful in their bid for power. Soon, the story became buried in the avalanche of corruption and misrule that followed,” writes McNamee.

“Today, South Africa is rudderless at home. According to an Ipsos “What Worries the World” study released in September, 8 in 10 South Africans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Serious analysts have labeled South Africa a “mafia state.” Water and energy infrastructure in Johannesburg, the country’s - and the continent’s - financial hub, is crumbling. The city’s politics have become farcical: nine mayors in the past six years.”

The National Dialogue was billed by Ramaphosa as an opportunity to ‘reflect on the state of our country’ and to ‘reimagine’ the country’s future. But as McNamee points out, South Africans don’t need a new story. “They need to know why the best one they will ever have was squandered.”

2025 has been a year of introspection as the country works its way through a quarter-life crisis. We are going to have to urgently decide what we want our future to be if we are going to be any different in 2026 and beyond.