Revolution Chapter 7: The Early Reforms

By the close of 2027, a year after the September Intervention, the effects of the Council’s reforms had begun to reshape South African society in visible and measurable ways. While challenges persisted — especially in housing, education, and rural poverty — there was a growing sense that the machinery of government was finally moving with purpose and direction.

Ending the Politics of Patronage

One of the earliest and most consequential policy shifts was the abolition of Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). These programmes, once conceived as instruments of redress, had over time become mechanisms of enrichment and exclusion.

The Council’s own audit, later published as the Jacobs White Paper on Equity, found that less than 5% of BEE beneficiaries had come from genuinely disadvantaged backgrounds. The rest were politically connected elites who used their proximity to power to extract rents from public contracts, often without adding productive value.

The Council concluded that these policies had entrenched dependency and division rather than promoting equality. As Jacobs remarked in one meeting:

“Empowerment is not a gift from government; it is the ability to compete freely, without corruption and without fear.”

With their repeal, the economy began to open up. Procurement processes were simplified, investment regulations liberalised, and new legislation ensured that contracts were awarded purely on merit and capacity. Within six months, reports from the Chamber of Commerce showed a dramatic surge of business confidence.

The Return of Investment

By early 2028, a wave of foreign investment began to flow back into South Africa. Firms from Europe, Asia, and North America, long deterred by corruption and racial quotas, returned to re-establish partnerships in mining, manufacturing, and logistics.

New industrial parks were developed near Durban and Port Elizabeth, where once-idle warehouses thrummed again with production. The stock market rose steadily, the rand strengthened, and exports climbed as global confidence returned.

The Council’s economists credited this not only to deregulation but to a restoration of basic trust — a government perceived as competent, honest, and committed to the rule of law.

Mobilising the Educated Unemployed

At the same time, the Council launched an initiative that would become one of its most successful and widely praised reforms: the creation of a new cadre of Community Liaison Officers (CLOs).

The idea emerged from a report presented by a team of sociologists and educators who warned that unemployment among graduates — especially in the social sciences and humanities — was approaching crisis levels. Thousands of educated young people, trained in communication and analysis, were languishing without purpose.

Rather than viewing them as a burden, the Council saw an opportunity.

In early 2028, it authorised the recruitment and training of 250,000 unemployed graduates. They underwent a three-month course in data capture, digital systems, and basic social work, coordinated by the Department of Public Administration. Upon completion, they were deployed across the nation’s provinces as Community Liaison Officers.

Their mission was twofold:

To gather detailed, ground-level data on the needs, resources, and aspirations of every community — from informal settlements to remote villages. Each CLO was equipped with a tablet linked to a central database, allowing real-time mapping of poverty, unemployment, and infrastructure gaps.

To act as bridges between citizens and the state, explaining new government programmes, employment opportunities, and civic responsibilities. They also monitored the distribution of the Basic Income Grant and ensured that corruption or double-dipping was reported swiftly.
The results were immediate and profound. For the first time in living memory, government decisions were based on accurate, localised data rather than outdated statistics. Communities that had once felt ignored now had a direct channel to the state.

As one newspaper editorial put it: “The government is finally listening — and the people know it.”

A Nation Renewed

These early reforms created a self-reinforcing cycle. The return of investment generated jobs; the Community Liaison network ensured that information and opportunity reached the grassroots; and the Basic Income Grant provided a floor beneath which no citizen could fall.

The crime rate dropped sharply as steady income and visible policing restored community stability. Informal traders began to flourish again, and taxi routes, once plagued by turf wars, were regulated and subsidised to encourage cooperation rather than conflict.

Above all, there was a perceptible shift in mood. Newspapers that had once printed daily tales of scandal now carried reports of restored hospitals, reopened factories, and newly paved roads. A public opinion poll conducted by the Institute for Civic Studies in late 2028 found that 78% of citizens believed the country was “moving in the right direction.”

The Quiet Transformation

The Council remained cautious. Jacobs often warned his colleagues that early success could breed complacency. “We are not yet healed,” he reminded them, “we are merely breathing again.”

But even he admitted that the change in national temperament was remarkable. For the first time in a generation, hope outweighed cynicism.

By the end of the first full year after the coup, the foundations of renewal were firmly in place: a cleaner government, a revitalised economy, and a society beginning to believe in itself again. The Revolution had moved from survival to reconstruction — from the act of taking power to the far more complex work of wielding it wisely.

Read Revolution Chapter 1 here.

Read Revolution Chapter 2 here.

Read Revolution Chapter 3 here.

Read Revolution Chapter 4 here.

Read Revolution Chapter 5 here.

Read Revolution Chapter 6 here.

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