This article was first published by Daily Friend on 9 October 2025
A recent article in The Conversation highlights a growing trend in South Africa: ordinary people, from the impoverished shacks of Imizamo Yethu to the affluent suburbs of Parkhurst, are bypassing the state to secure their own security, water, electricity, and sanitation services.
This phenomenon, where communities step in to fill the void left by a failing state, is a key dimension of stateproofing, whereby civilians secure themselves, their families, and their broader interests from the harms posed by, firstly, a malicious state, and secondly, a collapsing state.
It is not just a practical response to government failure, but also a psychological and philosophical shift that South Africans must embrace if we are to have any meaningful control over what the future holds for us.
If well-meaning communities do not step up, criminals and other malicious entities (I mean those not employed directly by government!) will inevitably fill the gaps left by the state’s absence, exploiting the chaos for their own gain.
No choice but to act
The state’s inability to deliver on the perhaps misguided promises that made it into South Africa’s constitutional settlement – of adequate housing, water, electricity, and supposedly guaranteed public safety – has left South Africans with no real choice but to act.
In Imizamo Yethu, residents organise community patrols to ensure safety where police are absent. In Parkhurst, wealthy households invest in solar panels and boreholes, sidestepping unreliable municipal services. Even in Westlake Village, where state-subsidised homes come with basic amenities, residents build illegal backyard toilets and dump waste to cope with overcrowding.
These actions are not mere technical fixes, but acts of justified defiance against a state that has forfeited its legitimacy through incompetence and neglect.
Stateproofing, a term first brought up a 2018 AfriSake (now Sakeliga) conference and now also championed by organisations like the Free Market Foundation and the broader Solidarity Movement, is about more than practical solutions.
South Africans must shed the mindset that the state is their saviour, a benevolent entity that will swoop in to fix potholes, restore electricity, or secure streets. This dependency, fostered by decades of romanticised statism, is a mental shackle that breeds inaction, which in turn facilitates further decay.
The belief that government will solve our problems is a fantasy, particularly in a country where many municipalities are essentially defunct and the criminal justice system in fact collapsed many years ago.
The Conversation authors assume the social contract remains intact as a default starting point, but this is mistaken.
South Africa’s social contract has already crumbled to a significant degree, eroded by persistent service failures and a state that no longer holds the trust or authority to bind citizens together.
I have written about some of these practical questions before.
Consider the example of Johannesburg’s impostor traffic wardens, who exploit (and even cause) power outages at busy intersections for profit. Residents lament this on community WhatsApp groups, pleading for metro police intervention – I have seen metro police blissfully drive past these impostors multiple times – only and predictably to be met with excuses from local councillors.
This is not a stateproof mindset. A psychologically stateproof community would not wait for happy-go-lucky metro cops. Instead, they might pool resources to pay legitimate (or at least known-to-the-community) traffic wardens, contract private security firms to place cars near intersections to look out for sabotage, or partner with companies like Outsurance to deploy pointsmen.
These solutions bypass the state’s inertia and focus on results, not mere regulatory compliance. Without such initiative, the vacuum left by the state invites exploitation by those with less noble intentions.
Similarly, the plague of potholes across South Africa exemplifies the futility of waiting for government.
That crater outside your driveway will likely remain there for years – especially if you find yourself in rural South Africa – if you intend to rely on the municipality. A stateproof response is simple: fill it yourself or pool money with neighbours to hire a professional. Pay less mind to questions of permits.
This is not lawlessness but a reclamation of responsibility and citizenship. We owe ourselves and our communities an obligation of acting against decay.
Shared citizenship
The Conversation article warns that unchecked citizen-led service provision risks deepening inequality, with affluent communities insulating themselves while poorer ones scramble for precarious solutions. It also claims that such actions undermine “shared citizenship.”
This is fundamentally wrongheaded.
Communities taking responsibility for their own services is the greatest manifestation of true citizenship in recent South African history. Real citizens are not passive consumers of politics, as Russell Lamberti often notes, nor are they merely voters waiting for the next election.
In a properly constitutional society, citizens are autonomous partners of the state – not its underlings but its superiors. Citizens always have the means and willingness to act independently of political favour… otherwise they are not citizens in any real sense of the word.
Stateproofing embodies this active, participatory citizenship, rejecting the false notion that civic duty begins and ends at the ballot box.
The answer to South Africa’s fracturing society is not to double down on a failing state but to foster a culture of responsibility where communities, rich and poor, take ownership of the problems they face.
Liberty is not about rights without responsibility – it is not a synonym for “fun”. Ownership of problems means bearing uncomfortable costs and consequences, but it is only if these are so borne that we really can be free to pursue our own preferences and interests. If the state is the only owner of the problems our society faces, and we are hapless children watching from the sidelines as it mocks us with contempt, freedom is impossible.
When we outsource electricity, security, or even infrastructure to the state, we surrender control. Rolling blackouts, unpunished criminality, and crumbling roads are the predictable result.
True liberty means accepting that no one is coming to rescue us – certainly not the African National Congress, but also not the Democratic Alliance or other reformist parties or politicians. Our salvation lies in our own hands.
Organise, innovate, and act. The Conversation article shows that South Africans are already doing this, perhaps at a scale few yet appreciate. Now, we should make it a movement that does not act merely out of necessity, but also happily, openly, and in-principle embraces the newfound responsibility.
