As the sun sets on 2025, South Africa’s long-awaited recovery is becoming visible like the first sliver of a waxing crescent days after a new moon.

While still modest, the 0.5% GDP expansion in the third quarter represents the longest period (four consecutive quarters) of sustained growth by the South African economy since Covid.

The performance followed the decision by S&P Global to upgrade South Africa’s credit rating in November; the first upgrade in 20 years, a period during which the country’s rating fell to a sub-investment grade (from which it is yet to recover) amid State capture, extreme loadshedding and a collapse in confidence and investment.

The upgrade was announced days after a solid Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement performance by the National Treasury and days before South Africa’s successful hosting of the G20 Leaders’ Summit.

The gloss has been taken off somewhat by the petty behaviour of President Donald Trump in attempting to exclude South Africa from the G20 in Miami and wipe out any digital trace of the Johannesburg event.

Nevertheless, the gathering showed that many governments around the world are wary of the ongoing dismantling of a rules-based multilateralist system in favour of transactional dealmaking, particularly as multipolarity starts to define the emerging order.

It also provided the stage for some European leaders to begin pushing back against the US. This, after it became apparent during the summit that Trump’s unilateral peace plan for Ukraine and Russia was heavily weighted in favour of Russia.

Having seen the ‘crescent’, however, will South Africans ever see the ‘whole of the moon’ mythologised in the classic 1980s song by the Waterboys?

In the South African context, that would imply growth of more than 3% for a sustained period so as to lay the basis for serious employment creation, as well as the revenue growth required to begin addressing the socioeconomic backlogs that continue to leave the majority of South Africans in dehumanising poverty.

Of course, growth alone will be insufficient.

Unless there is far better governance, resources will continue to be wasted, and services will not improve.

Without ethical political leaders and executive managers, corruption will continue to eat away at the pillars of democracy and make the threat of a Mafia State almost impossible to resist.

Without far better law enforcement, crime will continue to erode confidence and deter investment.

Nevertheless, without growth, it is going to be almost impossible to advance towards a more economically fair dispensation.

Growth remains a necessary ingredient for funding the soft and hard infrastructure required for the development of South Africa, as well as to begin truly aligning the lived reality of those who reside here with the rights-based vision of the Constitution.

The platform has been laid for higher growth by the progress made in tackling the confidence-sapping electricity and logistics crises and in stabilising the macroeconomic framework. Now is the time to truly build on that platform.