Our Next Ten Years - A Time Traveller's Guide (Paperback)

Picture South Africa in ten years: Are the angry poor rising up, seizing land and businesses? Will the ANC survive three more elections? Will the middle classes still braai in suburbia or will we go the way of Zimbabwe?

South Africa is currently at a tipping point. Unemployment, slow growth, threats to freedom of speech, and poor education can send the country in any direction. Frans Cronje, CEO of one of the country’s leading think-tanks, identifies the key trends in the economy, politics and society which hold the clues to our immediate future.

While living standards have for instance improved since 1994, in an ironic twist this is fuelling ever-increasing expectations by the populace. The “curse of rising expectations” lies at the root of much of the instability in the country.

Cronje uses key trends in our society to outline the four most likely scenarios for the country, which he quite fittingly calls the Narrow Road, the Wide Road, the Rocky Road and the Toll Road.

Sobering, shocking and hopeful in turn, no South African can afford to ignore the convincing futures Cronje paints.