South Africa

South Africa's governing African National Congress won every election from 1994 to 2024, but its vote share declined from 69% to 40%, forcing the party into a coalition government for the first time — a phase transition from dominant-party democracy to competitive multiparty politics. The economy is constrained by Eskom, the state power utility whose rolling blackouts (load shedding) cost the economy an estimated 2-5% of GDP annually. Eskom's dysfunction illustrates how a single infrastructure failure cascades through an entire economic ecosystem: manufacturing, mining, retail, and agriculture all contract when electricity supply is unreliable. Unemployment exceeds 30% using the narrow definition and 40% including discouraged workers, creating a structural surplus-labour economy that the post-apartheid growth model has failed to address. South Africa's constitutional framework is widely admired — the Constitutional Court has overruled the executive multiple times — but institutional quality hasn't translated into economic performance, demonstrating that legal architecture alone doesn't determine metabolic health.