Before President Cyril Ramaphosa’s surprise announcement last week that the cap on energy self-generation was to be raised tenfold, and that a private partner had been secured for SAA, it was hard to string together a credible growth story for SA.

Instead, it seemed likely that SA’s deeply embedded structural problems — from fiscal imbalances to sky-high unemployment and yawning inequality — would continue to heat up and spill over into rising discontent...