SA isn’t great but they’re still one of the more prosperous societies in Africa and they survived the fall of apartheid without descending into complete anarchy so I don’t think the current issues they have are insurmountable.
Mate things have seriously deteriorated in the 30 years since the fall of apartheid.
Chronic corruption across the board, significantly widening income inequality, significant increases in violent crime and organised crime across the board.
Rule of law has deteriorated in most of the country and for the most part police either act as the punitive arm of the ANC or as another gang. One of the, maybe the, largest industry in the country are militarised private security firms.
All their infrastructure is collapsing and it's purely down to political corruption. Critical water shortages because of mismanagement, rolling daily power outages nationally, crumbling buildings and transport infrastructure, etc, all because of corruption, nepotism, and frankly racism in the ANC and halls of power. Food security is increasingly becoming a concern as well.
They have 32% unemployment (and many experts reckon they're significantly underestimating) and about 60% of the nation are on the dole or some equivalent government payment. On top of that about 1.5% of the population pay about 60% of South Africa's income tax and that pool of people has been shrinking.
There're mainstream players in South African politics with openly violent rhetoric, most famously Julius Malema and the EFF. South Africa is the only country with diversity quoters for the majority population and institutionally discriminatory practices against Boer, ethnically English, Indian, Khoisan, and even some of the less politically powerful Bantu tribes of the time, are endemic. The occurrence of political and racial violence against the Boers is particularly concerning and escalating.
I could go on, but the point is that South African society is one spark from exploding into a million pieces.
