It’s funny how things kind of glide along, as though what is new was always the case. The government of national unity (GNU) madnesses and dramas have ebbed and flowed in a seemingly natural way.

Helen Zille has become a feature at every micro event in the GNU life that needs commenting on, while Fikile Mbalula has an impassioned press release to remind everyone that the GNU is the ANC’s baby and everyone must behave. The way the presidency recently reacted to (not quite new) revelations from the department of public works & infrastructure was hyperbole but entirely as expected.

It was the same in the UK after the recent election there. A Keir Starmer premiership seeming to glide into power as if it’s always been there, helped by some good planning on early policy announcements. Indeed, Donald Trump’s probable return later in the year might take on the same guise.

The problem for SA, for investors, is there remains no real single thing the GNU government can do to turn sentiment. As I’ve said in this column many times, it’s actions that count. As such this week’s “second state of the nation address” is likely to be rather dull — on the surface at least. No words there can turn sentiment on their own.

That’s a slight exaggeration though; investors can become more confident that action is more likely to be forthcoming if certain people are doing it. The launch of a new Operation Vulindlela agenda will be keenly awaited by investors, businesses and markets, which all put much stock in an entity that gained credibility for getting stuff done and deploying political capital to knotty situations. If, say, some elements of education are added to its agenda they will raise expectations that more action will be forthcoming. Still, the link between education, productivity and growth is long term — albeit crucial in the medium run.

As to SA’s more immediate network industry crises, the change needed becomes in some sense more boring, complex and difficult to understand as we go into the weeds and as reforms progress. There’s a long list of issues for the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa), and a complex market code for rail and electricity to be completed. Still, there are few big, immediate wins from new reform.

That said, the accumulation of change from the previous administration to growth in this one — particularly from electricity crisis intervention since the energy action plan in mid-2022 — will bear fruit now and become a political bun fight over credit. Let’s not forget it was a long and complex fight for many since the 1999 white paper that got us to that point and then Operation Vulindlela that seized it and drove to completion.

In the shorter term, visas may have some wins where regulatory change can be effected at the stroke of a pen, though in reality that relies on an institutional juggernaught making a sharp turn.

For sentiment to turn, we need a jolt out of the sense we are stuck in an amateur dramatics play. That might come from the new minister of electricity & energy setting a firecracker under Nersa in a way his predecessor would never had done. It could also come from education and a battle with the unions that many members of the ANC realise is needed (when you press them firmly enough). But, unfortunately, markets care only so much for education as an inflection point.

Instead, the department of trade, industry & competition might be the source of a few surprises. Here we have two deputy ministers ideologically on either side of their minister in seeming balance, and a departmental machine micromanaged almost to death by a predecessor who had such little interest in being a salesman for exports or for investment or for “trade and industry” beyond a centralised-pick-your-winners variety so as to be almost negligent. That means there are potentially some easy wins, and markets and investors might well pick up on a team that can get things done in a new way.

The other oasis might be foreign policy. The ANC isn’t a monolith on foreign policy and the “high school debating society” variety of foreign policy that is more performative than strategic was allowed to take over for too long in the last administration — especially on the Russia issue (though true Russophiles in the ANC were always in the minority). It is therefore an interesting moment for the department of international relations & co-operation’s Ronald Lamola — who is always a calmer and more considered voice — to undertake something of a reset, not by abandoning neutrality but by having a firmer and more strategically pragmatic basis that doesn’t alienate everyone. His recent Sunday Times column was the first hint of this.

A salesperson is needed in the cases of trade & industry and foreign affairs — someone who can actually talk to stakeholders and do the hard yards (and air miles). SA often likes to rest on the laurels of what I call “Mandela’s rainbow unicorns”. It’s the sense that investors, local or foreign, somehow owe SA something for giving the world Nelson Mandela and therefore the country can be a charity case more than 30 years after apartheid. This sense — a number of ministers in the previous administration, most notably Pravin Gordhan and Ebrahim Patel, were its biggest proponents — was always mad and must be abandoned by this administration in favour of hard-nosed relationship building and pragmatic salesmanship (as grubby as that may sound).

The oddity that is Brand SA is perhaps the worst example of that vibe. It’s almost as if the country is a designer handbag that advertising people say you must have because of the name — regardless of what the product really is or whether you need it.

Superficially, being a salesperson is about what you say, but it’s more than that. It’s the stance and the relationship to the outside world, to domestic stakeholders, that comes from the way key people in this administration will work that generates credibility and a sense of surprise and novelty, not the words.

• Peter Attard Montalto leads on political economy, markets and the just energy transition at Krutham, a SA research-led consulting company.