Why Good People Hold Back

What Johannesburg voters can tell you about your own staff

In March 2026, the Institute of Race Relations asked South Africans whether the different races need each other. 89% said yes. Last year it was 84%. The number is going up.

So the goodwill is certainly there. But getting people to act on it is an entirely different matter.

Ahead of the local elections, the SRF polled voters in Johannesburg. 80% said their lives would improve if the DA ran the city. But only 25% said they would vote for it.

Read that again. Four in five believe it would work. One in four will commit.

That gap is about belonging. You can believe an organisation is competent and still not believe you are one of its people.

Renias Mhlongo and I have experienced that gap, too.

I had all the evidence I needed about Renias within two months of meeting him. We tracked a dangerous leopard with two cubs into a donga. When she charged, I dropped my rifle and ended up flat on my back in the sand. He was the one who got me out of there.

‘Competent’ is not a big enough word for what he showed. It was extraordinary.

But none of that made us close. Even eighteen months later, working side by side, I still knew very little about him.

What changed it was an invitation.

Renias invited me to visit Dixie, his village. Four hundred people, no electricity, and one faltering borehole. He arranged for the head chef at Londolozi, who lived in Dixie and was on leave, to come and cook for me. The next morning there was a zinc bath with hot water waiting. His 11 year old daughter had heated it and carried it to my room.

I learned more about him in those 3 days than in the previous eighteen months.

Notice who did the inviting.

Renias had less money, less power and more to lose. He had watched young guides like me come through, take what he knew, and leave. He had every reason to hold back. But he went first anyway.

That is the question in your business. Who is expected to risk reaching out? And how many times? One invitation is a gesture. Three is a sincere invitation.

If you are waiting for your staff to close the belonging gap, you are asking the people with the least protection to take the biggest risk. And when they do not, you will call it disengagement. It is not that, it is self-protection.

Renias went first. I had eighteen months to do it myself and I did not.

Sources: Institute of Race Relations polling, conducted 9 to 20 March 2026 among 1 038 registered voters, margin of error approximately 3%. Social Research Foundation Q1 2026 Market Survey, conducted by Victory Research, fieldwork 16 February to 6 March 2026, Johannesburg sample of 503, margin of error 4.4%, reported by The Common Sense, 19 March 2026.