My father has a habit of handing me books with an instruction rather than a recommendation. “Read this,” he says. “Then tell me what you think.”

The assignment came in two parts: William Butler Yeats’s The second coming and Chinua Achebe’s Things fall Apart. Nearly a century separates the two works. Yet they ask the same question: what happens when the ties binding a community together begin to break?

The centre cannot hold

Yeats gave one of the most famous lines in English literature: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” He wrote it in 1919, after World War I. Societies do not fall only from outside blows. They fall because the moral centre holding them together grows weak.

Achebe took that line nearly 40 years later as the title of his 1958 novel. His main character, Okonkwo, is crushed by colonialism. Yet Things Fall Apart also shows a society already cracking before European rule arrives. Colonialism speeds up the collapse. It does not cause every crack.

Societies become weak when they lose the ability to adapt and keep people’s trust. That question feels close to home now.

Close to home

South Africa is not a failed state. Yet the gap between what the Constitution promises and what people live through is hard to ignore. Service delivery failures, and fading trust have made people’s faith weaker than the institutions themselves. Governments change. Trust is harder to rebuild.

Accountability stalled

On Friday 24 July, the Western Cape High Court gave President Cyril Ramaphosa a court order halting Parliament’s impeachment process over the Phala Phala scandal.

On Monday 27 July, Ramaphosa accepted the sudden departure of Advocate Andrea Johnson as head of the Investigating Directorate against corruption, the unit set up to chase complex corruption cases.

Johnson said she faced what she called “attacks on both my person and official capacity” . The President holds up the process meant to hold him accountable. The anti-corruption chief walks out the door.

Meanwhile, 63% of South Africa’s municipalities are in financial trouble, according to National Treasury figures. Police face what experts call a system in collapse. The Government of National Unity, formed after the African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority in 2024, strains under budget fights and public quarrels between the ANC and the Democratic Alliance.

Ramaphosa warned on Monday that government is ready to take over water services from failing municipalities. That a president must threaten action to deliver clean water says enough.

Certainty where care is needed

Yeats saw this coming when he wrote: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Loud certainty often pays better than careful truth.

Former president Jacob Zuma, now leading the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, spent the last week of July tightening his grip on the party. He scrapped his presidential task team, took away his secretary-general’s powers and removed every party official’s access to the party’s bank accounts.

Zuma still owes the state about R29 million in legal fees and is fighting to keep his tax records hidden. His party members in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature face claims of faking medical reports to get state-paid drivers.

He holds loyalty through force of personality and anger, not through strong structures. He gives certainty where care is needed and rage where thought is needed.

The ceremony of innocence

Achebe understood something today’s leaders forget. Institutions draw their strength not from laws alone but from shared habits of trust. Communities last because people believe the rules are worth following, even when following them is hard. When that belief fades, the fall is not sudden. It shows in lowered hopes, accepted failure and cynicism. People stop seeking accountability because they no longer believe it possible.

This may be what Yeats meant by “the ceremony of innocence.” Not innocence as foolishness, but the habits and values that show a society still cares about justice, accountability and duty to others. Once those habits lose meaning, building them again is far harder than keeping them.

The figures tell the story. In the first quarter of this year, 3,9 million young South Africans between 15 and 24 had no education, work or training. Social cohesion researchers scored the country 56 out of 100 middling at best.

Mirrors, not old texts

When I first spoke to my father about Yeats and Achebe, their images felt far away and their warnings seemed hollow. Time has made them feel less like old texts and more like mirrors of today.

Both writers remind us that strong leaders or written laws alone do not hold societies together. They last because enough people keep believing institutions matter, truth matters and self-restraint is worth defending.

The question Yeats leaves is not whether things can fall apart. They always can. The more pressing question is whether people still see the centre while it slips and whether they have the will to hold it before history repeats itself.

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