In this article, we seek to briefly explore the concepts of policy uncertainty and policy coherence in relation to more recent (2008 to 2018) economic policies in the country, and the impact thereof on foreign direct investment (FDI). The article explains how policy uncertainty affected countries like Russia, Brazil and India, which are part of the BRICS bloc together with South Africa. It uses unobtrusive techniques to analyse the secondary data available from leading databases of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Statistics South Africa. At the end, it was clear that South African policies kept on changing in different eras and that on their own cast doubt on attracting the much-needed foreign direct investment. Consistency in the policy space needs to be addressed for the country's economy to grow.