Introduction

About 2, 000 years ago, Plato, the Greek philosopher, pointed out in his Socratic ‘Dialogues' that justice is nothing but an advantage of "the stronger" in society. There is growing consensus in post-apartheid South Africa that economic justice, to paraphrase Plato's words, is nothing more than an advantage of an increasingly powerful, cohesive, confident and self-assertive multi-racial, hegemonic ruling elite. Economic justice continues to elude tens of millions of poor and marginalized SA blacks, creating a huge, semi-permanent disadvantage in society for them.

Matters, looked at from the vintage-point of the past anti-apartheid struggle, did not have to come to this sorry, acute pass. For economic justice delayed, is economic justice denied.

At the very heart of the persuasive power and moral strength of the anti-apartheid struggle was always the belief that victory over racism and apartheid in South Africa would deliver not just a political vote for the formerly disenfranchised, but that it would double up as economic justice for the poor and marginalized as well. This would be SA's Freedom Charter moment. There was always a strong belief, throughout the period of the anti-apartheid struggle, that economic justice would become an advantage for the whole post-apartheid SA society, in its entirety, the poor included, and not just for the stronger and powerful elites, and least so for just a tiny, self-serving, insatiable, and grubby multi-racial ruling elite.

It was therefore with a measure of great pride that I listened to Archbishop Desmond Tutu's inspired impromptu speech at SA evening Gala Dinner at the January-February 1998 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, where he spoke, convincingly, about "a scintillating South African economic miracle about to happen." At that point, I vividly conjured up post-apartheid SA as an economic miracle on par with Singapore or Norway or Finland.

Fifteen years later, the dream of economic justice for tens of millions of dirt-poor South Africans remains unrealized by the much-heralded CODESA political settlement that ushered in "new" South Africa. Fifteen years later, the poor in SA are still waiting for "a scintillating economic miracle about to happen."

Fifteen years later, South Africa is not facing the much-feared prospect of Zimbabwefication of our economy and society, but is confronted by the haunting economic and societal reality that our post-apartheid, multi-racial ruling elites have settled on Kenyafication of SA's present and future. Those who fear Zimbabwe are daily, and incessantly, plotting that we never escape the suffocating neo-liberal clutch that is SA's Kenyafication today.

Are SA's poor waiting for Godot, in terms of deep-going economic transformation? Well, yes, if you take the timeline of the National Development Plan (NDP) seriously. The poor may have to wait for another generation to know whether "a scintillating economic miracle about to happen" will ever happen in their lifetime.

Even the uplifting and moving words of Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Grameen Bank, seem incapable to unleash our collective national imagination towards defeating the economic legacy of apartheid, which is embodied in the continuing exclusion of the overwhelming majority of South Africans from real and substantive ownership of, and participation in, SA economy as equals.

Delivering the Seventh Nelson Mandela Lecture Address in Johannesburg on 16 July 2009, Muhammad Yunus held up the truly scintillating prospect that SA could be the first country in the world to defeat poverty in the shortest possible time.

"Human journey began in Africa", declared Yunus. "On behalf of Africa", he continued, "let's make South Africa the first country where poverty will not exist, nobody will be a poor person. Let's do it fast - let's do it in the next 20 years."

A great Yunusian dream for Mandela's South Africa was born to much fanfare. But the NDP begs to differ. It has indefinitely deferred this Yunusian dream for SA of sweeping poverty eradication in 20 years. The NDP merely promises to halve poverty in SA by 2030.

Amongst those who vigorously applauded (and even sniggered at) this ambitious vision of Yunis for post-apartheid South Africa, and who attended the Seventh Nelson Mandela Lecture, were men and women, all of them of very substantial, comfortable means, who would later craft SA's National Development Plan (NDP), and, in the process, bury the Yunusian dream of SA without poverty in 20 years.

How is it that the drafters and promoters of the NDP cannot find in themselves the courage of their convictions to embody poverty eradication in SA in the shortest possible time in the NDP, in line with the vision espoused during one of the Nelson Mandela Lectures?

What is proving so difficult in delivering economic justice for all in post-apartheid South Africa, in the shortest possible time of 20 years, as a precursor to ‘a better life for all'? Why does the National Development Plan fail to promise delivery of economic justice for all by 2030?

Not only has the NDP dismally failed to commit to economic justice for all in SA by 2030; it has recently been subjected to a truly surprising detour. The NDP, which started, supposedly, as the most democratic and participative form of popular expression of how to draw up a vision and strategic national plan for SA towards 2030, has hit a Rock of Gibraltar-size problem on its path to implementation. Its economic chapter, which clearly does not enjoy national consensus, has been farmed out to Tripartite Alliance technocrats to reformulate, in an effort to reach some consensus on it.

So what started out, supposedly, as the most popular, democratic and participative initiative in the hands of all interested South Africans since the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955, has ended up in a typical and predictable SA place - some darkly-lit, smoke-filled and CODESA-like small room, where a coterie of political technocrats will attempt to thrash out a compromise on the NDP's economic chapter; but where SA masses are spectators.

In a word, the NDP has ended up in a Tripartite Alliance's Task Team. Far away from popular, mass energies. This is not the endgame of crafting the NDP that was previously promised by its drafters and supporters. Interestingly, some of the initial supporters of the NDP supported it on the basis of its proposals contained in the current economic chapter, which are now likely to metastasize and to look very different from the NDP draft which was adopted by all parties represented in SA parliament. Were these early supporters of the economic chapter of the NDP made to buy a pig in a pork? Or did they willingly fool themselves and the SA public regarding the true economic content of the NDP?

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