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."