If nothing changes, the term "failed state" will soon no longer be followed by a question mark when referencing South Africa.

South Africans at home and in the vast global diaspora, together with others – friends of the country and those simply interested in or curious about its historic trajectory – have been watching a once-admired liberation movement, that used to be led by globally respected moral giants, ensure that any prospects of sustained economic and reputational recovery remain bleak.

This is due to a basket of failed policies and a governance style that has been tried repeatedly with the hope that doing things over and over again in the same way would produce different outcomes.

The rest of us know it won’t, but we have no power to intervene, except by joining the coalitions of the pained and disappointed on various social media platforms.

It is hard, however, to propose alternative ways to govern South Africa and manage its strategic institutions – many of which have been operationally destroyed and robbed of specialised expertise over time, thanks to failed, archaic policies – when one is so easily reminded that the only other time the country wasn’t (mis)governed by the current lot, it was a truly bad place to live for its black population.

No one can reasonably deny that.

But this does not mean any attempt to propose undoing or redrafting some of the failed policies that remain de rigeur should be interpreted as an attempt to take the country back to its painful yesterday, or to undo the gains of liberation. This interpretation is in itself the kind of emotional onslaught and pushback that only the well-resourced and seriously obstinate can withstand.

Making such suggestions while being white is an even bigger hazard. The pushback always comes down like rocks with heavy racial overtones. Many who could play constructive roles have simply chosen to retreat instead. That being said, doing so while being black is not safe either, as emotional accusations and insults of betrayal or "self-hate" also come readily crafted for great effect.

Let's talk about BEE

Let us take affirmative action (AA) and Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) policies, for instance. And this is not a discussion about their reported origins in big business or the extent to which they maintain influence over the manner and extent of black integration into the mainstream economy. Whatever their origins and intended purposes, B-BBEE and AA policies yielded a mixed bag of positive outcomes and, increasingly over time, negative ones.

Few will argue that the original purpose of their development and implementation – assuming that this was not nefarious and concerned primarily with big business interests in mind – was noble. Something had to be put in place to drive a sure integration of black South Africans into the mainstream of the economy over time, following many decades – perhaps even centuries of systemic, deliberate, exclusion and neglect. AA and BEE (which later became B-BBEE) policies were the tools put on the table and eventually accepted to drive that integration over time. Few will also deny with straight faces that these policies, certainly in their early years, opened many doors for black people, enabling them to be appointed into employment positions and to receive business opportunities that they would not have seen during apartheid.

Many of the early beneficiaries of these policies grew in confidence and materially over time, becoming economically independent to the point, in many cases, of going on to create further job and business opportunities for others. Many others failed, too, for any number of reasons. All of that is to be expected.

Sell-by date

The mistake we made was not to insist on clear performance/success indicators for AA and B-BBEE policies, as well as sunset clauses. There is no sense in keeping them indefinitely as tools for black economic integration when they have, over time, simply become tools for political manipulation or to drive deeper fissures.

There has also been evidence of some vastly problematic motivations at play in the implementation of policies that were originally intended to correct past injustices. This increasingly became the case during the presidential term of the man from Nkandla, who is also seriously implicated in the criminal handing over of South Africa on a silver platter to his friends, the Guptas. It was also during his term that cadre deployment, which similarly started off with noble intentions, became a vehicle for state capture. Whatever criterion had originally been agreed upon for the deployment of skills and capacity flew out of the window.

Instead, opportunistically, race came to play a big role when it emerged that the Guptas, working closely with one Duduzane Zuma, had a hand in the appointment, briefing, and monthly retention of the erstwhile Bell Pottinger spin-doctoring firm that rolled out a racial stink bomb whose objective was to deepen the racial fissures of an already fragile social cohesion in the country, pitting races against one another and accusing the white minority of being responsible for everything that was wrong in the country, including the worsening socioeconomic conditions of poor blacks, despite the rise of an uncaring, corrupt, greedy, abusive, arrogant, and kleptocratic politically connected and shielded black elite.

The system of public tenders, also implemented with the pretext of enhancing black participation in the mainstream of the economy, similarly served to widen the gaps between the politically connected black elite on the one hand, and the growing hordes of poor blacks that remain chained to a system of government grants on the other.

If nothing changes, the term "failed state" will soon no longer be followed by a question mark when referencing South Africa.