32 years on, the promise of a better life rings hollow

Thirty-two years ago, South Africans were promised a better life for all. That promise is now measured not by slogans, but by the daily reality of unemployment, failing services, and a political culture that too often rewards impunity.

In the early years of democracy, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was sold as a near-sacred blueprint for transformation. Yet it was sidelined quickly. By 1996, the government had pivoted to Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), a macroeconomic strategy intended to stabilise the economy, cut the deficit, and reassure investors. It read well, and it was marketed well. But for millions, the central test—work and rising living standards—never followed at anything like the scale required.

Many of the leaders who midwifed democracy—on both sides of the old divide—have exited the main stage. Some now posture as elder statesmen, attempting to reclaim the moral authority they once enjoyed. But the country they helped shape is frayed, and it is hard to take comfort in official insistence that “we have done well” when everyday life tells a harsher story.

South Africa has spent years—and billions—on commissions that describe wrongdoing in forensic detail. The Zondo Commission on State Capture reportedly cost about R1 billion. Yet, for ordinary people, the most visible outcome has been frustration: high-profile accountability feels slow, selective, or absent. New inquiries, including the Madlanga Commission, add to the sense that we are excellent at diagnosing rot—and far less capable of removing it.

The pattern is old. The Arms Deal remains a foundational lesson in how alleged corruption can outlive consequences. A few convictions occurred, but the broader message endured: powerful networks can survive scandal, inquiries, and time. The Seriti Commission (2011–2016) came and went. Lawyers billed. Politicians moved on. And communities learned, again, that accountability is not guaranteed.

Meanwhile, the governing party speaks fluently about fixing the economy, crime and service delivery—while struggling to confront dysfunction and corruption within its own ranks, or to manage alliances that blunt reform. Grand projects are announced, but basics lag: water interruptions, electricity insecurity, crumbling roads, and municipalities that cannot deliver consistent sanitation or housing. The gap between the political class and poor households is no longer a perception; it is experienced as daily abandonment.

Statistics South Africa’s multidimensional poverty indicators underline what many already know: deprivation is concentrated among low-income households, especially in informal settlements and rural areas. In practice, the poor are systematically excluded from the infrastructure that enables health, safety and economic participation. If the best government can do is keep people mired on welfare, then South Africa is in trouble. 

Education barriers entrench inequality

Education is another fault line. Poor communities often see lower attendance where children must work or care for siblings. Many learners complete fewer years of schooling, and schools are frequently under-resourced—lacking libraries, laboratories and qualified teachers. Poverty limits education, and limited education reproduces poverty.

Unemployment is tightly bound to this cycle. People with little schooling face far higher rates of unemployment, and many who do work are pushed into the informal economy with few protections. Female-headed households experience markedly higher poverty levels. This is not individual failure; it is structural exclusion from stable, well-paid work.

Apartheid-era geography still shapes opportunity. Many poor communities remain far from economic centres, with inadequate transport, safety risks and weak local development. Where you live continues to predict your access to jobs, quality schools and reliable services.

Children carry the heaviest burden: inadequate nutrition, unsafe housing, limited early childhood development, and weak schooling outcomes overlap and compound. Even where income measures improve marginally, many households still report that their income does not meet basic needs. Three decades later, we have children being taught under trees or dying in pit latrines, which is an indictment of the government. Why is the South African Human Rights Commission not holding the government accountable to the constitution?

Today’s discrimination against the poor is less often written into law than embedded in systems: spatial planning, broken local administration, unequal schooling, and labour markets that exclude. These forces reproduce inequality across generations.

Stats SA’s money-metric poverty findings (Income & Expenditure Survey 2022/23 and the Poverty Trends report) estimate that about 23.2 million people lived in poverty in 2023—around 4.1 million fewer than in 2006. Extreme poverty (below the food poverty line of R777 per person per month in 2023 prices) declined from 27.4% in 2006 to 17.6% in 2023, leaving about 10.8 million people still food-poor. KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, North West and Limpopo remain the hardest hit, collectively home to nearly 60% of South Africa’s poor. The numbers show movement, but the poor number millions, making one wonder whether we have anything to celebrate.

President Cyril Ramaphosa returned to Mangaung, the birthplace of the ANC (1912), speaking about dignity and a life free from fear and violence. Sounds more like a man performing the last rites than inspiring hope. The words are easy. Credibility is harder to maintain with inaction, because dignity cannot coexist with collapsing policing, persistent political patronage, and a state that struggles to protect those who expose corruption. He is as unconvincing as an undertaker assuring one that a corpse will rise again. 

The unresolved killings of whistleblowers and anti-corruption officials deepen public fear. Babita Deokaran’s murder remains a national scar. Before her, Jimmy Mohlala was murdered in 2009, in a case linked to tender corruption. More recently, South Africans have watched reports of officials such as Simo Mncwabe (a threatened CFO), Kenneth Mamosadi (Boxing SA CFO, 2024), and Mpho Mafole (Ekurhuleni’s head of forensic audits and investigations) being killed. The list, as we know, is growing faster than one can see any action. 

Government cannot keep paying lip service to crime while families are slaughtered and cases drag on without answers. When horrific murders occur—such as the killing of seven members of one family in Newark, KwaZulu-Natal—people understandably ask what “a society free from fear and violence” means in practice. In that context, calls to debate the death penalty resurface. Whether one supports it or not, the real indictment is that citizens are driven to extremes because they no longer trust the state to provide safety and justice. When that fails, anarchy comes from lawlessness, surely? To right the wrongs, what are the rights of the victims if killers are emboldened by the government?

After three decades, many ask whether democracy was worth it—it was. The question is why the governing class treated accountability as optional and the poor as an afterthought. Until corruption is punished, services are restored, a safer society is created, and jobs become more than a talking point, the “better life for all” will remain what it increasingly sounds like: a broken promise.

Edwin Naidu is head of Higher Education Media Services. 

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