While it may be impossible to return to the hopeful optimism of 1994 when everything seemed possible, even within the hard contemporary fiscal boundaries and political dysfunctionality, there remains considerable scope for policy manoeuvre in South Africa, write Greg Mills and Ray Hartley.
There is one key indicator that illustrates uniquely how far the fortunes of South Africa and others in the African sub-continent have plummeted while the world has comparatively prospered. South Africa's share of global per capita Gross Domestic Product has been halved since 1960, and sits today at just 54%.
That means that South Africans are half as rich as they were six decades ago, about the time that Southeast Asia began its spectacular development rise. Asia started from the same level as Africa in 1960, and while its average GDP per capita is now greater than the global average, Africa's has fallen to just 15%.
