Had we kept going and pushed harder as a nation in developing our capacities, in addressing our social and economic challenges, and improving the performance of our government across all spheres, we would certainly be in a much healthier state today. We would still have challenges, but of a different and confidence-enhancing kind than the debilitating ones we have at present. We are still battling with an economy that is growing at a glacial pace; we have many people who have potential, but are excluded from the economy; and our public services are far from becoming a force for progress.

Yet still we are in a better shape than our peers. The size of our economy aside, we perform better in many respects compared to some of the emerging economies that have received attention recently.

Despite their newly found global prominence, countries such as China, India, Brazil, and Russia suffer institutional and infrastructural weaknesses beneath the veneer of their economic muscle. In some of these countries, there are no transparent legal frameworks and no credible rule of law, and there are poorly developed market institutions.

The West is also not without social diseases. In major countries and regions such as the US and Europe, self-confidence has ebbed. According to a recent poll by Eurobarometer, citizens no longer trust the European Union institutions. Many of these countries are languishing under the dark cloud of the financial crisis, with budget and spending cuts a part of their life.

We have none of these problems and, in a sense, we should be doing well under a focused and serious leadership. We boast a credible, liberal constitution, enjoy freedom of speech, and we vote every five years in free and fair elections. We have all the elements that should make for a great country.

While we enjoy a relatively better existence than our peers in the developing world, we are not, as such, inspired by possibilities of a better future. All we see in the future are shadows without light. Our achievements today are a product of past efforts. There are big internal challenges that threaten to throttle the dreams we started off with in the early 1990s. Chief among these challenges are poor education, insecurity, growing corruption, high unemployment, and deepening social inequalities.

It is not the mere fact of having these challenges that make us worry; it is instead the fact that our leaders have abandoned the ship for lack of a moral compass.

Our major bane is the fact that, despite its majority, the ruling party behaves as if it is a wounded and powerless party. It is more at home toyi-toying on the streets than fixing the country. It is at its best when it rides the crest of its past glory and engages in shadow boxing with the ghost of apartheid.

Without a doubt, the Legacy of apartheid still engulfs us, and its marks are engraved in our spatial planning; the education system; inefficient public services; and race-based inequalities. The African National Congress (ANC) was brought to power with huge electoral support precisely to do away with these ills. Yet it has failed.

What it has failed to do is build a social pact on the basis of its own moral and intellectual credibility as well as on the strength of its governing programme. Leading through persuasion, knitting together diverse societal interests beyond the tripartite alliance, and skilfully implementing programmes that generate results would have cast the ANC today in a better light.

Without telling us how long it will take to turn the country around, the ANC pleads to be given more time in power — perhaps the same amount of time as colonial and apartheid rule combined. The problem is that the longer the ANC stays in power, the more things approximate the past. It is under the ANC rule that South Africa took over the inglorious mantle from Brazil as the most unequal country in the world, with education standards worsening, and unemployment increasing.

Resources that could have been utilised to dent poverty, improve infrastructure, and create conditions of economic prosperity went to finance an expensive and corruption-ridden arms procurement programme, estimated by some to have totalled in excess of R70bn. State resources are diverted to the pockets of ANC cronies through tenders.

Yet still the ANC blames apartheid for its failings. ANC supporters protest that those who criticise it do not offer solutions. My parting shot in this final column would be that if you remove the ANC from power, signs of change will emerge, and we may rediscover our greatness as a nation. The ANC needs that too, to rediscover its purpose.

This article appeared in the Business Day of 26 April 2013