The recent spate of instances of conflict and scandal, ranging from universities to communities to Parliament and the Union Buildings, underscore how far we are from the 1994 vision of a peaceful, inclusive and just nation. The wounds from divisions linked to class, ideology, region and race risk overwhelming the sticking plaster of reconciliation. In many ways, conflict arises from the tension between a democratic political system, where everyone is equal, and an economy that remains among the most unequal in the world. That conflict became harder to manage when the commodities boom ended in 2011, bringing slower growth, fiscal constraints and large-scale net job losses. Mining alone has lost 15% of its total employment, or about 80,000 jobs, since 2012. The contradiction between political democracy and economic inequality has never been secret. From 1994, the government argued that democracy could not survive if economic benefits still went disproportionately to the wealthy, even ...
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