Dealing with all the issues facing South Africa is a matter of profound importance. It is difficult to see what a focus on race offers in doing so. In raising the costs of doing business, race policy has made it more difficult. And it incentivises racial thinking - helping to turn it from South Africa's great abomination to a source of cynical pride.
Former public protector Thuli Madonsela, widely respected for her work in that office to hold the line against official malfeasance, recently took up her cudgels in defence of something that is evidently very dear to her heart. Social justice, she argues, needs to be at the heart of policy and governance. In her view, this requires placing emphasis on group identities.
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