Given their mutually horrific historical backgrounds, what can South Africa and Rwanda learn from each other's successes and failures?

I have had numerous opportunities to undertake research and teach in several parts of our continent. Among these has been South Africa, which I have visited often in the past 30 years.

Most recently, I had an opportunity to travel to Rwanda after several years of absence from the Great Lakes region of Africa, and after reading scholarly works on the country for many years, I was so impressed by the country's transformation since the genocide.

The visit prompted me to write this short reflective piece focusing on what South Africa could learn from Rwanda, and conversely.

Calamitous histories as the backdrop

Thirty-one years ago, the political curtain came down on apartheid South Africa, and 1994 ushered in what has become a neoliberal democratic order. The new republican dispensation liberated all South Africans, but most resolutely removed the scourge of subjugation and restored citizenship rights to black people.

Liberated and democratic South Africa under the ANC government has made advances in many areas over the past three decades, before the ANC's electoral fortunes waned. However, the ANC-led government has had great difficulty in revitalising the economy and meaningfully reducing the country's deep economic inequality, except for a sliver of Africans...