Calling for BEE's abandonment and deracialising transformation deliberately obfuscates the fact that economic exclusion was race-based and the impact of this continues to reverberate around the country.

The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) held a roundtable discussion titled "Age of Identity Politics?" last week. On Monday I received a copy of the remarks framing the core issues of identity politics by Mistra's executive director and one of South Africa's foremost thinkers and strategists, Joel Netshitenzhe.

The ending of his inputs on the day's discussions really resonated with a document I had received last week. "The social capital that attaches to the liberation and transformation identity has largely been squandered," Netshitenzhe wrote.

"Activism around the legitimacy of affirmative action and broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) by the successful beneficiaries of these policies... is hardly visible. The trauma of having historically been consigned to the status of inferiority seems to have been aggravated.

Keep up with the latest headlines on WhatsApp | LinkedIn

"What is required to revive the energy towards forging a South African nation, united in its diversity and in pursuit of social justice, is the exercise of social agency.

"The elites and ruling classes across the globe are exercising their agency with much force and confidence. They have generated a trickle-up economics... characterised by wealth excess and political corruption - all the while corralling the working people towards social self-immolation.

"A common human identity should...