Political economist Moeletsi Mbeki explains the fracturing of the ANC, and why the DA needs to break with its own philosophical core.

When Moeletsi Mbeki speaks, it is with the measured certainty of someone who has seen the cycles of South African politics repeat themselves. In my recent interview with him, Mbeki wasted no time tracing the roots of the country's political malaise back to 1994.

"The African middle class took power," he began, "and their biggest mistake was to focus on developing the middle class instead of the black masses." African, coloured, Indian, poor and working class - they had decided to focus on developing the welfare of the African middle class through two policies: Black Economic Empowerment in the private sector and affirmative action in the public sector. Initially the ANC had sold this strategy as aiming for the advancement of all the black people, but the coloureds and the Indians soon realised that they had been left out. That is why they joined the DA, he said.

The result was an ANC that "has alienated, first the coloured population, the Indian population, the white population, and now they have alienated the mass of the African population. So...