One of the fundamental challenges of emancipation in South Africa is for the emancipated to avoid the conceptual trap of ascribing to the past of white racism centrality of explanation.

Every convention will outlive its validity.

The habit of looking at the spectacle has forced us to gloss over the nooks and crannies.

The conflict between material needs and inherited, if problematic, rewards on the one hand and political legitimacy on the other, can weaken individual moral resolve. This may transform a competent and proven struggle stalwart into a common corrupt official.

Attributing dissent to disloyalty too soon suggests insecurity and intolerance rather than internal organisational coherence. It suggests a reflex imposition of party discipline in place of understanding.

A government in power will need to create a safe space in the public domain where its own internal contestations can, from time to time, be played out without fear of being compromised politically. They can then withdraw into the formal sphere of power play and turn safe space understandings into decisions and in the process increase public trust.

This is the formidable challenge of a popular post-apartheid government. Can it conceptually anticipate a future when it is no longer overwhelmingly in control, and resist the temptation to prevent such an eventuality.

…no civilisation worth the name will emerge without the payment of disciplined and rigorous attention to detail.

The necessary political vilification of exploitation should be separated from the human triumph associated with work, a triumph which constitutes a positive value for the future.

…the rhetoric of protest began to replace the necessary commitment to engaging the forces of oppression through paying critical attention to the concrete social and political details of that oppression.

In reality, the recognition of a source of grievance does not necessarily imply that one understands a possible range of political implications which that recognition may entail.