This is former finance minister Trevor Manuel’s keynote address at The Gathering: Twenty Twenty-Four.
I would like to provoke a discussion about where we are on the journey to remaking the interactions between ourselves and the transformation of society.
So let me start with a “nostra culpa”. My generation stands accused of walking away from an incomplete transition.
Perhaps we considered that the adoption of the Constitution was an end-point, not fully realising that rules needed to be scribed and institutions built. Or perhaps it was just that the struggle had been too long and arduous, and that we would resolve the incomplete business in the fullness of time. Or perhaps it was that in our youthful enthusiasm, our political education was focused on the “withering of the state”, leaving too few texts on statecraft.
Whatever the reason, we should have an honest discussion about the aspects that remain undone. My contention is that it will never be too late for that discussion. Curiously, when we were assigned the task of convening a National Planning Commission, we saw it as an opportunity, to re-energise a discussion about constitutional values, some 14 years after the Constitution was first adopted.
When we adopted the Constitution we were very pleased that the Preamble describes us as “freely…
