With an election nigh, the temptation is great to concentrate on the shortcomings of the last two decades. Think of widening inequality, our poor education outcomes, worries over elected officials undermining government institutions and the damage caused by government’s Aids denialism of the previous decade. Various cases of corruption and many missed economic opportunities stand out.

The fact remains: there have been many positives too. The lives of many previously disadvantaged people have changed irrevocably. We have a growing black middle class and many black role models in the public and private sectors to inspire young black children to aim ever higher and achieve more. Crucially, we have seen the back of apartheid broken, along with its ability to subjugate workers where homelands could no longer subsidise the reproduction of cheap labour. A new labour regime was chimed in, which afforded workers world-class protections, but also came with a responsibility to help steer the economy to greater heights.

Generally, there remains much to be done where our future asks of us to cooperate, rather than to retreat into our different laager. This is as valid when it comes to race and ethnicity, as when it comes to our involvement in business, labour, civil society or government. Most will agree that implementation is where we have failed most and, in this regard, there is a litany of acronyms that never delivered to expectations: the RDP, GEAR, the GDS, ASGISA, the NIPF and Ipap, the NGP and the NDP counting among some of them.

The challenge is to not get bogged down with scandals and not to fixate on banalities. We need to show some original thinking and confront whether we currently have the correct institutional hardware to support healthy economic policy implementation and promote the achievement of realistic growth and employment targets. For instance, is it healthy that government should regard itself as a ‘constituency’ and that labour and business cannot align around common interests, in their sectors, or even at industry, company or factory level?

If we allowed ourselves to concentrate on what unites us across fault lines, rather than how we remain apart, we can right many ills that remain. That counts as much for the state of our economy, as it does for the state of our nation.