Richards Bay becomes a potential energy hub for Africa due to port infrastructure development

As South Africa moves into the future, a key question remains: how to reimagine the economic landscape to empower the black majority and ensure sustainable success for future generations? The black majority in South Africa has held political power for thirty-two years, yet it has accumulated significantly less economic power necessary for genuine national transformation. This is not a critique of democracy itself, but rather a description of an incomplete task.

Although the country has become very adept at responding to racism—by discussing racist remarks, acknowledging historical injustices, challenging symbols, and reviewing apartheid crimes, which is often justified—there is another question that deserves equal urgency: what are we building? Political liberation alone does not generate economic power. Economic power is not merely about having jobs; it is tied to owning productive assets, controlling capital, creating companies, generating intellectual property, shaping institutions, influencing markets, and possessing the purchasing power that dictates what the economy produces.

The example of Eskom illustrates this problem. If Eskom is assessed solely through the lens of profit and loss, its fundamental purpose—development—is overlooked. Established as the Electricity Supply Commission in 1923, Eskom was created in industrializing South Africa to provide electricity, a vital input for economic growth. Its initial mandate was closely linked to expanding mining, railways, industry, and the economy as a whole.

Electricity has never been just a consumer good. The built environment sector understands this deeply: construction, manufacturing, digital infrastructure, and Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies transforming design and facility management all depend on a reliable power supply as a basic resource. Power outages did not just inconvenience households; they delayed construction projects valued at 47 billion rand since 2019, stalled industrial potential, and pushed back digital transformation timelines by years.

Of course, Eskom must be financially sustainable, efficiently managed, and accountable for the use of public resources. However, judging a development-oriented institution only by whether it makes money risks confusing means with ends. A more critical question is whether reliable and accessible electricity allows South Africa to produce more, employ more people, build more businesses, and become more competitive. The modern economy cannot function without abundant and reliable electricity, just as the strategy for black economic advancement cannot.

This leads to an uncomfortable reality: Black South Africans constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, but demographic superiority has not translated into equivalent economic power. According to the 2022 South African census, the black population accounted for 81.4%. Nevertheless, household income and wealth remain deeply unequal across races. This is not just an issue of consumption inequality; it is an issue of ownership and productive capacity.

A society can have millions of consumers without having millions of asset owners. This distinction matters. Consumption drives the movement of the economy, while ownership determines its direction. When a Black household buys goods from a multinational corporation, it participates in the economy. But when a Black enterprise produces those goods, hires workers, owns intellectual property, and retains profits, it exercises economic power. These are different things. Therefore, South Africa must broaden its definition of transformation.

Transformation cannot be measured solely by the number of employed people, the number of graduates entering the labor market, or the volume of social welfare spending. These factors are hugely important, but transformation must also ask: Who owns the productive economy? Who owns the enterprises? Who owns the intellectual property? Who owns the land and productive assets? Who controls the capital? Who creates the technology? Who owns the media platforms through which South Africans understand themselves and their economy?

The last question is particularly crucial because economic power and narrative power are closely linked. The black majority in South Africa does not control a comparable mass media ecosystem that reflects its demographic weight. SABC remains the country's most important public broadcaster, but its financial vulnerability has repeatedly threatened its public mandate.

This is important because the media does more than just report reality; it helps determine which issues become national priorities. The same logic applies to knowledge production. Knowledge in the South African built environment—its design standards, software systems, accreditation frameworks, and research infrastructure—is still predominantly shaped by Global North institutions. Black South African engineers, architects, and construction specialists train using curricula developed elsewhere, use foreign software, and build careers whose intellectual products are cited and valued outside the country.

Epistemic ownership is inseparable from economic ownership; it is one of its foundations. Recent public events have demonstrated that South Africa's historical narrative remains actively contested. But the more significant question is not whether history should be remembered—it must be remembered—but whether Black South Africans are actively involved enough in creating the institutions through which their own history is told. If we do not build institutions capable of telling our stories, others will continue to define the national conversation for us.

This also explains why the historical argument is relevant. South Africa's economic structure did not suddenly emerge in 1948. Apartheid intensified and institutionalized racial capitalism, but many foundations of the country's unequal economic order were laid during colonial conquest and the development of the mining economy even before the National Party took power. Systems of labor migration, racial land ownership, spatial segregation, and unequal access to education and capital have a history predating apartheid. Recognizing this is not an exercise in historical accusation; it is necessary to understand why the political changes of 1994 alone could not erase centuries of accumulated economic advantage.

The democratic state inherited an economy where ownership, capital, and productive assets were already highly concentrated. Three decades later, the question must be asked: was our transformation strategy ambitious enough? Perhaps it focused too heavily on redistribution after wealth creation, and not enough on creating new sources of wealth and ownership. Perhaps we spent too much time on how Black South Africans could access the existing economy, and not enough on how to build an economy where Black South Africans are the owners, producers, and providers of capital.

This is especially relevant for townships. Townships are often discussed primarily through the lens of poverty, unemployment, and service provision. But they also represent massive markets. They contain consumers, entrepreneurs, skills, informal businesses, and social networks. The challenge is to convert township purchasing power into productive capacity. Instead of simply asking how the government can increase spending in townships, we should ask how most of that spending can contribute to business development, asset building, and productive capacity within these communities.

How do we turn consumers into shareholders? How do we help informal businesses become formal, scalable enterprises? How do we create financial systems that recognize township entrepreneurs as economic actors, not perpetual beneficiaries? How do we ensure youth are trained not only to compete for jobs but also to create intellectual property, companies, and technologies? How do we build digital construction skill pipelines that make township contractors competitive in a procurement environment increasingly demanding BIM, digital project management, and structured data handover?

An infrastructure portfolio worth 395 billion rand slated for procurement represents an economic opportunity for township construction firms, but only if these firms possess the digital capabilities to participate in tenders and execute public contracts. These are far more complex questions than identifying a racist, but ultimately, they may be more important. There will always be people seeking to provoke, exclude, or humiliate Black South Africans. We cannot build a national economic strategy around reacting to every provocation. At some point, initiative must replace reaction.

The goal should not be the creation of prosperity for the black population as a tool of racial exclusion. The goal must be the construction of a broader South African economy in which the majority possesses sufficient economic strength to participate meaningfully in determining its direction. This requires electricity that supports industry; infrastructure that connects people to markets; education that prepares creators, not just employees; financial institutions willing to fund new ventures; media institutions capable of creating independent narratives; companies able to move from township markets to national and international markets, and, above all, a cultural shift from access to ownership.

South Africa has spent 32 years asking whether democracy provided enough. Perhaps we should ask a different question: have we built enough? Because the future of the black majority cannot indefinitely depend on government redistribution, corporate transformation assessment systems, or reacting to the latest racist provocation. Political power has changed who governs South Africa. The unfinished question is who owns, builds, and shapes its future. And for a scholar specializing in the built environment who has spent their entire working life asking why our townships remain spatially isolated from economic opportunities thirty years after liberation, this question is not abstract. It is work.