What are the most significant developments – political, social, economic – in South Africa since 1994? How much has changed since the demise of apartheid, and how much remains stubbornly the same? Should one celebrate a robust democracy now two decades old, or lament the corrosive effects on political life of factionalism, greed and corruption? This book tries to answer such questions, and does so by avoiding simplistic or one-sided assessments of life under Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma. It recognises real advances under ANC rule, but it also identifies the limits and contradictions of such progress. It shows, too, how the country’s past permeates the present, complicating and constraining the politics of transition, so that genuine transformation has been short-changed.