The country’s current debate over land expropriation without compensation, which has now been endorsed by Parliament, is important. Not because, as some fear, it will radically change the constitution. Rather, it tells South Africans how, in the economy and other spheres, the country deals with its minority ruled past: by crisis followed by compromise.
Crises are the only way change happens because, since the 1970s, the goal of the minority which has called the shots in the society for decades has been to ensure that changes alter as little as possible.
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