South Africa still obsesses over “the struggle” and its heroes. The words appear in speeches, songs and political campaigns. They summon a time when the moral lines were clear: apartheid was evil, resistance was necessary and those who sacrificed their freedom — or their lives — deserved to be called heroes. That history should not be trivialised. But history can be honoured so mechanically that it becomes an alibi for failing the present. The uncomfortable truth is that “struggle” and “heroes” no longer match South Africa’s reality. Yesterday’s vocabulary is being used to avoid today’s work. Heroism is still imagined as defiance, mobilisation and the seizure of political power. But the country’s present crisis is different — the state, after being captured politically, has too often proved incapable of converting authority into learning, safety, infrastructure, productive work and human dignity. South Africa must choose between two struggles. The tsotsi struggle is the struggle inside a low-growth distributional power balance. Groups compete for access to a stagnant pool, while weakened institutions protect the brokers. Political factions fight over appointments. Businesses lobby for privileged access. Unions defend insiders while millions remain outside employment. Communities compete for housing lists, tenders and public posts. Everyone speaks of transformation, but the underlying pool of opportunity barely grows. In this struggle, victory means getting a larger portion of scarcity. It does not mean ending scarcity. The brokers thrive because access matters more than production. A connection can be worth more than competence. The politically protected supplier, official, employer or criminal can impose costs without carrying the consequences. Institutions weaken, trust collapses and capable people leave or learn to accommodate the system. The tsotsi struggle is real ― it is a struggle over the carcass. Yesterday’s vocabulary is being used to avoid today’s work. Heroism is still imagined as defiance, mobilisation and the seizure of political power. But the country’s present crisis is different. The struggle for justice is the struggle for a developmental inclusion. Here, capable institutions lower the cost of producing. Reliable electricity, water, transport, policing and administration allow households and firms to plan. Broad participation expands the pool through learning, enterprise, investment and employment. Fair consequences make co-operation rational because honesty is no longer punished while failure and theft are rewarded. This second struggle requires an aggressive reform coalition. Not another ceremonial social compact where political, business, labour and religious leaders agree that unemployment is regrettable and promise to “work together”. South Africa has no shortage of summits, plans or visions. A proven approach to a reform coalition is an enforceable alliance around a narrow programme: professional public appointments; reliable infrastructure; foundational learning; pathways into first work; competitive enterprise; fiscal responsibility; transparent procurement and real consequences for corruption and persistent failure. Its members need not share an ideology. They need to accept reciprocal duties, measurable commitments and accountability when they do not deliver. This changes what we should mean by politics, growth and renewal. New politics matters if it changes appointments, incentives and accountability. A new party, coalition agreement or president that leaves patronage intact is not new politics. It is a new cast performing the old play. Growth matters if it creates accessible productive work. An economy can grow while young people remain stranded far from jobs and excluded from the networks through which opportunity travels. Growth that enlarges profits without widening participation may stabilise balance sheets, but it will not stabilise our society. Renewal matters if it produces truth, restraint, restitution and service in public life. Renewal that fills auditoriums but leaves bribery, exploitation, factional loyalty and conspicuous greed untouched can be populist, not national renewal. Reform must eventually appear in a ledger, an appointment, a wage, a returned asset, a protected whistleblower or an opportunity given to someone without connections. The decisive agent is therefore not a heroic president, enlightened business class or mobilised citizenry acting alone. Each can contribute; none can carry the country. The decisive agent is a disciplined reform coalition that can make the constitutional order work in daily life, defeat or absorb resistance and compound its credibility through delivery. Its heroes may not look heroic in the old sense. They may be municipal engineers who restore water; principals who ensure children can read; prosecutors who follow evidence regardless of faction; business leaders who open markets instead of buying influence; leaders who hold their own accountable; and politicians willing to appoint competent people they cannot control. South Africa does not need to abandon the history of struggle. It needs to tell the truth about how the struggle has changed. The new frontline is the contest between extraction and production, brokerage and capability, protected failure and fair consequence. The new liberation is freedom from a system that distributes scarcity while calling it transformation. The new heroes will be those who build the coalition that makes reform stronger than resistance — making progress visible in ordinary life. • Oosthuizen, a former faculty member at the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria, is co-chair of scenarios at the World Energy Council.