This book has long been in the making. I have been meaning to write it for over a decade but work pressures, new jobs, alternative research projects, and deferred sabbaticals all conspired against it. So, when the opportunity for a sabbatical emerged at the end of my first term as deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Johannesburg, I had no doubt as to how I should spend the time. For many years, I have been immersed in academic and public discourse about South Africa and its future. The book is, therefore, a culmination of at least two decades of debates, reflections and thoughts about resistance in South Africa, its political and socio-economic evolution, and the conundrums and dilemmas related to the making of this society. In many ways the book is about how we got to where we are, why our present is not what we had hoped it would be, and what we need to do about it.

I see myself as both an academic and an activist. Although some may view these as separate endeavours, I have always seen them as mutually compatible. Indeed, my decision to take political science as a subject in my undergraduate years was motivated by a belief that this would enable me to better address the challenges that my compatriots and I confronted as activists. Of course, this didn't work out in the way I had imagined it might, but the academic grounding provided by my undergraduate and especially my postgraduate studies, were essential in developing my understanding of my country and world.

This book therefore reflects both of these facets of my life – academic and activist. The debates I engage with in the book occur both within the academy and in the broader public sphere. In my view, newspapers and magazines, as well as academic journals, are of intellectual relevance, and I therefore challenge, support and reference political leaders and activists as well as academics in this text. But the book is unashamedly scholarly. Although some suggested that I strip the book of its academic debates and theories, with a view to broadening its readership, it seemed to me that this would undermine one of the central purposes of writing it; namely, to bridge academic and public discourse in order to enrich each with the reflections and debates of the other.