It is sometimes hard for people to understand why South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) failed to build a substantially prosperous and successful society during the three decades it ruled over the country. The country had, after all, a wealth of resources, skills, and infrastructure that was the envy of its emerging-market peers. A few days ago, senior ANC politician Naledi Pandor provided just about the clearest answer you will ever hear.

Pandor was on a podcast and, given that she was once the country’s most senior education official, was asked to comment on a university that is being built in South Africa.

That university is called Akademia. It was established in 2012, with just 40 students, by the Solidarity Movement, which is a chiefly Afrikaner trade union and civil rights group in South Africa.

From those small beginnings Akademia has grown in stature and reputation and a substantial project is now being undertaken to expand its facilities. That expansion is projected to cost R3.2 billion and will see the construction of a new 220-hectare campus to accommodate 5 000 undergraduate students, 2 000 postgraduate students, and 1 500 residential students. The first students are expected to move onto the new campus in 2028.

No taxpayers’ money is being used to develop the university, with all funds raised privately from the broader community as an investment in the future of their children and grandchildren, so that these might live good lives in a future South Africa and contribute to the country’s success.

That is just about the most positive and impressive thing you’ll read this year.

But Pandor was damning of the project. She called it unacceptable and said it would allow progress through private institutions and entrepreneurship. She urged the state to crack down to block the project, saying South Africans were "far too complacent with our freedom".

Over the years that her party was in government, we judge that it spent around R20 trillion on education. On a per-capita basis, it spent more per pupil than its emerging-market peer averages (and presided over nearly 30 public universities). 

Because of mismanagement, corruption, and ideology those funds were squandered to a significant degree. Comparative studies regularly place South African children at the bottom of global reading and maths and science rankings. A substantial share of children cannot read for meaning. Just five in every 100 children will get a good enough maths pass to set them up for a middle-class future. It is common to read of fraud and corruption around South Africa’s education spending.

It would not be way off to say that the one thing holding South Africa’s children back above all others is the state schools they are forced to attend. It is the poor quality of the education they get there that explains why half of South Africa’s young people are unemployed.

And of those nearly 30 universities, how many did the government build over the past 30 years? The answer is two, and both of those were ensnared in allegations of corruption and tender fraud and produce results so poor that no parent would willingly send their child there.

Education is the most important thing there is. Societies, communities, and countries that invest in it invest in their future – they literally build a better future for generations that will come after them. It is amazing that any person could be damning of the building of a university, therefore, let alone demand it be torn down. Just think of the toxicity of the mind that sits behind that.

South Africans are not like that. This newspaper will poll the question later in the year but would already bet that the overwhelming majority of South Africans will say that what is being done to build the expanded Akademia university is great – and that they wish that the government would learn from the example and be inspired by it to do the same.

The investment to build Akademia, and what South Africans would think of that, versus Pandor’s call for the state to break it all down is the crucial juxtaposition. The juxtaposition is especially strong given the enormous wealth the government could have invested in education. Those who invest to build a future and those who break things down: you will not see a better explanation of why the ANC lost the country.