A subscriber asks: did the ANC truly deliver in its early years, or was it a happy accident? James Myburgh and Richard Tren field the question. James lays out the National Democratic Revolution’s four phases, the gutting of the civil service in 1996 and 1997, the 1999-to-2004 Goldilocks years, and the mining charter and Eskom failures that caught up with it. Richard then explains why apartheid South Africa did not have a free economy and the growth that came after the end of apartheid simply came from scrapping race laws.