The paper reviews the extent to which South Africa is meeting set goals, within the context of
the ‘dream’ of becoming a developmental state. I revisit my previous works which had
suggested that South Africa was a ‘developmental state in the making’. The plans of creating a
(democratic) developmental state in South Africa feature in many policy documents of the
government and the ruling African National Congress, although lately the emphasis appears to
be on the pursuit of a so-called ‘capable state’ – ideally, a developmental state is a capable
state too because various capacities are required for a state to be an effective developmental
state. The notion of a developmental state is, arguably, all-encompassing in a sense that the
vision of what post-apartheid South Africa was envisaged to be is effectively encapsulated in
the developmental state framework. It is in this context that the paper examines aspects of an
‘unfinished business’ towards attaining the much aspired for developmental state, especially
two decades after the dawn of democracy in South Africa. The conclusion reached is that South
Africa is still very far from being a (democratic) developmental state and South Africa’s dream
of becoming a developmental state appears to be getting deferred. A theoretical perspective is
advanced as to why that is the case