Although it is not uncommon to hear the view expressed that the South African government has good policies on paper but has failed many times in their implementation, it is less often that we examine the possibilities that such policies might be flawed in their very approaches (that is, before their implementation even begins). The chapters in this section allow us to consider such a possibility in relation to a set of diverse topics, offering detailed accounts and assessments of the evolution of policy (and its relation to concrete practice and lived experience). As we read the accounts of skills development, the state of education and health sector transformation, the politicisation of senior appointments in the public service, and male circumcision, we are able to develop a deeper understanding of the crises being faced in each of these areas of experience and engagement, allowing us to move beyond merely repeating the observation that the state lacks the capacity to implement policy (which it admittedly often does). These chapters draw our attention to some of the major blind spots, points of mismatch with lived reality, and areas of neglect that characterise policies that guide contemporary efforts to address persistent problems and needs.

Stephanie Allais kicks off this section with a close analysis of skills policy, identifying key problem areas, and relating developments in the sphere to international debates with the aim of ‘building a conceptual language as well as an empirical base’ from which to evaluate South African skills policy. She offers a brief history of skills development in the country, emphasising clear failures of the key strategies adopted in the post-apartheid period, including the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and the system inaugurated by the national skills levy (levy-grant system), followed by a survey of international approaches (in the ‘developed’ world) to the question of expanding and improving the vocational skills of national populations. She suggests that at least four major factors contribute to the persistence of low levels of skills in South Africa: economic inequality and job insecurity; a poor school system; ‘the tendency of the NQF towards low-level fragmented skill’ with ‘cumbersome’ related requirements; and ‘a contractualised provision model which does not provide a framework for building public provision’, worsened by difficulties of implementation.