This research report comprises two parts: a theoretical introduction and a long-form
journalism piece “Tracking the progress of an elusive South African dream.” The overall
work seeks to understand one of the biggest challenges post-apartheid South Africa faces -
achieving economic transformation, a process through which wealth of the country can be
shared with all its people. The theoretical component explores the concept of economic
transformation and describes various economic indicators, such as Gini coefficient and
unemployment figures, in order to determine what these metrics are saying about economic
transformation in South Africa. The long-form journalism piece incorporates all these
different facets of economic transformation and economic indicators to examine how this
important post-apartheid project is being monitored and in what ways. The long-form piece
describes my journey of attempting to find answers to these two questions – what is
economic transformation and how should it be measured? What the long form piece describes
is that the concept of economic transformation still rests mainly on the governments’ policies
around Black Economic Empowerment. Many experts however, believe that this in it self
will not lead to the Utopian dream the constutution sets out to achieve. The paper also finds
that measurements around the use of BEE and inequality, conflict with one another making it
difficult to track the real progress of this transformation.