From 1910 South Africa practised a social democracy that was racially exclusive in character. Within that setup, public enterprises dominated the national political economy landscape. As a result, liberation movements' struggles were informed by socialist rhetoric and after assuming power in the 1994 national elections, the democratic government adopted a development-oriented approach that was later entrenched in the democratic dispensation in terms of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996. Despite the constitutional provision of suffrage and contrary to the expectations of many South Africans including the ruling party's constituency, the democratic government drifted from the socially-oriented Reconstruction and Development Programme to adopt "non-negotiable" macro-economic policies ranging from the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), Accelerated Shared Growth for South Africa (AsgiSA)