By 1994, South Africa faced immense problems: mass unemployment, a majority without secure ownership, a state-engineered skills deficit, and deep inequality. Emerging from Soviet rule in 1991, Estonia’s liberation-moment inheritance was as grim as South Africa’s, with poverty, corruption, and institutional weakness. Estonia’s ranking for economic freedom leapt from 92nd in 1990 to consistently the global top-ten level by the end of its third post-liberation decade. South Africa, which in 1998 had a similar ranking at 32nd, ranked 72nd in the world by 2022. South Africa’s tragedy is not that time ran out for an innocently naïve ANC, but that three decades of opportunity were wilfully squandered.