A revered activist who was politically and romantically involved with the late Steve Biko has launched a party to challenge the governing African National Congress (ANC) and "rekindle the South Africa of our dreams".
Mamphela Ramphele said that dream had faded for people who endured poverty and inequality, the threat of a return to traditional rule in rural areas and a broken education system that had gone backwards since the end of racial apartheid.
"Our society's greatness is being fundamentally undermined by a massive failure of governance," she said at a launch event on Monday at the historic women's jail at Constitutional Hill. "Our country has lost the moral authority and international respect it enjoyed when it became a democracy."
The 65-year-old said her new organisation would be called Agang – "Let us build", in the Sesotho language – and would contest national elections next year.
Ramphele, who spent seven years under house arrest during white minority rule, was among the founders of Biko's black consciousness movement. The pair fell in love and had a daughter, who died aged two months, and a son, born after Biko was killed by apartheid police in 1977.
What Biko would think about today's South Africa if he had lived, and how he would respond, is a perennial subject of debate. "He would have been disappointed, as I am, that the country of our dreams is yet to become a reality in the lives of ordinary people," Ramphele told the Guardian.
"He would have been as committed as I am to put up his hand to make sure that we mobilise South Africans to build this country of our dreams and to make ours a modern, thriving 21st-century democracy."
Ramphele, who is not married, dismissed as "preposterous" the notion that she was Biko's political torchbearer. But she added: "There are those of our generation who remember not only with our minds but with our hearts, and I believe Steve Biko's imprint on my generation of activists is indelible. It is a rich heritage from which we are drawing. The fact that I'm able to engage with South Africans across the party political, colour and cultural divide is a tribute to the consciousness-raising that we all worked on.
"I don't have any inferiority complex against anybody, nor do I have any grudge against anybody. So I feel I am in a position to encourage other South Africans to put the country first. Let us self-identify as South Africans, not this shameful status right now where less than 10% are able to say 'I am a South African'. We can't talk about black consciousness. We must talk about a South African consciousness."
Others have tried and failed with parties that made only a small dent in the dominance of the 101-year-old ANC. Ramphele said she was starting small with an "energetic team of five", and was vague on how the party would be funded. Some believe she may succeed only in dividing the opposition by taking votes from the Democratic Alliance (DA), which has been expanding its reach to the black middle class.
Ramphele said she had never been a member of a political party and never aspired to office, but it was time for her generation to stand up and rekindle the ideal that "the people shall govern". Where had the country gone wrong? "The fundamental failure of governance," she replied.
"We fought this struggle so the people can govern. Instead we landed with an electoral system that took away the accountability for who gets elected to parliament, who keeps them accountable, who monitors their performance in relation to the promises they make.
"Instead of the people governing, party bosses are governing, that's the fundamental flaw. So you can have a corrupt person being reappointed to either a government position or a parliamentary position because there is no cost, no accountability."
She announced a campaign for electoral reform, which she said should be the first order of business of the next parliament.
Ramphele has worn many hats: medical doctor, social anthropologist, World Bank managing director and university executive. She recently stepped down as chairwoman of the mining company Gold Fields. But she denied being a member of the out-of-touch elite. "It is really important not to define me by a narrow window of one thing that I do," she said.
In her presentation she invoked the "tears of joy and relief" the nation felt at Nelson Mandela's inauguration as South Africa's first black president. Asked how the Mandela of 1994 would feel about the state of the nation now, she said: "Absolutely disappointed because I'm very close to him and I know that we have had several conversations, and he would be the first to acknowledge that he failed, but the fact of the matter is that failure is not a problem, the problem is what do we learn from failure?"
With Mandela set to turn 95 this year, she feels it important to move on. "We have to learn as a country to transcend Mandela's leadership, not because we don't celebrate it but, like all people, even in a family, you can't keep being defined by what your father says. A sign of adulthood for us as a country will be when we are no longer dependent on struggle heroes to define who we are. We should be free to make the choices that make sense, that put South Africa first."
The ANC "noted" the announcement but said Ramphela's speech offered nothing new. "The criticism of the ANC is a failure to acknowledge that many of the challenges were not created by the ANC," said a party spokesman, Keith Khoza. "It is historical. Any party that won elections would have faced the same societal issues in education, health, housing and so on."
Mmusi Maimane, a spokesperson for the DA, said: "Dr Ramphele shares the DA's core values of non-racialism and constitutionalism, and her move is another step in the long process of realigning South African politics around these values."
A group of ANC heavyweights split off in 2008 to form the Congress of the People and performed well in elections the following year but has since all but imploded amid infighting and wrangling.
Ramphele said Agang was currently a "party political platform" because it was still in a consultative phase.
More than 35 years after his death at the hands of the state, she still misses and loves Biko. "Of course," she said. "That never dies."