South Africa faces many complex problems. However, many of them are not new. Of late, the debate has been dominated by inequality and race. Every day now we analyse, dissect and fight over these issues. It feels as if we are back in the 1980s or 1990s again. There is a lot of analysis but few proffer solutions. There is a lot of shouting but nothing that points to what the next step is.We moan, as if we were not in power. Those who sit in the Union Buildings join students to moan about high university fees, and the lack of movement in ensuring access and free education for the poor. They do this despite the fact that they have been in power for 21 years.Why haven't they used the power legitimately given to them by the people to change things?Writing about the recent student protests, academic and philosopher Achille Mbembe asked: "If everything 'must fall', then what exactly must stand in its place? Unless we extend our imagination and properly articulate what "must stand" in lieu of what will have been overthrown, we might end up privileging the politics of ruin over a genuine politics of creative emancipation."He is absolutely right. Where are the creative solutions to inequality, to unemployment, to racial discrimination?Let's start with some history. In the late 1950s everyone loved the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania. They loved it even more in the 1960s. And why not?When it came to analysing the plight of the black man and woman under apartheid, the PAC was outstanding. Its charismatic leader, Robert Sobukwe, searingly dissected the state of the nation in a way not many ANC leaders - from Nobel prizewinner Albert Luthuli to young firebrands Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela - were able to.The PAC was justifiably angry and its leaders moved crowds with militant slogans and radical rhetoric. However, its anger never translated into a policy that could convince the rump of black South Africans to back it.By the 1970s it was a shadow of its former self, rent by factions and divisions.In the 1990s, after its unbanning, it remained mired in analysis to the extent that it was paralysed. It knew what was wrong but never advanced any solutions. It had no policy with which to move its analysis into the realm of reality. It offered no future.In the 1970s Stephen Bantu Biko led the Black Consciousness Movement into the centre of South African politics. Its influence led to the 1976 student uprisings and forced many young people into exile.In the wake of the murder of Biko by the apartheid regime in 1977, the Azanian People's Organisation was formed and dominated liberation discourse well into the early 1980s.Virtually every leader of the Mass Democratic Movement of the 1980s - from Cyril Ramaphosa to Mosiuoa Terror Lekota - had some BC background.The Black Consciousness Movement's analysis of the plight of black lives under apartheid was on point. It was justifiably angry and it was eloquent about it. Yet it never managed to put forward a convincing plan for change - given the complexities of South Africa and the world - that convinced South Africans to back it.The PAC and Azapo were amazing analysts. But they were poor at coming up with workable solutions to the problems they analysed.Biko and Sobukwe's analyses are quoted extensively in race debates today. Together with Frantz Fanon, these are the most influential thinkers on race over the past six decades in South Africa.As it was in the 1950s and after, though, there is copious analysis but few, or no, solutions. Why?Much of the debate on inequality and race in South Africa seems to be borrowed from intellectuals in the US, where blacks are a minority and have suffered centuries of slavery and discrimination. Although South Africa has suffered apartheid and its numerous effects, our trajectory is different.In South Africa a liberation movement, the ANC, is in power.If there is anything I would like to see come out of our current debates, it is acknowledgement that we are now in power and with that power we should formulate policies that begin to solve our problems.If we don't, we are just like the many who came before us: talking, and talking, as if we were still in chains and in the minority.Nelson Mandela used the power he was given to the best of his ability - within the constraints of the South Africa he led.Thabo Mbeki tried to turn Sobukwe's Africanist dream into reality despite the limits imposed by the global pressures he and others faced.What are today's leaders, and the many moaning analysts who attend them, doing to use the power they have?..