In short
- HSRC survey data show support for restitution increased across all generations between 2016 and 2025, with the national Restitution Index rising from 52 to 57.
- Gen Z recorded the biggest shift, with agreement that South Africans should “forget the past and move on” dropping from 67% to 44%.
- Young adults increasingly support restitution measures, including dialogue, accountability and action to address historical injustices.
- Findings suggest continued public backing for restitution-oriented policies and challenge calls for race-neutral approaches to inequality.
Ten years after the HSRC’s South African Social Attitudes Survey first measured public support for restitution, the 2025 round shows significant shifts across every generation. There is a striking turn among Gen Z adults, almost a quarter of whom have moved away from wanting to ‘forget the past’. The findings complicate current calls to ‘sunset’ racial terminology in South Africa.
Young mourners, enraged by the massacre of 16 June 1976, march at the Doornkop Cemetery in Soweto at the burial of the victims. Photo: Alf Kumalo, african.pictures
A few weeks into Donald Trump’s second, non-consecutive term as US President, he began vociferously ‘sunsetting’ much of the past 50 years of programmes aimed at diversity, equality and inclusion. Similar calls have surfaced in South Africa: to retire racial terminology, to scrap Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) rather than strengthen it, and the ever-present injunction to ‘forget the past and move on’.
But what does the South African Constitution – which invites us to “recognise the injustices of our past … heal the divisions of the past, and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights” – ask of us? And what do South Africans, especially the young, think about restitution 32 years into democracy and 50 years after the June 16th student revolution of 1976?
What the 2025 survey asked, and of whom
To find out, the HSRC’s South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) – a nationally representative study – repeated in 2025 a restitution module first fielded in 2016. Respondents were asked to agree or disagree with five statements covering post-apartheid compensation, a voluntary restitution fund, demands for restitution, dialogue between black and white South Africans, and the call to ‘forget the past’. Their responses were combined into a composite Restitution Index on a 0–100 scale, where higher scores indicate stronger support across these 5 dimensions of restitution. Nationally, the mean rose from 52 in 2016 to 57 in 2025, with support climbing across almost every segment of the population. The generational story is especially striking. See Table 1.
A generational turn
In 2016, two-thirds (67%) of Gen Z adults – those born between 1996 and 2012 – agreed that South Africans should ‘forget the past, move on and stop talking about restitution’. In 2025, the figure had fallen to 44% for these Gen Z youth, now aged between 14 and 30 years. This drop of 23 percentage points was the largest shift of any group measured. Over the same period, Gen Z’s score on the Restitution Index overall rose from 49 to 61, reflecting an increasing interest in restitution.
Responses in other generations moved too, but less dramatically. Born Frees (1980–95) rose from 54 to 61; the Struggle Generation (1960–79) from 52 to 60; and those born before 1960 – the Grand Apartheid cohort – from 49 to 57. The direction was the same for every cohort: toward accountability, engagement and redress. But Gen Z, who have lived the shortest time under democracy and will have the longest time aware of its unevenness, led the turn.
Younger South Africans are also not simply rejecting ‘forgetting’ – they are actively supporting action. By 2025, 63% of Gen Z adults agreed that it was essential that all white South Africans take action to repair the damage of the past (up 13 points from 2016); 62% endorsed black South Africans demanding restitution (up 18 points); and 63% said small-group dialogues between black and white South Africans should decide what is fair (up 18 points). For a generation often accused of being disengaged, the data tell a different story: young South Africans want to talk about restitution, and they want to see concrete restitutionary action.
Table 1. Shifts in support for restitution by generation, 2016–2025 (% agreeing and mean Restitution Index score 0–100)
Source: HSRC SASAS 2016 and 2025 restitution modules
Race, class and geography still matter
The generational picture did not eclipse other fault lines. Racial divides endured most strongly. Black African adults continued to show the strongest support (Restitution Index of 63 in 2025), while white adults remain the least supportive (46) – although an 18-point climb among white adults suggests minds are changing, if from a lower base. Coloured adults recorded one of the largest gains (+16 points). Indian respondents showed more modest movement and were the only group to increase their agreement with ‘forgetting the past’.
Class matters too. Those who self-rated as ‘poor’ or ‘just getting by’ registered the highest support across every measure. The non-poor, while they have shifted in a pro-restitution direction, remain most inclined to want to ‘forget the past’. Unsurprisingly, material deprivation continues to inform stronger demands for restitution, rooted in the lived experience of inequality.
Why this matters for policy
These findings form one strand of a forthcoming book chapter (State of the Nation, HSRC Press) on five indicators of unfinished transformation, alongside a race-disaggregated Human Development Index (which places white South Africans at HDI rank 22 of 193, black South Africans at 139), the slow pace of land restitution, modest gains in employment equity, and stalled apartheid-era prosecutions. Across all five, the work of transformation remains unfinished.
The 2025 data make a policy argument that is easily missed in the noise of the ‘sunsetting’ debate. South Africans are not tiring of restitution: quite the opposite, they are becoming more willing to engage with it. And that willingness is most concentrated among the South Africans who will live longest with the consequences of what is decided now. Sunsetting racial terminology would not only turn away from the historical facts that persist – in life expectancy, earnings, land ownership, and accountability – but also from the very generation most willing to carry the work of restitution forward.
These race-based inequalities in “the ability to lead a long and healthy life … to acquire knowledge … and to achieve a decent standard of living” need to remain firmly in public consciousness and central to public debate, particularly at a time when race-neutral policy approaches are increasingly presented as sufficient responses to historical inequality.
The Constitutional preamble invites us to recognise injustice and to heal. The generation now entering adulthood is telling us – clearly and at scale – that they are ready to accept that invitation. These findings suggest continued public support for restitution-oriented policies.
Research contacts and acknowledgements
This Review article was written by Prof. Sharlene Swartz, divisional executive in the HSRC’s Equitable Education and Economies research division, and Dr Benjamin Roberts, a research director in the HSRC’s Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division. For more information about this work, please contact Prof. Sharlene Swartz at sswartz@hsrc.ac.za.
The SASAS 2016 and 2025 restitution module was fielded by the South African Social Attitudes Survey team in the HSRC’s Developmental, Capable and Ethical State research division, coordinated by Dr Benjamin Roberts.
Special acknowledgement: We extend our sincere thanks to african.pictures for granting access to its image library, which is dedicated to “Africans telling Africa’s story” by licensing and preserving authentic African visual archives while supporting African photographers, media organisations and heritage institutions to share the continent’s stories with audiences around the world.
