Economist W.H. Hutt criticized South Africa’s apartheid but argued that unconstrained majoritarianism combined with capital mobility could result in instability that could make previously oppressed groups worse off even with elections—due to the likely emergence of a populist strongman. Thus, his work stands as a powerful free-market critique of discrimination and a precursor to subsequent research on the critical importance of institutional design in transitional democracies seeking to overcome colonialism’s legacies.