Despite the fact that the commitment to position South Africa as a developmental state has been part of the strategic policy objective for the transformation of the state and governance for some time now, the discourse on the concept is enmeshed in misconceptions. It is distorted and conflated with other concepts. Much of what is bandied about as signifying a developmental state is not consistent with the authoritative scholarship on the conceptualisation of the concept. The discourse largely lacks epistemological insight. It dangerously displays little understanding of the originative historical context of the concept. The paradigm from which the discourse on a developmental state is framed is porous, so much so that the concept is used to mean anything that its users want it to mean. A few examples of misconceptions inherent in the contemporary discourse on theorising South Africa as a developmental state are that it is a 'demo