This article focuses on the impact of several competing discourses on higher education (HE) policy formulation in South Africa in the post apartheid period. It argues that there has never been a strong consensus in the HE community regarding the content of a new policy framework. In particular, the analysis focuses on the limits imposed by the neoliberal macro-economic policy framework, "Growth Employment and Redistribution," which drastically reduced the new state's abilities to coherently steer and plan the fundamental reconstruction and transformation of HE. The article also examines the most recent phase in the development of HE policy, which has been largely to do with attaining institutional efficiencies through mergers--a key element of HE restructuring across the globe during the past two decades. The analysis concludes by arguing that this final phase is best characterised as a period of discursive stalemate. (Contains 1 table.)