Political: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a decision aimed
at unity rather than imprisoning thousands of white people. Photo: File
In South Africa’s political history, national dialogues have been celebrated as tools of reconciliation and critiqued as expensive talk shops.
From the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of the 1990s to the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture, public conversations have promised to heal the nation’s wounds — but often left citizens asking whether they changed anything in their daily lives.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is betting that this year’s National Dialogue will succeed where others have stalled. In his State of the Nation address in February, he urged citizens to play their role “in building the nation we want”.
“I call on all South Africans, united in our diversity, to come together in the National Dialogue to define a vision for our country for the next 30 years. The National Dialogue must be a place where everyone has a voice. It must be a place to find solutions that make a real difference in people’s lives.”
Ramaphosa’s ambitious plan is to create a new social compact after 30 years of the transition from apartheid. A preparatory task team, steering committee and inter-ministerial task team have been set up to guide a process that aims to include 13 000 community and sectoral dialogues and 50 000 citizen-led dialogues at a ward level.
But the initiative suffered a blow when — before the first national convention on Friday expected to gather 1 000 delegates and set the agenda for the local discussions — several legacy foundations withdrew from the preparatory task team, citing a non-inclusive and rushed process.
“What began as a citizen-led initiative has, unfortunately, in practice shifted towards government control. In pushing forward for a convention on 15 August at the will of government officials and against the advice of the sub-committee chairs, we believe that a critical moment in which citizens should be leading will be undermined,” they said in a statement.
The dialogue is meant to build on the National Foundations Dialogue Initiative, launched in 2016 by a coalition of legacy institutions honouring figures such as Robert Sobukwe, FW de Klerk, Desmond and Leah Tutu, and Albert Luthuli. Its aim was to “mobilise all citizens to participate in the process to determine their destiny” and “define a clear vision and establish a unifying programme” for South Africa’s democratic renewal.
The foundations insisted the process must be citizen-led, with former president Thabo Mbeki cautioning “the ANC NEC [national executive committee] against any attempt by itself, or the GNU [government of national unity], to try to take over the National Dialogue”.
The foundations criticised the lack of a clear rollout plan for the grassroots dialogues that were meant to follow the convention, warning that without them, the event risked becoming “more performance than participation”.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) was the first to signal its boycott of the dialogue in June, after Ramaphosa fired the party’s deputy minister of trade, industry and competition minister, Andrew Whitfield. DA leader John Steenhuisen called the dismissal “excessive”, noting that several ministers implicated in wrongdoing by the Zondo commission remained untouched.
“Frankly, the president cannot even dialogue meaningfully with his own coalition partners, so there is little point in pretending there is any substance to an ANC-run National Dialogue,” he said at the time.
Although Mbeki labelled the DA move as “misplaced and very strange indeed” in a letter to Steenhuisen claiming the initiative as his brainchild, his own foundation has since acted similarly.
If the preparatory process is anything to go by, the first national convention will probably be fraught as delegates scramble to set the agenda for discussions, keep the process transparent and petition funds for local dialogue events. Ramaphosa rejected calls to postpone, insisting the event should go ahead on Friday.
“The national convention must happen so that South Africa’s people can take ownership and control of the National Dialogue. Invitations have gone out to organisations across the country, and delegates are preparing themselves to attend the convention. It is at the national convention that the people of South Africa will take over and run with the National Dialogue process,” he said.”
Officials say the R740 million budget figure cited by critics as excessive will be finalised only after the convention, depending on in-kind contributions and donations. The presidency has stressed that the process will comply with the Public Finance Management Act, with Unisa offering venues free of charge.
Trade union federation Cosatu supported the move, despite noting “legitimate concerns” from the foundations. Cosatu’s parliamentary coordinator, Matthew Parks, noted the foundations had withdrawn only from the preparatory task team, not the dialogue itself, and pointed out that, unlike unions or churches, the foundations do not have members nor represent a formal constituency.
But Cosatu warned against repeating the same route of similar reviews and discussions previously held, including former president Kgalema Motlanthe’s High Level Panel Review that concluded in 2019 — which the union says has been left to gather dust in parliament.
“We don’t want a talk shop, we want concrete action,” Parks said.
The dialogue must agree on fixing state capacity, accelerating growth, tackling youth unemployment, expanding artisanship and maintaining the social relief of the distress grant, he said.
But he argued that dialogues have been more effective than people are willing to admit. “We have a tendency to de-campaign our victories,” he said, citing examples such as improvements in tax collection and some high-profile corruption prosecutions after the Zondo commission. The question is whether the National Dialogue will build on such incremental gains.
Regarding the TRC, Parks said the choice not to begin democracy by jailing swathes of white people for their apartheid wrongdoings was a political decision, but cautioned that a similar reluctance to confront corruption today would doom the dialogue’s credibility.
Civil society organisations have also staked their claim to the process.
Anzio Jacobs, of the Civil Society National Dialogue Caucus, acknowledged disappointment at the foundations’ withdrawal but insisted this should not derail momentum. “Civil society must accentuate its watchdog role. We cannot allow this event to be another wasted moment.”
Jacobs believes South Africans want “radical reform” from the dialogue — including rapid responses to service delivery failures through stabilising electricity and water supply. He conceded that political grandstanding was inevitable but maintained that the 86 000 civil society members across the country would use it as a vehicle for change.
Zaid Kimmie, of the Foundation for Human Rights, said dialogues were different from commissions, which he defined as quasi-legal platforms to uncover the truth and make recommendations. In both cases, though, what happens afterwards is a collective responsibility, Kimmie said.
“National dialogues tend to be treated as political performances rather than a genuine attempt at resolving any issue. This doesn’t mean that they do not work, but if they are reduced to a single event where only the bare modicum of consultation takes place, then they are doomed to irrelevance,” he said.
“A truly inclusive process would allow for many hundreds of events where people are allowed to respond to various positions or options. So we need to kick off with issues that need resolving and come up with some concrete potential solutions.”