President Cyril Ramaphosa’s newly announced national dialogue is already turning out to be a misunderstanding at best, or a train wreck at worst.
In its proposed form, and in the makeup of its eminent persons group, it aims to reimagine South Africa and perhaps even redraw it. That’s a mistake because, for many of us who have been calling for a clear, bold pact between the ANC and the DA since last June, the aim was an able, nimble, decisive and goal-orientated coalition government.
If we think of South Africa as a school, it needs enthusiastic, qualified, hard-working teachers, a visionary principal and pupils who are improving and heading towards a higher goal every semester and every year. What Ramaphosa has done is to announce a process to rewrite the school syllabus over several years. Inevitably, this academic exercise will take forever and may deliver little or nothing.
As structured, this national dialogue is more of the same malaise of the past 16 years: we convene, we make grand plans, but we don’t do anything that produces real results. We should stop this habit of thinking that meetings, conferences and summits are “real work”. They are not. Our meetings should be measured only by their results: is there less poverty, are there more jobs, is crime under control, have shacklands been eradicated?
There is nothing fundamentally wrong about the pact that South Africa struck in 1994. The dream of a united, nonracial, nonsexist and democratic South Africa is a glorious thing. The fact that we have stumbled in making that vision a reality, particularly since 2009, does not diminish its humanity and glory.
What South Africa has lacked in the past 16 years is a government that delivers on that 1994 dream.
In the years between 2009 and 2024, the ANC could not reform itself enough to deliver that vision. That is why, on May 29 2024, the people of South Africa deprived it of the majority that would allow it to continue to govern on its own.
This is where a clear set of aims and objectives, of priorities and programmes, is needed. The GNU has not been tasked with giving us a new vision of South Africa. It is tasked, primarily, with running a clean and efficient government that prospers within the parameters of the assembled parties’ manifestos.
The country does not need a treatise on the idea of a car. It needs a driver to take it from the point A of unemployment and poverty to the point B of prosperity
What is needed now is a “how and when” document, not a “who or what are we” document. We are beyond the philosophical arguments. We are tired of them. The country does not need a treatise on the idea of a car. It needs a driver to take it from the point A of unemployment and poverty to the point B of prosperity.
Coalitions are built all over the world all the time now. They succeed when they agree on a road map of what needs to be done first, who will do it, what the time frame is — and what clearly articulated results they are aiming for. Our GNU has failed to do this, hence the announcement of a national dialogue that will be years in the making while our urgent problems remain or most likely get worse.
Why did the presidency choose what will be a long, expensive and misdirected talk shop instead of negotiating a crisp, clear programme of action between the 10 coalition parties? Just three of these parties command the support of more than 65% of the electorate. It’s more than enough of a mandate.
No-one has asked the GNU to rewrite the constitution. The electorate has asked it to agree on a programme to run the country and turn its fortunes around. Voters have asked it to be Temba Bavuma and the Proteas — not rewrite the rules of cricket but perform in such a way that the country wins and is proud of its government and of itself.
You don’t need a national dialogue for that. This dialogue will be remembered for being a bit like the government’s wasteful tenders to spray empty classrooms with dodgy chemical products during the pandemic.
Ramaphosa can correct course now. He should. But he won’t.
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