Criticism of the National Dialogue is necessary, but too heavily reliant on magic and myths

Daily Maverick

26-06-2025

Opposition to President Cyril Ramaphosa's National Dialogue initiative has continued to spread and swirl.
It is, in one sense, a good thing; people are engaging with the initiative, and a measure of distrust of the government is always necessary. That applies as much to governments we put in place, as to the opposition.
Setting aside the stock-phrase peddlers, the knee-jerk responses — and there is a serious problem with some of the responses — one of the standard responses has been that it is, or will be, a 'talk shop'. I have no major problem with that; it will be a talk shop, in the sense that we have to, actually, sit down and have a serious discussion about what has gone wrong in the country over the past two decades.
Justice Malala's response in the Financial Mail was strange, yet somehow predictable. I only recently discovered that he had decamped to the US. I am of the belief that there is a reciprocal relationship between societies and individuals forged through culture socialisation and institutions. In this sense, I should situate Malala's response, but not here, not now…
In fairness, Malala strikes the right notes, but then makes the fatal error of judging something that has not happened, not yet anyway. This might have to do with apparent predictive genius. Surely, we cannot say what has happened to something before it has, actually, happened. I shall remain happily confused and ignorant. The problems he identified are beyond dispute.
The big thing, at least to me, is that he is correct about that thing I tried to spread when I was in the secretariat of the National Planning Commission over four years or so.
It's quite simple, I told public servants in local, provincial and national government. You start by not confusing ambition with achievement. Holding a meeting or establishing an inter-ministerial committee is not an achievement. You have to start somewhere, though. This brings me to a second response (among several) to the National Dialogue.
One of the responses that I found disingenuous, is the statement by the former president of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber, Loyiso Dotwana, that 'we do not need to 'unpack' our social and economic problems, yet again. We know what they are. What we need is capable, competent, skilled and experienced people implementing solutions.'
It has a nice ring to it, innit!
There are two difficulties I have with this; one is ideological and the other is practical.
Pragmatism as a ruse
The ideological has to do with the terribly weak notion of pragmatism as somehow the abandonment of ideology.
Pragmatism, such as it is, is actually very much an ideological position and sits most comfortably with liberalism and more especially with the endism of the early 1990s.
That was when liberal capitalism was presented as triumphant, and the end-point of human (social) evolution. According to its proponents, this was part of the end of ideology, and that end-of-history nonsense.
One of the better examples of 'pragmatism' presented as non-ideological is Singapore (much loved by people who believe that the prime desideratum of all human endeavour is to make money, build flashy skyscrapers, shopping centres and housing developments), where pragmatism essentially meant obeisance to liberal capitalist fundamentalism and authoritarian governance – and from the outset taming or co-opting organised labour…
Singapore's sycophants would conveniently ignore the period of effective one party-rule (this is undergirded by the belief that ideas and ideologies are simply in the way of making money and 'making a living', which is, actually, precisely the ideological foundations of liberal capitalism, and its place among the transnational capitalist class).
There has been a raft of scholarship on Singapore's transnational capitalist class affiliations which is most prominent in its relations with Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea.
That country gets high on 'macho-meritocracy' and 'value-neutral technocracy' and outright Chinese dominance, which has since its inception sidelined and overwhelmed the native people of the Malay island. In a terribly racist statement, Lee Kwan Yew has said that Singapore was not ready for a native person to be prime minister! (See 'Are We Ready to be Colour Blind?' The Straits Times, 17 November 2008.)
This is an important part of the research and ethnographic work I have been doing in South East Asia over the past two to three years (and more than 10 visits since 1991).
For what it's worth, none of my visits to Singapore were funded by the government, which has spent a fortune on junkets and 'educational' visits and tours, mainly, it should be said, so it may curry favour with other countries, and along the way deflect from the injustices at the base of the erasure of the Malay population, first by the British and continued by the Chinese settlers.
Never mind the racism or Chinese supremacy; as long as there is money and glittering skyscrapers it's all good. Or, as one (Chinese) interviewee told me in March 2025: 'We don't mind corruption or [illiberalism] as long as there is development.'
There's a lot more, from de facto one party rule from 1968 to 1981, the continued dominance of the People's Action Party, and how it has contributed to an 'insulated process of policymaking' and public caning as a form of judicial punishment. This is decried (rightfully) as barbaric when it is done in Muslim countries, but it is perfectly acceptable in Singapore because nothing should stand in the way of making money or building the next skyscraper — not even a Sikh holy place or shrine…
The practical element and wilful blindness
I should not spend too much time on the practicalities issue. Dotwana is correct in that we know what our problems are, and as he wrote 'what we need is capable, competent, skilled and experienced people implementing solutions'. So far so good.
Except, capable people, competent people, skilled people and experienced people do not appear magically from the ether. Implementation does not happen magically either. The writer throws shade with the use of the term 'unpack' (I get that), but public policy-making and implementation do not occur mystically.
When, for instance, there is talk about evidence-based policy-making, which comes with its own liberal and/or free market ideological baggage, someone has to actually read and discuss the evidence; the facts and the significance of such facts.
Employing capable, competent, skilled and experienced people includes vetting processes, which do, unfortunately, take time. The best appointments aren't always the best people, as we know from cadre deployment — includes deployments by the Democratic Alliance!
So, all things considered, questioning Ramaphosa's National Dialogue initiative is fair and necessary. But attempting to steal the moral high ground through tiresome slogans reproduced from liberal capitalist orthodoxy cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged.
It is more a sign of intellectual laziness and wilful blindness. I am nowhere near the centre of public policy-making, but I know the difficulties there are with making public policy (global and national) under choking conditionalities and resistance — especially the powers that are at play in the process.
We can, of course, just avoid talking about the country's problems and wait for capable, competent, skilled and experienced people to show up (magically), and things to fall in place (magically).
Ultimately, making the country more prosperous, more stable, with high levels of cohesion and trust among the population will not occur without direct intervention — not unlike the highly interventionist Chinese government of the Malay state of Singapore. DM