Cash for talks as service delivery collapses
Organisers have been quick to label it as an 'investment', and a necessary step towards building a better South Africa.
But with deep social and economic challenges facing the country, many are questioning whether the money could have been better spent.
The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation was one of the organisations that initially called for a national dialogue, and has also raised concerns about the ballooning costs.
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Daily Maverick
11 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Seventy years on — understanding the Freedom Charter in changing times
Just as the Congress of the People — the way the Freedom Charter was created — was a process and not an event, the same is true of the charter itself. Its meaning was not finalised on the day of its adoption on 26 June 1955. The Freedom Charter does not have an obvious interpretation that stands in place from generation to generation. How we interpret the document is affected by where we are located, what our interests are in looking at the charter, what we hope for, and what resonates with the charter in terms of aspirations that people have for a better life. Obviously, the conditions — of any time — affect what can be done to provide basic needs and realise the aspirations of the charter. It's now 70 years since the Freedom Charter was adopted at the Congress of the People on 26 June 1955. There are still many things to learn about the charter, some of which entail what I would suggest ought to be a revision of how we understand the document. Just as we used to say that the Congress of the People — the way the Freedom Charter was created — was a process and not an event, the same is true of the charter itself. Its meaning was not finalised on the day of its adoption on 26 June 1955. Its meanings (in the plural) must be modified in different conditions as we grow and learn more and our democratic consciousness may develop. The first thing to notice is that the charter emerged from a process of extensive consultation, not simply from the president of the ANC saying that there was extensive consultation, as Cyril Ramaphosa does in relation to the National Dialogue. The Congress of the People process is now well documented, and the statements of participants testify to it entailing arduous consultations with people from all walks of life in order to access views from a range of classes and strata. (See Raymond Suttner and Jeremy Cronin, 50 Years of the Freedom Charter, 2006 and Ismail Vadi, The Congress of the People and Freedom Charter: A People's History, 2015.) The Freedom Charter was adopted as a consensual document, a consensus emerging from a long process of demands being heard and recorded and distilled into the short document that is accessible, and has remained part of many people's political development and part of their ways of evaluating the present and progress towards realising freedoms today. An example of changing meanings is with one of the key clauses of the Freedom Charter which reads that 'The People Shall Govern!', and until recently that was interpreted to mean that people would have the right to elect representatives to Parliament. It does remain the understanding of many. That is why in the book that I wrote with Jeremy Cronin, one has Dorothy Nyembe, who served 18 years in prison, saying about the Freedom Charter that the people were going to vote for Chief Albert Luthuli (then ANC president), Dr Monty Naicker (then president of the Natal Indian Congress and Dr Yusuf Dadoo (then president of the Transvaal Indian Congress) to lead them into Parliament. So the notion of 'The People Shall Govern!' entailed the realisation of its meaning through voting for Parliament, what is known as representative democracy. About 30 years later in the People's Power period of the UDF in a number of parts of the country, one saw people taking control of their own destiny at a local level, kicking out the police and Bantu Administration officials of the apartheid regime. They then created their own street committees, block committees and other projects of self-government at a local level with the meaning being similar to 'The People Shall Govern!', but at a local level and with the masses taking direct control. One of the people who was interviewed in this period, Weza Made from Uitenhage, said specifically that what they were doing with the People's Power period was to implement the first clause of the Freedom Charter, 'The People Shall Govern!' This illustrates what it means to give meaning to something like the Freedom Charter. The meaning of words must be constantly rethought in the light of new experiences. In striving for freedom, these become part of our understanding. In fact, one must give a new meaning in the context of the present where one has an election-centred notion of freedom. There may be diverse notions of what it means to exercise political freedom, and it need not mean that ideas of popular power ought to be suppressed or, alternatively, that representative democracy must give way to popular, direct democracy. We should see freedom as involving a combination of popular power and popular inputs into all organs of the government. Right now, there are limited spaces for popular inputs into legislation and other processes of government, and there is zero official space for popular, direct democracy. That is the official space, but there are unofficial spaces for the popular, notably inhabited by the shack dwellers' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo. There may be others who without publicity can be characterised as popular democratic sites. Representative and popular democracy are not antagonistic to one another if the meaning of representative democracy is to give voice to the voters who are not present in Parliament and other elected bodies, but have delegated the representative to carry out their interests, to re-present them in the organs of Parliament, as if they were there. The Freedom Charter and nation building In the Struggle against apartheid, much of the discussion and debate among comrades who were fighting for a free South Africa related to what was called the 'national question', or sometimes 'nation building' or what comprised a new nation. In thinking more about the Freedom Charter, I've come to believe that one of its key products was a contribution towards nation building. In the course of this short document, you have a number of propositions. These headings of parts of the Freedom Charter themselves comprise a vision of the new South Africa, that the charter and the people who made it believed should comprise what a new nation should be. What is useful for us is that these are not scientific categories in the main, but moral qualities that ought to inform us. The headings under which these political and moral qualities emerge are: The People Shall Govern! All National Groups Shall Have Equal Rights! The People Shall Share in The Country's Wealth! The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It! All Shall Be Equal Before the Law! All Shall Enjoy Equal Human Rights! There Shall Be Work and Security! The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened!' There Shall Be Housing Security and Comfort! Charterists and the role of the Freedom Charter in the Congress movement Those who supported the ANC-led liberation movement were often referred to as Charterists. That was one of the key bases for delineating who belonged in the Congress movement, who supported the leadership of the ANC and the UDF. In working on these lines of demarcation, the main thing was to convince the public that the Congress movement, as opposed to other movements, best represented their interests. The Freedom Charter would be alluded to as one of the bases on which that claim was made. But there was not room at that time for careful scrutiny of all the clauses of the charter and to give it meanings that had some authority within the organisations. I think this is true of a lot of ideas that were used to rally people and get people to rally behind a document like the Freedom Charter. This is not the same as giving it a definitive meaning. In some ways, that is a strength in that hopefully people start to debate the meanings of documents of the liberation movement in a time of peace. Unfortunately, that has not happened from what I can see. The Freedom Charter as a nation-building document The Freedom Charter emerged as a national project of the ANC and its allies. In that sense, it was a popular process of consultation to hear people's views as evidenced in the documentation of the Congress of the People campaign. On the one hand, it was a popular process, but on the other, it was part of national liberation, a project for building a new nation, a new nation with a series of values that it sought assistance in getting people to make their own preferences, expressing what worried them in South Africa at the time and what they saw as remedying the problems that they faced. The Freedom Charter is a nation-building document and does not go into details like a constitution, but it sought to elicit from people ideas as to what their future should be. It's a document that tries to join people and to find ways of binding people. That is why throughout the document one finds stirring allusions to the unity of the people and ways of joining people to one another. DM
IOL News
13 hours ago
- IOL News
EDITORIAL: It's game over for the DA in the GNU
DA leader John Steenhuisen's announcement that his party, including ministers serving in Ramaphosa's Cabinet, will not take part in the upcoming National Dialogue, is immaterial, argues the writer. Image: Armand Hough/ Independent Newspapers THE DA now has little to no ground to argue against the perception that the ANC has reduced it to a mere bystander in the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU). That is why President Cyril Ramaphosa can fire a DA deputy minister from his executive without being concerned about the political implications for his decision. From the start, the ANC has always been firmly in control of the direction the government takes despite failing to secure enough votes to govern the country as a single party in last year's elections. Ramaphosa knows all too well that the DA's desperation to remain in government runs so deep that it will not retaliate with severe action even when he acts against DA members in the executive. The DA was always going to find it difficult to impose itself in the GNU because it entered the coalition government for the wrong reasons. Its stated objective of keeping the EFF and Zuma's MK Party out of government plays into the ANC's hands. ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula's utterances that the government won't collapse even if the DA leaves the GNU should be seen as a declaration that the DA's involvement in the GNU is immaterial. Just like DA leader John Steenhuisen's announcement that his party, including ministers serving in Ramaphosa's Cabinet, will not take part in the upcoming National Dialogue. The DA must leave the GNU with whatever little pride it still has. Its role in opposition benches was more effective than it is in this current government. The past 12 months have proved this. Almost all the policies and Bills it opposed remain firmly in place and some of them will be implemented on behalf of the ANC by their ministers. Leaving the GNU will allow it to make a head start in campaigning to win some of the key metros that remain hung. It's there that it should demonstrate its governing strength. It can find inspiration from renowned Pan-Africanist Professor Patrick Lumumba's words when he correctly points out that: 'No matter how good you are…if you stay for too long, you spoil it. A good dancer must know when to leave the stage.' CAPE TIMES
The Citizen
13 hours ago
- The Citizen
KwaDukuza mayor and deputy-mayor resign under provincial party pressure
KwaDukuza municipality mayor Ali Ngidi and deputy-mayor Sicelinjabulo Cele resigned this afternoon under pressure from the provincial African National Congress (ANC). The decision was announced at a briefing in KwaDukuza following the meeting of a high-level delegation of senior provincial leadership led by ANC provincial task team co-ordinator, Michael Mabuyakhulu. Ngidi and Cele had been in the roles for just under eight months after being elected on November 5 last year. They have both handed in their resignation letters but will continue to serve until new leadership is elected. 'The ANC has committed itself to rebuilding and renewal. We have said that we will act in the interests of our people and our decisions are informed by nothing else but the interests of our people,' said Mabuyakhulu. 'Anyone has the right to interpret our decision as they deem fit, but we are consistent in the message that we put our people first' The party had previously launched an investigation into misconduct allegations at KwaDukuza following a series of scandals, including the hiring of vehicles for over R1-million and a monthly personal security bill for the mayor of just over R173 000. Ngidi and Cele have been asked to repay a portion of the funds used for car hire. They will only settle the expenses incurred before council formally approved car hire for them. The mayor, who was supposed to use one of the cars as a backup, will also need to repay the expenses for that period. Aside from these scandals, Ngidi presided over a disastrous period for the municipality. During his tenure, the municipality experienced widespread electricity blackouts between December and February and the highly-publicised embezzlement of R35.7-million in January, as well as strikes from hundreds of workers more recently. Separate investigators from the Special Investigating Unit, Department of Co-Operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) and National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) are all also on site in KwaDukuza to look into alleged mismanagement. Growing calls for resignation from civic society have added further pressure. Combined, it made for an incredibly difficult period in office for Ngidi after taking over from Lindile Nhaca, who was axed at the end of September last year. No date has been announced for the mayoral and deputy-mayoral elections, nor any replacement candidates. It took just over a month between Nhaca's suspension and the election of Ngidi and Cele last year. Stay in the loop with The North Coast Courier on Facebook, X, Instagram & YouTube for the latest news. Mobile users can join our WhatsApp Broadcast Service here or if you're on desktop, scan the QR code below. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
