The National Dialogue must be revolutionary and people-driven

IOL News

22-06-2025

Protesters take part in the defiance campaign, in June 1952, in Johannesburg, by occupying places for white people. The campaign against the apartheid regime's of racial segregation was launched on 26 June 1952 by the ANC and led to the Congress of the People where the Freedom Charter was adopted on 26 June 1955 in Kliptown.
Zamikhaya Maseti
The much-talked-about National Dialogue is indeed a national conversation we didn't know we needed until former President Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki called for it. President Cyril Ramaphosa must be saluted for heeding that call. This gesture affirms that our leaders still speak and listen to one another. It is a tradition of leadership that the younger generation must urgently emulate: speak truthfully and listen earnestly.
Accordingly, President Ramaphosa has announced that the National Dialogue will take place on August 15, 2025, at a venue yet to be disclosed. I will not pretend to be a seasoned logistician, but I would like to propose that Kliptown, Johannesburg, be considered as the location. I make this suggestion because Kliptown was the site where our great-grandparents gathered under difficult, illegal conditions on 25–26 June 1955, to craft a vision for a democratic South Africa.
Their gathering produced the Freedom Charter, a document that became a lodestar for the liberation struggle. Today, we face an equally historic task: rebuilding the South Africa that was born of their sacrifices. A nation now fractured and drifting, in desperate need of repair. More significantly, 25–26 June 2025 marks the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter. Holding the Dialogue in Kliptown would root it in the moral soil of people's struggles and remove the sting of elitism that so often surrounds state-led initiatives. It would strip the dialogue of unnecessary extravagance.
The original Congress of the People saw delegates arrive by bus, taxi, train some even on horseback. In that spirit, we must question the reportedly proposed R700 million budget for this dialogue. Such an amount is not only absurd; it is morally indefensible. I am relieved that the Presidency has rejected that outrageous and outlandish budget proposal.
As South Africans of all colours, classes, and convictions, we must ask the most strategic and politically relevant questions: What should be on the table? That is to say, what must be the agenda, and who defines it? Who should be at the table? Who sits where, and who speaks for whom? Are the working class, the agrarian working class, the landless masses of the people, and the unemployed adequately represented?
These are not rhetorical questions. They go to the very heart of the dialogue's legitimacy. We cannot assume that 'broad representation' will occur naturally or that it should be left solely to the Preparatory Committee. I do not claim to have all the answers, but I do insist that all South Africans must grapple with these questions.
A particularly troubling issue is the class composition of the Eminent Persons appointed to guide the process. By and large, they are drawn from the polished ranks of South Africa's middle class if not the elite. The rural poor and the agrarian working class are conspicuously absent. The assumption that the inclusion of traditional leaders covers their interests is false. Many of these institutions remain untransformed, misogynistic, patriarchal, and disconnected from the democratic impulses of the poor.
In short, the selection of Eminent Persons leaves much to be desired. Perhaps their exclusion reflects the disorganisation of rural voices, but that is no excuse. The National Dialogue must reflect the totality of South African life. It is ostensibly aimed at navigating South Africa through deep and interconnected crises: a crisis of governance, a crisis of political legitimacy, social fragmentation, and economic despair.
The critical question is whether this initiative is a bold act of national renewal or just another elite performance, obsessed with appearances while the nation quietly disintegrates. For the dialogue to have any integrity, it must begin with representative legitimacy. The poor, the unemployed, farmworkers, shack dwellers, and students still fighting financial exclusion cannot be passive spectators. The tragedy of South African democracy is that the people are so often spoken about, rarely spoken to, and rarely allowed to speak for themselves.
Will this Dialogue include the real South Africa, or will it be another exercise in managerialism, dominated by technocrats and polite middle-class professionals? The timing of this dialogue is not neutral. It must be seen in light of the failure of the political class to resolve the legitimacy crisis that followed the 2024 general elections. The resulting Government of National Unity (GNU), a patchwork of ideological contradictions, has failed to inspire public trust. This dialogue, then, risks becoming a substitute theatre, a democratic therapy session designed to manage anxiety rather than resolve it. If so, this is not dialogue it is deflection.
We must insist that the dialogue confronts structural questions: economic power, historical redress, and the unresolved land question. These matters cannot be handled delicately or deferred indefinitely. We must also address the scourge of bureaucratic unaccountability. Any serious conversation about building a capable and ethical State must begin with real consequence management for public servants who loot, obstruct, or undermine public trust.
This national dialogue must not be pacifying; it must be revolutionary. It must be uncomfortable, radical, and people-driven. It must speak to power, not for it. It must demand a reckoning with the nation's unfinished business.
We cannot afford a dialogue that dances around the contradictions of our society. We cannot whisper reform in a house already burning. The President may have opened the floor, but it is up to the people to seize the space not as polite guests but as the rightful architects of South Africa's democratic future.
If this Dialogue becomes another elite jamboree, it will bury us deeper in disillusionment. But if it becomes a genuine space for democratic reimagination, a re-founding moment, then perhaps, just perhaps, the Republic may begin to heal.
* Zamikhaya Maseti is a Political Economy Analyst with a Magister Philosophiae (M. PHIL) in South African Politics and Political Economy from the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), now known as the Nelson Mandela University (NMU).
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.