Civil society group enter labour party case
Among the organisations joining the case are the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation and the Strategic Dialogue Group.
Labour Party Interim President Joseph Mathunjwa has described their involvement as a desperate political manoeuvre, aimed at shielding what he calls a 'collapsing elite consensus' from constitutional scrutiny.
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IOL News
3 hours ago
- IOL News
South Africa's human rights crisis: Calls for action ahead of National Dialogue
Amnesty International South Africa has asked President Cyril Ramaphosa to invest the money allocated for the National Dialogue in the protection and fulfilment of people's rights. Image: Supplied / GCIS Civil rights organisation, Amnesty International South Africa, has urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to redirect the R700 million allocated for the National Dialogue. The organisation advocates for this budget to be invested instead in safeguarding and fulfilling the basic human rights of South African citizens. Ramaphosa formally announced the National Dialogue last month. It is intended to be a platform for reflection on the nation's current state, envisioning its future, and establishing the foundation for the upcoming National Development Plan. The process, scheduled for August 15, 2025, will unfold in phases, including local consultations and sectoral engagements, to provincial and national gatherings, over the period of a year. Ramaphosa also pointed out that this is a chance for South Africans to shape the next chapter of democracy, adding that it is an opportunity to forge a new social compact for the development of the country. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ While South Africa's transition to democracy years ago was a landmark event, the country continues to grapple with significant challenges stemming from its past and present realities. Despite progress in some areas, deep-seated issues such as poverty, inequality and unemployment persist, often linked to the legacy of apartheid and the slow pace of land reform. Furthermore, corruption and state capture have undermined public institutions and service delivery, impacting basic services like water, electricity, and healthcare. Amnesty International South Africa's executive director, Shenilla Mohamed, said that while nation-building and social cohesion are important, the government should ensure that the budget allocated does not come at the expense of addressing the country's most pressing challenges. 'Most of the country's population lives in dire conditions and do not have access to basic essential services such as water and sanitation,' said Mohamed. 'Repeatedly, we hear people complaining of raw sewerage flowing through townships, inadequate housing, poor medical services, lack of quality education, high rates of gender-based violence, crime, and the list goes on. To address these violations and ensure the fulfillment of basic human rights, we need more government action and increased investment,' she said. Asked to comment on the statement, Ramaphosa's spokesperson Vincent Mangwenya did not respond. Amnesty stated that, despite a progressive legal landscape, rates of sexual and gender-based violence remain staggeringly high, with the number of reported offences in 2023/2024 sitting at 53,285, adding that the South African Police Service continues to fail in ensuring quality investigations. The group also highlighted the situation of human rights defenders and whistleblowers who have been killed with impunity. 'Yet these are the brave individuals who expose acts of criminality and abuse by government, corporations and people in power. While South Africa is in the process of strengthening whistleblower legislation, there is no legislation for the protection of human rights defenders. A human rights defender is anyone who, individually or in association with others, acts to defend and/or promote human rights at a local, national, regional, or international level.' The organisation said that when it comes to basic services, over 3 million people have no access to basic water supply service, while 5.3 million households do not have access to safe and reliable drinking water. 'Decades of corruption and the mismanagement of public funds have weakened the government's ability to safeguard the country's water security, especially in the face of climate change and extreme weather events. Climate change is another threat to a wide range of human rights and will continue to impact the rights to life, health, housing, water, and sanitation. Without proper investment in climate-resilient infrastructure, we will continue to see destruction and loss of life during floods and other extreme weather events. 'There are a number of ways to spend R700 million. We urge the South African government to invest it in the protection and fulfilment of people's human rights,' said Mohamed. Meanwhile, political analyst Professor Sipho Seepe said the National Dialogue is a costly distraction meant to give the impression that Ramaphosa's administration is doing something. He said this is all about smoke and mirrors, something that Ramaphosa has mastered and perfected. 'The National Dialogue has no legal and constitutional standing. Its recommendations are not legally binding. To that extent, it is just another talkshop that is meant to cover up Ramaphosa's glaring failures,' he said. Another political analyst, Ntsikelelo Breakfast, said there is no need for the National Dialogue to uncover challenges facing the country, adding that they are well-known. 'He is always having a State of the Nation Address (SONA) and he can't tell us that he is not aware of the problems. What is it that he has been talking about? The whole thing is not necessary. We don't need a National Dialogue to understand our problems,' he said.
IOL News
10 hours ago
- IOL News
Madiba's legacy: Time to reclaim the soul of the struggle
ANC president Nelson Mandela smiles on April 27, 1994, as he casts his vote at the John Langalibalele Dube's Ohlange High School in Inanda, near Durban. We were once a society celebrated for the moral imagination of our negotiated settlement, hailed as a Rainbow Nation that chose dialogue over destruction, political patience over military confrontation. That fragile consensus has disintegrated, says the writer. Image: AFP Zamikhaya Maseti As the world paused to observe Mandela Day this week on July 18, 2025, we are reminded that this day, solemnly declared by the United Nations in 2009, stands not as a decorative event on the calendar but as a global summons to political and ethical conscience. Mandela Day was never meant to be reduced to a moment of philanthropy. It is a moral provocation. It demands reflection, honesty, and action from all of us, particularly those who profess to walk in the shadows of the long and unfinished journey that began long before 1994. On February 11, 1990, President Nelson Mandela emerged from Victor Verster Prison with his fist raised high in the air, a gesture that immediately entered the symbolic archive of revolutionary imagery. It was not a sign of triumphalism. It was a signal. A political message carved into the conscience of this country and the watching world. That image did not mark the end of the struggle. It marked its transformation. It did not signify closure. It announced a continuation. It called upon the oppressed and the marginalised, the landless and the working poor, to pick up where he and his fellow Rivonia Trialists had left off. The prison gates had opened, yes, but the gates of justice remained locked for millions. He did not emerge bitter after twenty-seven years of carceral humiliation. He came out with the integrity of purpose intact, preaching reconciliation, peace, and coexistence. The reconciliation was meant to be just, it was meant to be transformative, and it was meant to be rooted in redress. This year's Mandela Day finds South Africa at a historical crossroads. It coincides with the build-up to what may become a defining moment in the life of our post-Apartheid democratic project, the much-anticipated National Dialogue, now just a month away. In a previous reflection, I described the National Dialogue as a conversation we did not know we truly needed. It is now apparent that we are a society adrift, lacking a common moral vocabulary and torn apart by deepening social fragmentation. In the context of Mandela Day, we must be courageous enough to pose the most uncomfortable but essential questions. Have we remained faithful to the founding ethos of our democratic transition? Have we honoured Mandela's radical legacy, or have we betrayed it? We were once a society celebrated for the moral imagination of our negotiated settlement, hailed as a Rainbow Nation that chose dialogue over destruction, political patience over military confrontation. That fragile consensus has disintegrated. Today, we speak less like a Nation and more like a federation of bitter factions divided by race, class, geography, and ideology. The dream of non-racialism has withered into suspicion. The national unity once imagined in the fervour of 1994 has been replaced with racial scapegoating and retreat. This is not the country Mandela sacrificed his freedom for. This is not the inheritance his fellow Rivonia Trialists hoped to bequeath to future generations. Mandela Day must not be reduced to cooking for communities or painting classroom walls. These gestures are not inherently wrong, but they are dangerously insufficient. They become symbolic bandages on wounds that require political surgery. We need to elevate Mandela Day beyond gestures. It must become a platform to interrogate structural injustice, economic exclusion, and the social distance that continues to define our post-1994 reality. The uncomfortable truth is that we have regressed. The South African Nation, post-February 11, 1990, defined by an ethos of Rainbowism, has collapsed into a contest of parallel grievances. The original project of inclusive nation-building has been corroded by policies that, while well-intentioned on paper, have had contradictory consequences in practice. The Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy, for instance, while aimed at redressing apartheid-era dispossession, has inadvertently alienated certain sections of the Black majority (Africans, People of Colour, People of Indian origin, and the Khoisan People). When I refer to Black people, I do so in the tradition of the liberation movement as a historically defined social category forged through a collective struggle against colonialism, land dispossession, and Apartheid. That Black unity, painstakingly built in the trenches of resistance, is today fraying at the seams. We are witnessing a tragic reversal, a balkanisation of the oppressed into fragmented groupings, each speaking a different political grammar, each wounded by a different historical wound. Instead of deepening national unity, certain policies have created perceptions of intra-Black competition, fuelling resentment, bitterness, and ultimately disunity. We must confront the ideological implications of this drift. The emergence of what I call the Lumpen Bourgeoisie, a predatory class in itself, lacking revolutionary consciousness, obsessed with accumulation and proximity to power, stands in stark contrast to the National Bourgeoisie, a class for itself with a progressive mission, national vision, and clarity of purpose. The former is transactional and extractive. The latter, at least in theory, is meant to be developmental and historically conscious. The BEE unintentionally fostered the rise of the former while neglecting the ideological nurturing of the latter. This is not an attack on BEE per se. It is a call for its recalibration, for its redistributive potential to be realigned with the historic aspirations of the Freedom Charter and the social compact imagined at the birth of our democracy. Policies must not only transfer wealth, but they must build productive capacity, foster unity among the oppressed, and dismantle systemic privilege at its root. Equally important is the role of White South Africans in the post-1994 Nation. We cannot build a united country if significant sections of the population continue to self-isolate and insulate themselves from national challenges. The recent episode involving forty-nine self-exiled White farmers who left South Africa under the illusion of genocide and were caught in the geopolitical crossfire of a now-fractured Trump-Musk alliance is telling. It reveals the continued racial distrust, the misinformation industry, and the alienation of White South Africans from the collective destiny of this country. It also reveals a troubling reality that we are once again singing from two hymn books, one Black, the other White. These wounds will not heal through sentimentality. They require political honesty, institutional courage, and leadership with historical memory. That is why the National Dialogue is important. It must be a space where these contradictions are surfaced without fear. The Dialogue must ask why Mandela's Rainbow Nation has faded. The reconstruction of national unity cannot be subcontracted to slogans. It must be lived, nurtured, and constantly renewed. Mandela Day offers us a moment to recommit to the work of Nation-Building. It invites every South African, Black or White, rich or poor, urban or rural, to become an active participant in the unfinished struggle for a just and equal society. We all have a role to play in bridging the fissures of mistrust and despair. Mandela Day must be a call to civic renewal, to ethical leadership, and deep, principled reconciliation. Not the reconciliation of forgetfulness, but the reconciliation of truth, justice, and inclusion. In the name of Mandela, we must confront the fractures, realign our compass, and rebuild a Nation worthy of his legacy. * 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.
Eyewitness News
2 days ago
- Eyewitness News
Court gives green light for National Dialogue to go ahead
JOHANNESBURG - The North Gauteng High Court has given the green light to the National Dialogue, scheduled to take place in August. The court has dismissed the Labour Party's court bid to halt President Cyril Ramaphosa's dialogue. The party approached the court, accusing government of driving an unconstitutional and wasteful process. ALSO READ: • Ramaphosa says National Dialogue not 'just about talking', expects it to 'produce real results' • Ramaphosa tasks eminent persons with boosting public participation in National Dialogue • National Dialogue figures say government must be ready to answer tough questions on police corruption • Committee working on National Dialogue looks to bring projected R700m cost down It was seeking an urgent interdict to stop the dialogue before its first national convention next month. The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria found that the Labour Party did not meet the legal threshold for an interim interdict. They had argued that the National Dialogue duplicated existing structures like Parliament and NEDLAC. It called the process irrational, exclusionary and a costly exercise that ignores the working class. The state and the foundations running the dialogue defended it as a constitutionally permissible effort by the president to foster national unity, citing his duties under section 83. The court agreed, finding the dialogue rationally connected to that duty, also noting that its R700 million projected cost was not yet final. The dialogue will now proceed in August as planned, while the Labour Party pursues a full constitutional challenge.
