The need for an all-inclusive national dialogue

We come from a dark, dank, dingy and painful past. Close to 300 years of colonial dispossession and subjugation and the blind fury of apartheid brutality and oppression. To paraphrase Karl Marx in his genealogical exegesis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, in Volume 1, of his magnus opus, Capital; the new South Africa, came into this world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt, or as some would say, with blood oozing from every pore.

Given this past, we needed a founding that was blindingly transformational, to cleanse us of the blood, gore and filth of our past. This we did with our founding pact, the constitution. I want to quote in pertinent parts, the Founding Provisions of our Republic, as laid out in Chapter I, of our constitution. The Republic of South Africa is one sovereign, democratic state founded on the following values:

• Human dignity, the advancement of equality, and the advancement of human rights and freedoms;
• Nonracialism and non-sexism;
• Supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law; and
• Universal adult suffrage, a national common voter’s roll, regular elections, and a multiparty system of democratic government to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness.

This was the summons to the barricades for the new republic, an injunction for a deep social, political and economic transformation, to banish the haunting spectre of our funky past.

Central to this transformational mission was political freedom and economic upliftment. In a sense society, or the polity, is undergirded by two critical vectors, the political superstructure, as Marxists would refer to it, and the economic base. The two constitute the warp and the woof of the social fabric. If they are not in harmony, or ailing, social transformation is perforce subverted if not negated.

Political freedom notwithstanding, there is huge malaise and alienation from the political project in our country. This is evinced by declining voter turnout and alienation from substantive democracy.

In a statement on June 27, calling for a national dialogue, to develop a common vision and an intervention to bolster our substantive democracy, to recalibrate our developmental trajectory, towards the attainment of our deferred dream; the national foundations, named for iconic South African freedom fighters, made the following observation: “That in spite of a proliferation of political parties and independent candidates in the recent May 2024 elections, fewer voters participated than ever before. This is an ominous indication that the faith of the citizens in our electoral democracy, has declined precipitately, since its birth in 1994.”

Of concern they noted further, “is the prospect that this voting trend may be a symptom of declining faith in the very idea of democracy and a country united in our diversity”.

This may suggest that our people, especially the youth, are losing faith in politics and voting as a lever for transformational change. I understand that about 61% of eligible voters, most of them the youth, did not bother to show up for the May 29 elections. What are the implications for legitimacy of our representative government in this statistic?

It is pellucidly clear that the past 30 years have been a tale of two countries, one helmed by the Nelson Mandela/Thabo Mbeki double act, with Mbeki effectively in charge of the nuts and bolts of government ab initio. And Madiba preoccupied with the important task of forging national reconciliation, a key ingredient for social cohesion. There could after all, be no social transformation in a country rent and rived by racial strife. Between 1994 and 2008, the economy grew at an average of 3.6%, with the number of jobs created increasing by about 6-million.

After healthy and appreciable progress with respect to social transformation indices at the beginning of our democratic odyssey, the last 15 years have represented a veritable dystopian turn

These numbers refute the fashionable canard, that we had jobless growth. In the past three years of the Mbeki administration, the economy grew by 5%, the first time such levels of economic growth had been attained since circa 1965. The debt to GDP ratio fell from 49% to about 24%. The government also achieved sustained budget surpluses for the last two years of Mbeki’s reign, the first time such had ever been achieved since the founding of this country as the Union of South Africa in 1910.

The government would use the budget surpluses to invest in infrastructure and finance a huge social relief programme. The black middle-class exploded. And we got out of the junk status the apartheid mandarins, buffeted by sanctions, global isolation, and corruption, had plunged us into in 2001. It was the golden age of our republic. Camelot, perhaps without the symphony, which people would only realise after it was gone.

Since then, the economy has grown at an anaemic rate, of about 1% for the past 15 years, not enough to keep up with population growth. And unemployment, using the broader measure, consequently exploded to 42%, from 29% circa 2008. And the debt-to-GDP ratio is now close to 80%. Such levels of unemployment are untenable. They have earned us the dishonourable attribute of being the most unequal society on earth, in defiance of the constitutional injunction, I quoted above, to create a more equal society.

These levels of unemployment have created a veritable kindling for a social explosion. This prospect was powerfully telegraphed in the violent mayhem of July 2021. And above all, they have led to all manner of social pathologies, from gender-based violence, rape and violent crime. We have literally been transformed into a virtual prison, hiding behind high walls in fear of our own, down on their luck. The social transformation, which was a charge of the new dispensation, has faltered. We now have all the hallmarks of a sick society. What is to be done?

Here I want to join the national foundations in restating the need for a society-wide, all-inclusive national dialogue, involving all social actors — business, labour, faith communities, government, social movements, women’s movement; youth movements, farmers and farm workers, academia, think-tanks and professional bodies, traditional leaders, arts and culture formations, sporting organisations, and all political parties elected to the National Assembly to gather in a national convention, to ponder and deliberate ways and means for the reinvigoration of our ailing democratic soul.

This would lead to the promulgation of a national pact, to be debated and passed by parliament that will inform all legislation, customs and behaviours, becoming the animating spirit of our republic for the next 30 years and beyond. I believe this would be the requisite elixir for our rebirth as a healthy democracy. In this dialogue, South Africans, from the bottom up, will proclaim and design the South Africa we want.

As countenanced by some in the epistemic community, the dialogue will involve examination of key themes that would be an ingredient for our democratic advance, running the gamut from:

• Respect and defence of our constitutional state and its democratic structures in the form of its: constitution, section 9 institutions, fiscal legislation, and electoral procedures (in other words, do we retain the proportional representation method of voting for parties, or do we want direct elections to deepen accountability to the citizens?).
• Building a capable state in all three spheres of government, including a review of the constitutional provisions relating to each sphere.
• The elaboration of a concrete social compact by the Nedlac social partners to turn around the economy, to ensure that it grows and develops in an inclusive manner, resulting in continuous reduction of unemployment and the sustained reduction of the levels of poverty and inequality.
• A comprehensive short and medium plan to fight crime and corruption.
• Re-examining critical precepts in our approach to basic and higher education and training, including addressing such issues as the curricula, dropouts, relevant skills, the quality of teaching, and the fourth industrial revolution.
• The social security net, including its impact on poverty reduction and the matter of the possibility of a basic income grant.
• A foreign policy that privileges national interest, human rights and international solidarity; based on multilateralism and multipolarity. Should we consider reviving the anti-apartheid solidarity movement, the biggest the world has ever seen, in the same way that Israel has used the influential Jewish lobby, particularly in the US, to shield its national interests. Should we think of reviving those ties to defend our hard-won freedom and independence from those who seek to harm us? I have in mind all manner of harmful legislation, being mooted by certain interests in the US, because of our independent foreign policy. This is a competitive advantage few countries can boast of.
• An innovation, strategy and knowledge hub inside the presidency, which would be a deepening and broadening of the role of the National Planning Commission. This could entail the merger of the National Planning Commission with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), to infuse the government with the talent, resources and intelligence to spot future threats and opportunities; ranging from global pandemics, drought and water scarcity, food security, population and immigration patterns; to spotting opportunities, using, for example, our natural endowments in the arts, culture and sports nodes, as a source of national cohesion, happiness as measured by the happiness index, and soft power; in the way that Brazil used its prowess in soccer (Jogo Bonito), samba and bossa nova, to forge social cohesion, in a racially fragmented country; and the US uses popular culture, music (jazz, rock n roll, R&B, hip-hop, gospel), Hollywood, basketball, to project soft power, that has given it unrivalled hegemony, even as China emerges, as a rival economic and military power. We could call these South African futures.
• The youth, the future of our country. How do we engage their interest, passion and participation in the democratic project that they seem to be so woefully alienated from. Does a country that dishonours its youth deserve its future, as OR Tambo memorably exhorted, about 40 years ago?
• Women: the objects of gender violence, rape and the continuing dominance of patriarchy in our society. Can we build an empathic and flourishing civilisation and future, when women in large measure are accorded subordinate status in our country, in defiance of the injunctions of our constitution? How do we make the constitution a lived reality for our mothers, sisters, and daughters?

The foregoing represents the state of social transformation in our country. After healthy and appreciable progress with respect to social transformation indices at the beginning of our democratic odyssey, the last 15 years have represented a veritable dystopian turn. It does seem to me that these difficulties are beyond the efficacy of normal politics and policymaking and will require an all-inclusive national dialogue by all social actors, to ensure that we do not lose the future.

• This is an edited version of an address by Oyama Mabandla, author of Soul of a Nation, to a conference on 3 Decades of Democracy in South Africa at the University of Johannesburg.