National dialogue key to SA's future

President Cyril Ramaphosa campaigned for his election in 2019 based on a “new dawn” for South Africa. The anchor pillar of his presidency was managing a trust deficit between South Africans and convening a dialogue that would culminate in a social compact. The new dawn included stemming the tide of corruption and state capture. He integrated the renewal of the ANC into his campaign and focused on rebuilding the state to have the required capabilities in a competitive world.  

The contours of his idea of a national dialogue or its intended outcome, a social compact, have been opaque.  During his first term, the social compact idea was given currency, content, and impetus by civil society. And the Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, FW de Klerk and other foundations engaged in conversations about the necessity of a national dialogue.  

The civil society movement, organised into sectoral enclaves of influence, grew into a potent force and became a new advocacy and opposition complex whose logic started reinterpreting the liberation narrative. This propelled several discourses that could not be boldly expressed as matters of national unity and social cohesion, particularly in a post-apartheid South Africa. Minority rights, language rights, redistribution of land, economic transformation, inclusive economics, inequalities in social services and education, universal health coverage and many other issues started to find new prominence.  

The proportional representation gains of the 2016 and 2021 local government elections, which created a national possibility where none of the parties have absolute power to govern, gave impetus to coalition government as an antidote to deal with majority rule as a proven tyranny in other democracies.

While in South Africa there were no signs of a tyranny of an absolute majority, the state capability gaps in dealing with service delivery dysfunction, rising levels of crime, disintegrating public infrastructure, corruption, a growing number of (nonracial) oligarchs, a highly politicised deep state and many other dysfunctions grew into a tyrannical experience society attributed to the governing elites. The rationale for a national dialogue gained additional impetus. The civil society groundswell, including intensified political opposition in parliament, started to shift the power of discourse into the domain of civil society. 

Across human history the most dynamic and creative societies have been expansionary, moving outward from partisan institutions, tribes and regionally rigid identities to put their stamp upon what is in the national interest.

The grandeur of parliamentary protocol and bureaucracy was institutionally reorganised to give a semblance of being about “we the people”, save for the limitation of being represented through political parties that ultimately decided which individuals play the role.

Notwithstanding the arguably correct thesis that the national dialogue might have been an insurance facility if the ANC won an absolute majority to govern in 2024, the material conditions of the country and the political balance of forces would have necessitated it. The launch of the MK Party and its showing in the 2024 elections became an additional rationale why a national dialogue is overdue.  The intensity of poverty, unemployment, and economic exclusion in South Africa is a social powder keg waiting for maverick leadership to ignite it.  

With the ANC grappling with its renewal, entering into a succession battle phase, and a president with very little to lose if he designs how we enter a national dialogue, it has never been this opportune. Given the availability of the generation that bequeathed to the nation the monumental policies of the ANC and the policy choices of other political parties in one document, the 1996 constitution, it will be ideal for them to be part of dealing with matters arising from the negotiations that founded democratic South Africa. 

Besides the pending hegemonic battles about who determines the objectives, character, form, content, and agenda of the national dialogue, Ramaphosa is occupying the leader-of-society vacuum that came with the aftermath of May 2024. Despite his announcement that the dialogue will be held this year being made on an ANC historical platform, his office as head of state was key. The often-underrated genius of Ramaphosa’s skilful statecraft, which was required to shape the unfolding government of national unity, was again on display. He is successfully making the new order since the end of the ANC's absolute majority a national leadership priority and imperative.  

One of the growing risks to South Africa's constitutional and democratic order is the gradual withdrawal of society from participating in it, also called voter apathy. The withdrawal haunts the legitimacy of public representation. Across human history the most dynamic and creative societies have been expansionary, moving outward from partisan institutions, tribes and regionally rigid identities to put their stamp upon what is in the national interest. The vitality of what Ramaphosa is starting will make the nation a workshop of solutions. He has taken the matter seriously, as promised.