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The National Dialogue at least has us debating whether a debate is needed

If the hope is that somehow the National Dialogue will persuade the government to do that which has been known for decades and in which there has only been failure, then it is truly a waste of time and of taxpayers’ money.
Professor Balthazar
By Professor Balthazar
18 Aug 2025
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The National Dialogue has certainly elicited a dialogue, at the very least between those who consider the entire initiative to be a significant waste of taxpayers’ money and those who argue that there is a need for a societal engagement regarding the socioeconomic problems vexing South Africa and in which the political process has so lamentably failed the country.

Stephen Grootes contends that in the light of the failure of the established political process, if a National Dialogue “can bring people back into formal structures first through the convention process, then into politics (through voting), then it would have succeeded”.  

Pierre de Vos writes that it is difficult not to conclude that the National Dialogue is “an idiotic and self-indulgent scheme cooked up by decadent elites untethered from reality or greedy to share in the spoils of the lucrative consultancy work no doubt being generated by the jamboree”.

At least there is a debate in the country about whether to have a debate.

There is, however, a core question that the National Dialogue, arguably through the Eminent Persons Group, which has been appointed to pilot the National Dialogue, needs to answer, and urgently.  

Government failure


Critics like De Vos are correct to point to the almost complete failure of the government over a long period (certainly from the moment Jacob Zuma assumed the presidency).

There has been a sustained lack of delivery by government to deliver basic services to those most in need. There has been a marked increase in corruption, for example as documented in the Zondo Commission reports.

There has been a failure to hold key participants in the series of nefarious activities that engulfed the country and stole crucial national resources to be held accountable to the law.

The economic policy of government has produced no more than tepid GDP growth, as a result of which the country struggles to grow at more than 1% per annum.

Unemployment constitutes, on the official figures, a third of the population who can work. Key institutions, save for Sars and the SA Reserve Bank, are generally dysfunctional. 

A National Dialogue takes place in circumstances where, in the very week that it commenced, an e-hailing driver was murdered and others brutally attacked at Maponya Mall, with very little likelihood that those who committed these crimes will be found and successfully prosecuted. 

The Chief of the South African National Defence Force toddles off to Iran to proclaim our friendship with that country in the very week when the Department of Trade and Industry is desperately trying the persuade the American government to reduce the tariffs which it has imposed on South Africa and which will have disastrous effects on our economy and hence employment. 

And the Minister of Defence, heroically reproducing her record as Education Minister, supports this trip.

Corruption is of so gross a kind that the CEO of the Independent Development Trust can brazenly offer a journalist R60,000 in cash so that he will not publish an adverse article about her.  
The leaders of the National Dialogue need to tell the South African population how this dialogue will ensure that e-hailing drivers are not murdered, that those who perpetrate these murders are held accountable by the law, and that chief executive officers of important institutions behave with probity as opposed to brazen displays of corruption. 

How will a dialogue reverse the failure to deliver basic goods and services to those most in need? In short, how will the more than R500-million to be spent on this project ensure that the National Dialogue will transport us into a place that we have never been since the first few promising years of democracy dawned after 1994?

There has been much talk about the precedent of the Congress of the People, which produced the Freedom Charter in 1955.

But the Congress of the People at Kliptown took place after considerable political work had been done and in circumstances where the entire enterprise was designed to construct an alternative vision for a society which was then living under the horrors of apartheid. It produced a road map called the Freedom Charter, which continued to influence progressive politics for decades to come. 

By contrast, we now have a Constitution which sets out a framework for the development of a society based on freedom, equality and dignity for all. It demands accountable and transparent government which fulfils its obligations to provide basic social and economic goods to the population. 

If that was not enough, there is a National Development Plan collecting dust and a comprehensive report from the Harvard Growth Lab, which clearly indicates what is required to ensure that South Africa vindicates the vision which was initially articulated in the Constitution.  

In short, what is the National Dialogue going to tell us that we do not already know? Will it ensure that Cabinet ministers like Thembi Simelane, the Minister of Human Settlements (a not unimportant portfolio), are finally held to account for a whole series of damning allegations which require proper public ventilation?  
Will the National Dialogue ensure that the Chief of the SANDF cannot simply, on his own frolic, seek to undermine delicate negotiations taking place to save the economy?   

Will the national dialogue produce more reliable water supplies for the Johannesburg Municipality, collapsing as it is under decades of municipal incompetence?

Will it reduce the appalling levels of sexual violence in our country?   

The short answer is that there is a welter of considered research which indicates the direction that the country should take in order, for example, that inclusive economic growth can be generated to benefit the entire population. 

Do we need a National Dialogue to know that if the national government ensures that land it owns could be used for dealing with the urban housing crisis, we can begin to change the demographic character of our cities? 

Take, for example, Cape Town: the mayor of Cape Town has complained often that if the military properties at Wingfield and Ysterplaat could be handed over to the municipality, thousands of houses could be constructed and significant dents could be made in the challenge to redress homelessness, as well as recrafting the character of our cities.  

If the National Dialogue promotes the possibility of improved political awareness and an impetus to change the nature of our present political system, in which political parties have failed the country, then it may well serve a purpose. 

But if the hope is that somehow this dialogue is going to persuade the government to do that which has been known for decades and in which there has only been failure, then it is truly a waste of time and of taxpayers’ money. 

Last weekend, Daily Maverick published the views of its readers as to what is required from government. It covered all the key challenges that government has consistently failed to address. How will a National Dialogue, even as it is led by a group of most distinguished South Africans, ensure that government suddenly converts itself into serving 60 million South Africans and addresses these challenges which are common cause?  

There is an ironic feature to all of this. The national dialogue has been called by the President. The President’s record shows that he has been meticulous in his failure to engage the country in a dialogue other than by way of his family meetings, in which no questions are put to him.   

The President never subjects himself to radio and television interviews in which journalists, on behalf of the country, can put a range of difficult questions to him to ensure that the public gains a grasp of whether he can provide coherent reasons for government’s failures. 

He is, in short, the very model of a “non-dialogue” President. Yet he wants us to believe that this National Dialogue will turbocharge fundamental economic and political change in South Africa. Really! DM