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We were wrong and naïve at the dawn of democracy, and perhaps we’re still wrong

So much of what has been written about the National Dialogue — by seasoned journalists in particular — brought me back to the many ways in which we have been wrong in the past.
Ismail Lagardien
By Ismail Lagardien
22 Aug 2025
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A lot of column space has been filled and much ink has been spilled on the envisioned National Dialogue (I realise how out of date the references to “ink” and “column space” are, but there’s a sub-text to it all).

Anyway, almost everything that has been written about the National Dialogue has been either completely negative or outright condemnatory, sceptical and distrustful.

So much of what has been written — by seasoned journalists in particular — brought me back to the many ways in which we have been wrong, how naïve we have been in the past, or how our predictions and prognostications and speculation have been plain wrong.

I am at the front of the queue of confessions.

With regards to predictions, it’s difficult, sometimes, to work out whether any commentary or analysis is based on the writer’s wishes or personal expectations, or whether it is based on facts or a blend of fact and fiction and the lessons of history.

I guess the problem with it all has to do with the fact that history may not have happened at the time of writing, and anyway the passing of time and noise helps deflect attention from our misgivings.

I have certainly been wrong over and again, never mind my aversion to prediction. One example that stands out is just how wrong I was at the start of the democratic era, about a potential split of the Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP). I thought, all those years ago, that when such a split happened it would be the SACP and Cosatu, pulling away from the mother ship, with each going their own way to start a political party.

A few years earlier, in 1991, I covered discussions about a “patriotic front” led by the ANC and the PAC entering the negotiations settlement process, with Azapo as a likely partner. There was great optimism at the time. Murphy Morobe, one of the convenors of the envisaged patriotic front, told the Financial Mail in November 1991 that: “For the first time, organisations which had not worked together or seen eye to eye, jointly arrived at a common approach to resolving the crisis in this country. One could say that it was an approach whose time has come, given that the regime has itself come around to accepting that it can talk to people who represent our oppressed communities. It was expected that the liberation movement should respond in kind… We look forward to Azapo being able to rejoin the key organisations involved here.”

I was wrong in the first instance, and naïve in the second.

The split that never happened — and everything instead


I was wrong about a split in the Tripartite Alliance, and I was naïve to think that a patriotic front would take shape and some day lead the country.

In and around the little gatherings of the negotiations and bargaining processes of Codesa, something would unexpectedly emerge. That dodgy nexus of power and money — the evidence of all that is plain to see.

What has happened, and as a reflection of our (my) ignorance and naïveté, is that the ANC stayed consolidated as a political force until it began to be pulled apart by tribalist tendencies and “sectarian” interests, and what would shift-shape between ethno-nationalism and patterns of fascism by Julius Malema.

The ANC, MK and the EFF now form, unintentionally (unless I am wrong again), a political umbrella of sorts. Somewhere in the fabric are Azapo and the PAC.  

The SACP does not seem to be fully committed to being an independent force. The evidence certainly shows that the electorate had no stomach for a Marxist-Leninist political party. This takes nothing away from whatever appeal there may or may not be for socialism or communism.

Writ globally, there is more liberal capitalism in more places around the world with an attendant decline of communist countries: Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, China and Laos are the only remaining actual communist countries in the world.

It should be said that those countries not heavily sanctioned by the US, for differing reasons (Cuba and North Korea), have become increasingly successful and prosperous since China’s opening up in 1979.

As for Cosatu, the past two decades (since the tragic days of Marikana) have been marked by fractures in the trade union movement. By one account, Cosatu’s demise was pushed by “the Numsa moment”, when the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa pulled away from the ANC; further still by the growth of the Amalgamated Mining and Construction Workers Union (Amcu) which has drifted from being important and relevant to being provincial, and approaching political obscurity.

The trade unions in general seem to have lost their way, and are not sure if they should lead or follow while remaining fundamentally associated with the workers’ struggle, or tap into the powers and privileges of Frantz Fanon’s “national bourgeoisie”.

To the extent that the SACP and the trade union movement represented “the people”, the emergence of Malema probably sucked away more radical leftist tendencies, until his Economic Freedom Fighters began to resemble a firecracker that has been lying out in the rain…

The patriotic front and everything aligned against it


What was presented as an emerging patriotic front in 1991 was probably the height of black emancipatory expectations in South Africa, and what now seems to have been profound naïveté on the part of many of us who worked on newspapers like The Sowetan, and those of us situated in and around the Black Consciousness movement.

Journalists should make no bones about their allegiances, biases, preferences and expectations. Collectively these help shape our predictions and prognoses. Some of us are simply better at revealing our allegiances, unconscious biases and preferences — the slickest spins hide them behind thickets of “objectivity” or “commitments to truth-seeking”.

All the while we try to strike a balance between freedom from state intervention and market influence, demands or expectations. It is under these conditions when, ideally, the social role of the media in democratic society is privileged over its commercial function, and the public is composed of people who are above all active and engaged citizens interested in their own lives and society.

As much as I would lay down my life for free speech and press freedom (not really, but you know what I mean) there is little chance of my giving oxygen to genocidal maniacs (and denialists) or resting my arguments on false equivalences of “bothsidism”.

Nor will I leave unchallenged what James Baldwin might have referred to as the eternally innocent in his 1962 New Yorker essay, “Letter from a Region in my Mind”.

If the latter go unchallenged, we may end up normalising the worst elements of society.

The emerging patriotic front of 1991 seemed to represent what it said on the tin: the black political formations in the country coming together in a front that would help seal the end of legal political apartheid, and build the scaffolding for a democratic society that would not be bought by and sold to the highest bidder — and end up with the best democracy money can buy.

Things did not turn out as we expected.

Murphy Morobe’s optimism about the patriotic front in November 1991 — soured by Pandelani Nefolovhodwe’s inability to lead Azapo into a patriotic front, and PAC president, the late Clarence Makwetu’s misty-eyed avuncularity (the PAC, sadly, resembles a dad joke) — was lost somewhere in the Codesa process when the holders of political, financial and military power laid the patriotic front to waste.

The image of Dikgang Moseneke, then part of the anticipated patriotic front, and Nelson Mandela, respectively leaders of the PAC and ANC, evaporated.

Everything, conditions extant and the future of South Africa, hinged on Codesa, which seduced us all into accepting that the future lay away from black unity and the patriotic front. The ANC and the National Party secured agreement with a broader spectrum of actors — political, business and diplomatic/foreign.

That worked, until it stopped working in about 2006.

Getting back to the National Dialogue. We wait and we wonder. We know that something will come from it, we’re just not sure what or when. DM