The official announcement of the upcoming national dialogue has been met with derision and disgust in some quarters. A long litany of gripes and groans can be gleaned from media reports.
With a budget for the dialogue estimated at R700 million, the EFF describes the amount as “outrageous and wasteful”. Not to be outdone, COSATU considers the cost to be “ill-considered, rash and insensitive.”
ActionSA compares the cost to that of the Zondo Commission, pointing out that “we know how these things go … another burden on an already stretched fiscus.” It regards the similar cost of the Zondo Commission to be fruitless expenditure “with nothing to show for it in terms of arrests and successful prosecutions of high-profile politicians implicated in aiding, abetting and benefiting from the crimes linked to it.”
The national dialogue will be preceded by a national convention on 15 August 2025, at which the agenda will be set for the dialogue designed to define the nation’s path into the future, as announced by the President.
Dr Imtiaz Sooliman of Gift of the Givers, one of the individuals identified to lead the process, has remarked sagely, “We want to come forward with solutions and see them implemented timeously, otherwise it’s a pointless exercise. Being on such a platform means we have more rapid access to the President, hopefully with more efficient and decisive implementation. That’s how I see my role, finding challenges, offering constructive solutions and awaiting speedy implementation.”
Actually, the national convention is the body the President envisages will set the agenda for the national dialogue. He intends bringing together representatives of government, political parties, civil society, business, labour, traditional leaders, religious leaders, cultural workers, sports bodies, women, youth and community voices “among others”. The dialogue that follows the convention will be “to define our nation’s path into the future” as the President put it.
Supreme law
That path has already been set out clearly in the preamble to the Constitution, our supreme law.
A clear and steady focus on the envisaged constitutional trajectory of the country is required to make a success of the national dialogue. The founding provisions set out in Chapter One and the Bill of Rights, which contains the human rights guaranteed to all [that the state must respect, protect promote and fulfil] would provide a good starting point for the discussion and debate that the national convention will require.
In essence, the multi-party system of government envisaged by the founders of the Constitution is aimed at a “better life” for all, and is founded on the notions of human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms in a non-racial and non-sexist setting in which government is accountable, responsive and open.
Those involved in the national convention would do well to dust off Chapter Two of the Constitution, our world-famous Bill of Rights, and reflect on and identify the aspects of problematic progress toward the realisation of the promises made in it during the past thirty-one years. Many of the rights guaranteed to all are hedged about with “weasel words” like these:
“The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of each of these rights”.
These quoted words are in Section 27(2) of the Bill of Rights which deals with access to health care, food, water and social security. There are confirmed reports of children in rural areas dying of starvation earlier this year in SA. This in a land of plenty in which about a third of the food produced ends up dumped in landfill sites.
Approximately 27% of South African children under five are stunted, meaning they are shorter than expected for their age due to chronic undernutrition. This translates to over 1.5 million children. The mental and physical well-being of these children is deleteriously affected, for life.
Sprawling shack lands
According to Section 26 of the Bill of Rights, everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing. The sprawling shack lands around the metropoles of SA are evidence of less than adequate housing. Millions of citizens live in informal dwellings without proper sanitation, running water and other services. Statistics from 2024 indicate that there are over two million households living in informal settlements in South Africa, with the number of informal settlements across the country exceeding 4,000.
The promotion of the achievement of equality is central to the nation’s constitutional project. Yet, SA is now the most unequal society in the world in which inequality is measured. Our Gini Index has reached .67: way up from what it was when freedom was won in 1994, when it was measured at .45.
According to Section 9(2) of the Bill of Rights:
“Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.”
According to the research of Professor William Gumede of the School of Governance at the University of the Witwatersrand, only about 100 politically well-connected individuals have benefited from the B-BBEE legislation intended to be a broad-based method for economically empowering black individuals. This legislation must be regarded as a failure, in any fair conspectus of the efforts of government to roll out the rights envisaged by the Bill of Rights.
The Economic Empowerment for the Disadvantaged (EED) alternative to BEE as suggested by the IRR, incorporating a voucher system applicable to housing, healthcare and education, is a topic for the national dialogue.
Those who continue to live in poverty (about 55% of the population live below the upper-bound poverty line) have not benefited from B-BBEE measures. Living in poverty is deleterious to the bodily and psychological integrity of those obliged to do so. Yet, bodily and psychological integrity are guaranteed to all in the Bill of Rights. A significant number of South Africans, estimated at 25% of the population, are experiencing food poverty, with about 13.8 million people affected.
Education is also a guaranteed human right in SA. It is not subject to “progressive realisation”, meaning that it has been theoretically available in full to all since day one of the new dispensation. The basic education system is so dysfunctional that the teaching of maths and science to learners in SA is in retreat, with ever fewer schools offering these subjects due to the shortage of teachers able to teach them.
Reading is crucial
The ability to read for meaning in SA primary schools has eluded the majority of learners. A significant number of grade 4 learners, estimated at 81%, are unable to read for meaning. This means that they struggle to understand the text they are reading, impacting their ability to learn and succeed in school. The issue is particularly pronounced in the foundation phase (grades 1-3), where children are meant to learn to read, and it carries over into later grades where reading is crucial for accessing the curriculum.
All citizens have the right to choose their trade, occupation or profession freely in SA. Unfortunately, the availability of jobs, even for graduates, is not adequate to meet the demand for work, rendering this right nugatory for many work-seekers. The latest official unemployment rate in South Africa is 32.9%, as of the first quarter of 2025. This is an increase of 0.8 percentage points compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.
The expanded unemployment rate, which includes discouraged job seekers, is even higher, at 43.1%. An ever-increasing proportion of young work seekers are unable to find jobs. The youth unemployment rate in South Africa for those aged 15-24 is 62.4% in the first quarter. For the broader age range of 15-34, the youth unemployment rate is 46.1%.
Those participating in the national convention would do well to have regard to the findings of pollsters involved in the polling activities of public opinion researchers, in order to determine the issues that concern ordinary South Africans. Joblessness, poverty and corruption, which are interrelated in ways not always obvious to the casual observer, feature high up in the list of concerns of people polled.
The national convention is duty-bound to have regard to the concerns of ordinary South Africans. Its task of putting together a relevant and manageable agenda ought to be guided by the output of all research organisations involved in polling of public opinion in SA.
The dialogue that follows the convention should regard the promises of the Bill of Rights as “must haves” rather than “nice to haves”, because the Constitution has been in place for more than thirty years and is prescriptive about respecting and protecting those rights.
[Image: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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