In August, the government convened various stakeholders at the University of SA’s ZK Matthews Hall to discuss a roadmap towards a national dialogue. In the weeks leading up to the meeting, there had been tension between President Cyril Ramaphosa, the self-appointed convener of what is supposed to be a citizen-led dialogue, and the so-called legacy foundations. The foundations included the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, whose outspoken patron had campaigned for the national dialogue to be led by civil society.
They and others withdrew in protest due to what they deemed a “rushed” process that breached core principles of being citizen-led. The ZK Matthews Hall is named after SA’s intellectual giant, Prof Zachariah Keodirelang Matthews, who came up with the idea of a Freedom Charter. The entry of a ‘people’s government’ lulled many people into believing ‘our leaders’ would do the right thing.
He effectively triggered the first national dialogue that culminated in the adoption of the charter in 1955. Other national dialogues followed years later — one leading to the adoption of the democratic constitution in 1996 and another to the national development plan. These documents are all rhetorically acclaimed, but there are big question marks about society’s commitment to living up to the ideals contained in them.
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The call for a national dialogue was an acknowledgement that the country needs a new start. As I listened to facilitators of the planning meeting taking inputs from delegates on what should be on the agenda of the national dialogue, I reminded myself that the Sowetan had discussed similar issues at this very venue a decade earlier as part of its “Sowetan Dialogues” series. Shortly after I was appointed editor in 2011, a “redeployment” from the Daily Dispatch, I was keen to reignite and modernise the nation-building project of late former Sowetan editor Aggrey Klaaste.
He had inspired community-building initiatives ranging from choral music to the development of responsible community leadership. However, from a promise of galvanising corporates and ordinary citizens to play their part in building a new nation, the brilliant initiative had waned over time. Its remnants were unpaid advertising for the corporate social investment programmes of big corporates.
Why Klaaste’s project was allowed to lose significance is a different matter. I suspect it was, ironically, a victim of the democratic transition to which he was fully committed.
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