As a nation we have descended into a vulture nation scenario amid a lack of planning

WHY IS THE 15th of August - a chaotic and shambolic moment in South Africa - so impactful? It ran for two days, two days ago the National Convention that launched the National Dialogue.

- Dr Pali Lehohla

To sketch the background that led to this very moment it was during the last Cabinet Lekgotla that President Thabo Mbeki presided over in July 2008.

On the agenda was the discussion of South Africa's scenarios, the second in the series from the first launched as Memories of the Future: South African Scenarios to 2014: Welcome to Foresight For Development.

The first scenarios had four possible outcomes: Dudisanang, Sgud S' Nais, Skedonk and Shosholoza. By all counts by 2007, South Africa was on a Shosholoza Scenario of high hope, high economic growth, declining unemployment with annual number of the employed growing by an additional 500 000 entrants.

The then President of the Republic, Thabo Mbeki, at his 2007 Sona would say. "I feel emboldened to appropriate for our people the promise contained in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, when God said: For you shall go out with joy. And be led out in peace.

"The mountains and the hills Shall break forth into singing before you. And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree. And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree." Five years from the first scenarios and six months post-Polokwane Conference, the July Cabinet Lekgotla of the Third Administration under President Mbeki, three months from resigning as the President of the country, considered the next set of scenarios contained in a document titled, South Africa Scenarios 2025: The future we chose. The scenarios had three sub-optimal outcome scenarios titled Not Yet Uhuru, Nkalakatha and Muvhango.

The Muvhango scenario was the ugliest outcome in this competition of the ugly. And 17 years from that fateful 2008 Cabinet Lekgotla the ugliest scenario contestant won the competition.