National Dialogue must speak to power, not for it

THE much-talked-about National Dialogue is indeed a national conversation we didn’t know we needed until former president Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki called for it. President Cyril Ramaphosa must be saluted for heeding that call.

- ZAMIKHAYA MASETI

This gesture affirms that our leaders still speak and listen to one another. It is a tradition of leadership that the younger generation must urgently emulate: speak truthfully and listen earnestly.

Accordingly, Ramaphosa has announced that the National Dialogue will take place on August 15 at a venue yet to be disclosed. I will not pretend to be a seasoned logistician, but I would like to propose that Kliptown, Johannesburg, be considered as the location. I make this suggestion because Kliptown was the site where our great-grandparents gathered under difficult, illegal conditions on June 25-26, 1955, to craft a vision for a democratic South Africa.

Their gathering produced the Freedom Charter, a document that became a lodestar for the liberation struggle. Today, we face an equally historic task: rebuilding the South Africa that was born of their sacrifices. A nation now fractured and drifting, in desperate need of repair. More significantly, June 25-26, 2025, marks the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter. Holding the dialogue in Kliptown would root it in the moral soil of people's struggles and remove the sting of elitism that so often surrounds state-led initiatives. It would strip the dialogue of unnecessary extravagance.

The original Congress of the People saw delegates arrive by bus, taxi, train, and some even on horseback. In that spirit, we must question the reportedly proposed R700 million budget for this dialogue. Such an amount is not only absurd; it is morally indefensible. I am relieved that the Presidency has rejected that outrageous and outlandish budget proposal.