Dialogue or Distraction? Power, Exclusion, and the New National Dialogue


South Africa stands at another historic crossroads. The announcement of a new Five Hundred Million Rand National Dialogue has been presented by President Cyril Ramaphosa as a renewal of the spirit that guided the early 1990s negotiations. Those original dialogues were painful but focused, and they helped dismantle the legal framework of apartheid and establish formal democracy. However, a retrospective analysis of that transition makes clear that while the political system of racial rule by a minority was ended, the economic and social foundations of apartheid, namely inequality, landlessness, and extraction, were left untouched.

The 1990’s negotiated settlement was an elite pact at best, and one would be hard pressed to be more charitable without being ahistorical. In its final analysis, it was an agreement between anti-apartheid political leaders and economic power holders that political power could be transferred so long as economic power remained intact. The result was democracy without justice and inclusion without redistribution. The property clause in the Constitution, the embrace of neoliberal economic policies like GEAR, and the failure to realise land reform, all pointed to a strategy of managing inequality, not eradicating it.

Today, three decades later, that settlement stands at an epochal moment, a moment where the cracks in its foundation make clear that meaningful transformation is no longer optional, but urgently needed. The legitimacy of our democracy is eroding fast. Less than 50% of eligible voters participated in the 2024 elections. The current Government of National Unity (GNU), cobbled together from across the political spectrum, governs with a limited popular mandate. It is a coalition of political parties more interested in power-sharing than in transformation. And its early signals, such as moves to criminalise the poor, weaken progressive legislation, and deepen corporate access to public resources, indicate a sharp turn away from the unfinished business of liberation.

It is within this context that we must assess the new National Dialogue. On paper, it promises much: to be a society-wide process that brings all sectors of society into a conversation about our future. But in substance, it reproduces the very flaws that have brought us to this crisis. Like the elite pacts of the past, this dialogue is being constructed without the participation of those who bear the burden of our unequal society. It is a top-down, curated exercise, designed and controlled by the same political and economic forces that have failed the people for 30 years.

Let us begin with the composition of the Eminent Persons Group. The state has presented these individuals as among the best that South Africa has to offer, eminent in their fields, capable of inspiring a nation in need of direction. But what does this selection say about the landless, the unemployed, the mining-affected, or the shack-dwelling poor? Are they not also capable of inspiring? Are they excluded simply because they were born into poverty? Have they been consigned to eternal marginalisation not by lack of vision, but by the weight of structural oppression?

There are no street traders, no informal workers, no social movement leaders from the peripheries. Instead, we see cultural icons, former judges, religious leaders, business figures, and politicians. This is not a people’s panel. It is an elite circle dressed in the language of inclusion. We cannot have a society that only reflects the lucky and the successful. If this dialogue is to be truly national, it must include not only those who have 'made it', but those who have been made and especially those who continue to suffer.

Second, the process design is so anomalous and diffuse that it is effectively impotent before it even begins. The dialogue is to take place in phases: local consultations, sectoral forums, provincial meetings, national conventions. However, even as the state elevates the Eminent Persons Group as the symbolic face of national inspiration, it has also quietly acknowledged that real administrative and strategic control will rest elsewhere, specifically in the hands of a Steering Committee and a Secretariat managed by NEDLAC, operating under the direction of the Presidency. In other words, the Eminent Group serves more as a public façade than a decision-making body.

This revelation raises critical concerns. If those who have been most excluded are denied a seat at the table, and those who have been elevated are without real power, then who is truly steering the process? The architecture of the dialogue offers participation without power, consultation without consequence. It is designed to simulate inclusivity while maintaining elite control behind the scenes. It gives the appearance of democracy while reproducing its hollowed-out core.

This mirrors the experience of many communities with Presidential Imbizos, public engagements where the state pretends to listen, only to continue with predetermined plans. The public know this strategy all too well. For years, communities have been "consulted" on mining projects, only to be excluded from decision-making and denied the benefits promised in Social and Labour Plans. The recent "Looted Promises" report laid bare how these plans have been systemically violated by mining corporations, with no consequences and no justice.

It is no accident that those of who have suffered most from the failures of the post-apartheid state have been left out of this dialogue. The exclusion is structural. It ensures

that the conversation remains safe for elites, unthreatening to capital, and free from the uncomfortable truths about how this society is organised.

If this new dialogue is to be anything other than a rerun of the past, it must begin by naming the core contradiction of our society: inequality. Not just income inequality, but structural inequality rooted in land dispossession, racialised poverty, and the enduring legacy of extractive capitalism. It must acknowledge that the original democratic transition did not dismantle these structures. It merely wrapped them in a new flag.

The current National Dialogue is not designed to confront these truths. It is being convened at a time when the state is moving aggressively to liberalise and deregulate in favour of capital. It is taking shape under a GNU that is actively weakening transformation mandates and aligning South Africa more deeply with global regimes of neoliberal extraction. In this context, talk of inclusion and consensus rings hollow. We have heard it all before.

To be meaningful, the National Dialogue must meet at least four conditions:

1. Structural inclusion: It must centre those historically excluded. Mining-affected communities, shack dwellers, rural women, unemployed youth, and informal workers must not just be invited; they must set the agenda.

2. Clarity and accountability: The process must have clear goals, transparent rules, and binding outcomes. No more vague consultations that lead nowhere.

3. Redistribution, not reconciliation: This cannot be another moral performance. It must produce policies and laws that transfer wealth, land, and power into the hands of the majority.

4. Truth-telling: Like the dialogues of the 1990s, this process must begin with honesty. Honesty about the failures of the last three decades. Honesty about who has benefited. Honesty about what must change.

We are told that this National Dialogue is about rebuilding trust and reimagining the future. But trust is not rebuilt through optics. It is rebuilt through justice. It is rebuilt through the inclusion of those long excluded. It is rebuilt when the voices of the poor are not only heard but obeyed.

Until then, we must remain sceptical. We must remain critical. And above all, we must remain organised. Because if history has taught us anything, it is that no real change has ever come from the top down. It comes when the people speak for themselves, in their own voices and on their own terms.

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