It would seem to me that the D.A is also saying that “the people have forfeited the confidence of the D.A … Perhaps the D. A’s equivalent of the ‘Secretary of the Writers Union’ should distribute leaflets along Nelson Mandela Boulevard in Cape Town, telling the people that they should redouble their efforts to win back the confidence of the D.A or face dissolution.
DEFINING A CLEAR VISION AND ESTABLISH A UNIFYING PROGRAMME THAT INSPIRES NEW NATIONAL HOPE
Honourable Mr. Steenhuisen,
Sometime after the Foundations had held their June 2024 Press Conference, the ANC held one of its regular National Executive Committee (NEC) meetings.
One of the items on its Agenda was the National Dialogue
Of course, the ANC had accepted the idea of a National Dialogue. A proposal tabled at the NEC meeting was that a ‘Secretariat’ should be established in the State President’s Office to organise the National Dialogue.
I attended this ANC NEC meeting.
By this time the Foundations had had fairly extensive contact with the broad spectrum of civil society organisations.
ANC NEC ADVISED AGAINST ANY ATTEMPT TO TAKE OVER THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE
It was therefore possible to advise the ANC NEC that the larger part of civil society would not attend a National Dialogue organised either by the ANC or the GNU.
In this regard, you might have noticed that in their 27 June Statement, the Foundations had spoken of “an urgent, inclusive, citizen-led national intervention.”
Precisely because of this, we advised the ANC NEC against any attempt by itself, or the GNU, to try to take over the National Dialogue, and proposed, instead, that if it had any suggestions about any matter related to the National Dialogue, it should engage the Foundations. Fortunately, the ANC accepted this suggestion.
President Ramaphosa constituted a group of 4/5 persons to engage the Foundations.
I hope that you have seen the Statement issued by the National Dialogue Preparatory Task Team (PTT) last month on 13 June 2025.
Before quoting what the PTT said, I must assure you that later I will explain all relevant matters about this PTT.
AS THE HEAD OF STATE PRESIDENT RAMAPHOSA HAS THE RESPONSIBILITY TO CONVENE THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE
This is what it said three weeks ago:
The National Dialogue Preparatory Task Team and Working Committees, consisting of over 50 organisations representing Foundations, Non-Governmental Organisations, Community Based Organisations and the Presidency welcome the announcement by the Head of State, President Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa on Tuesday, June 10th setting the path forward for the National Dialogue.
For the pat 9 months, the Foundations and civil society formations have engaged extensively with the Presidency. This was necessary because, whilst we are determined that this should be a citizen-led process, we also recognise that it is only the Head of State who has the mandate in terms of the S 83 of the Constitution to “promote the unity of the nation and do that which will advance the Republic.” As Head of State President Ramaphosa has the responsibility to convene the National Dialogue.”
This Statement includes a number of important points of which you should be aware. Some of these are that:
- The National Dialogue has a Preparatory Task Team (PTT) with a number of Working Committees;
- The PTT has been working with over 50 organisations of civil society;
- The PTT has been engaged in negotiations with President Ramaphosa’s envoys for 9 months.
- The PTT believes that sufficient preparatory work has been and will be done to ensure that the National Dialogue begins on 15 August 2025, and,
- The PTT believes that the National Dialogue should have constitutional legitimacy by virtue of its launch by the Head of State, not the Head of Government, relying on Section 83c of the Constitution which says the Head of State “promotes unity of the nation and that which will advance the Republic.”
With regard to these points, I would like to explain that:
The National Dialogue PTT is made up of:
I. The National Dialogue PTT is made up of:
- The National Foundations
- The NEDLAC Executive and Secretariat, and,
- Four (4) Presidency officials
NATIONAL CONVENTION ELECTS A STEERING COMMITTEE
This is the body responsible for all the Preparations for the National Dialogue. It will cease to exist after it has reported to and handed over to the National Convention on 15 August 2025. At that moment, to give expression to the principle and practice of a “citizen-led” process, the National Convention will elect a Steering Committee which will lead the National Dialogue from then onwards. Accordingly, what the PTT will table at the National Convention would only have the status of recommendations, which the National Convention will be at liberty to accept or reject.
II. After the 27 June 2024 Press Conference of the Foundations, many civil society organisations approached the Foundations, offering to work with them to organise the National Dialogue. This is why the PTT referred to “Working Committees, consisting of over 50 organisations…”
III. During the 9 months in which they engaged in negotiations, the PTT and the President’s envoys agreed on everything relating to the National Dialogue.
- The PTT, and neither the ANC nor the GNU, will be responsible for the preparations for the National Dialogue;
- At the first meeting of the National Convention, an instrument of the National Dialogue, it will elect a Steering Committee from among its members to lead the National Dialogue; and,
- The Ministry of Finance should provide the funds necessary to hold the National Dialogue, over and above the contributions both cash and in kind expected from various participants and constituencies of this national endeavour.
In fact, the costs of the preparations to date have been borne by the Foundations themselves, while the day -to- day work relating to the National Dialogue has been carried out by volunteers who are committed to building a better South Africa. These are men and women who are ready to lead the way in ensuring that citizens claim their agency.
IV. The Head of State will use his constitutional authority to proclaim the preparations and launching of the National Dialogue. He will otherwise play no executive role in any part of the proceedings of the National Dialogue.
Honourable Mr. Steenhuisen,
I hope that the preceding will have helped you to gain a better understanding of the National Dialogue as it has been conceived and pursued.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS ABOUT THE NATIONAL DIALOGUE
Further to help in this regard, I will now provide some additional details about the National Dialogue, based on my briefing by the PTT.
The PTT has decided that participation in the National Dialogue, through the National Convention, will be by ‘constituency’. It is likely that there will be at least twenty (20) of these ‘constituencies.
Each ‘constituency’ will be allocated a number of ‘Delegates to the National Convention’, which it will select on its own, without any interference by anybody, including the PTT. However, the PTT will demand of each ‘constituency’ that its delegation must be truly inclusive.
Here are some examples of the ‘constituencies’ I have mentioned:
- Women
- Youth
- Organised Labour
- Business
- Each Political Party in the National Assembly
- Other Political Parties
- The Legislature
- The Judiciary
- The Foundations
- Faith Communities
- Traditional leaders
- Traditional Healers
- Academia
- The Professions
- The Creative Arts
- Sports
- Special Organisations like the Solidarity Movement (and)
- Specially Invited Individuals
THE PTT SENDS OUT REQUESTS FOR CONSTITUENCIES TO CHOOSE THEIR DELEGATIONS
As I understand it, the PTT has sent out or will immediately be sending out the requests to the ‘constituencies’ to choose their delegations, inform the PTT when these will be constituted, and contribute to the Agenda of the National Dialogue.
It is only after the conclusion of this particular process that it will be possible for the PTT to give a definite number of the number of delegates which will attend the National Convention.
Honourable Mr. Steenhuisen,
The PTT will forward to these ‘constituencies’ the Draft Agenda for the 3- day National Convention which will start on 15 August 2025.
The PTT will also forward Discussion Papers to these ‘constituencies’ to help them prepare for the discussions which will start on 15 August 2025.
All the Official Languages will serve as the languages of the National Dialogue. The necessary translation facilities will therefore be provided.
The PTT will also give some procedural guidelines to help the ‘constituencies’ to prepare for the Steering Committee they will have to elect during the sitting of the first National Convention which meets on 15 August 2025.
The PTT will propose to the National Convention that after its 3–day–sitting, it should adjourn to consult the people at the grassroots level, up to Voting Districts. After this grassroots consultation, the National Convention should reconvene to discuss and adopt its Final Decisions and Recommendations.
EMINENT PEOPLE’S GROUP AND THE INTER MINISTERIAL COMMITTEE
Please also understand that the ‘Eminent People’s Group’ announced earlier by President Ramaphosa, will play a vital role of serving as ‘Ambassadors’ of the National Dialogue, acting on the basis of the processes and outcomes of the National Dialogue.
The PTT believes that various matters will arise during the Dialogue which will require action by the Government, without having to wait until the conclusion of the National Dialogue.
For this reason, it requested the establishment of the necessary governmental structure to address this need.
For this reason, the President has constituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) which will be on stand-by to act on such matters as may be forwarded to it by the National Dialogue.
The PTT has decided that the National Convention will be held at the NASREC Expo Centre in Johannesburg. It has acted to book the Centre for the specified three days, or so, next month in Augst.
Honourable Mr. Steehuisen
I hope that you have by now understood that the National Dialogue, which will start with the National Convention on 15 August 2025, will be a true ‘Parliament of the People’, controlled by the people themselves.
This will be the very first time in our country that the people will engage one another in a detailed and comprehensive conversation in exercise of their right to self-determination.
As you can see, the National Dialogue will have absolutely nothing to do with Ms. Helen Zille’s fertile imagination of an “ANC’s 2026 Election campaign” or what you called “an ANC-run National Dialogue…”
And as you know, Ms Helen Zille’s, and therefore presumably the D.A’s view, is that the absence of the latter from the ‘Parliament of the People’ will make the Parliament “a sham” and “a hollow exercise.”
It is very good that, at last, Ms. Helen Zille has openly expressed her eminently arrogant and contemptuous view of the masses of the people, that these cannot think and plan their future correctly, without the D.A!
That presumably, is also the view of the Federal Leader of the D.A who must have felt very proud when he announced that “Effective immediately, the D.A will therefore have no further part in (National Dialogue) process. We will also actively mobilise against it…”
THE D.A LIKE OTHER PARTIES IN THE GNU SIGNED AND COMMITTED TO AN ALL-INCLUSIVE NATIONAL DIALOGUE PROCESS
I hope that in time the D.A will explain to the people why it signed up to the commitment in the Statement of Intent of the Parties in the GNU that, “Parties commit to an all-inclusive National Dialogue process…”, whereas, as Ms. Helen Zille said, she had “been very opposed to it (the National Dialogue) from the start.”
Honourable Mr. Steenhuisen,
I would like to assure you, without hesitation, that representative delegations of the people of South Africa will convene on 15 August 2025 in a National Convention to begin the long-awaited National Dialogue.
I am also confident that through the instrumentality of the National Convention, including its grassroots consultation, the National Dialogue will make an historic and seminal contribution to the sacred effort to chart the way forward for our country as it strives to extricate itself from a destructive and deeply entrenched general crisis.
Thus, the people will strive to answer in detail, the strategic questions:
- What is the South Africa we want: and,
- What is the South Africa we do not want
I sincerely hope that all our political leaders and the Parties they lead will recognise the inalienable reality that the people are our country’s sovereign authority. This is exactly why our Constitution begins with the word, “We, the people of South Africa…”
The ancients were not mistaken when they said – Vox Populi, vox Dei!
As I have said, I have no doubt that the DA acts against its own direct interests when it decides to isolate itself from this sovereign authority when the latter decides to engage in a National Dialogue to determine our country’s future.
Honourable Mr. Steenhuisen,
In 1953 the workers in East Germany, the GDR, engaged in a virtual uprising, demanding various changes in terms of their life conditions, in opposition to certain programmes that had been imposed by the then Government.
Reflecting on this, the eminent playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht, composed a satirical poem which he entitled ‘The Solution’. The short poem reads:
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
It would seem to me that the D.A is also saying that ‘the people have forfeited the confidence of the D.A’.
Perhaps the D.A’s equivalent of the ‘Secretary of the Writers Union’ should distribute leaflets along the Nelson Mandela Boulevard in Cape Town, telling the people that they should redouble their efforts to win back the confidence of the D.A, or face dissolution!
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