The National Dialogue proposed by President Cyril Ramaphosa continues to be a tormenting thorn in his flesh.
Critics of the government, outright and unflinching critics, have suggested that the National Dialogue could turn out to be a waste of time, and a distraction (in the absence of “a plan”).
Other criticisms refer to distrust between the main partners in the Government of National Unity, “indicative of a major problem”.
These are fair criticisms.
Amid all of the up-and-down and round-and-round are the expressions of politicians – a slice of the understanding that everything is political has been the Democratic Alliance’s rejection of the National Dialogue, which former President Thabo Mbeki has described as “misplaced” and “self-defeating”. Mbeki also described the DA leadership as “arrogant”.
This, too, is fair criticism.
Mbeki is correct in that the DA has presented itself as indispensable. DA leader John Steenhuisen has said, “Effective immediately, the DA will… have no further part in this process. We will also actively mobilise against it...”
The DA’s federal chairperson, Helen Zille, suggested that the dialogue was merely “a cover for the ANC’s 2026 election campaign”, adding that without DA participation, “the whole thing becomes a sham, a hollow exercise”.
To this, Mbeki replied: “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 they cannot think and plan their future correctly, without the DA!”
Parallels with the past
The discontinuous minds of our time may, predictably, ignore the parallels and continuities between the National Party and the Democratic Alliance, most especially the way that the former drove black people out of the city centres with politics and forced removals, and the latter using “market forces” to transform the cities – notably Cape Town – into enclaves of white and middle class elites, and AirBnB paradises.
We should probably not expect much from the discontinuous mind. The rest of us may reflect on the way that the DA remains loyal to the playbook of the NP.
Consider the persistent threat, spoken or unspoken, of the DA leaving the GNU, which really is a ruse to conceal the belief that without the DA, the country has no future – what Mbeki described as arrogance.
Now reflect on the way that former president FW de Klerk led his followers from the Government of National Unity in 1996. De Klerk’s stamping of feet (he was dissatisfied with the Constitution) did not result in the country’s collapse.
When De Klerk and his white minority left the Government of National Unity in 1996, Nelson Mandela was as conciliatory as ever. In a statement laced with niceties (as was his wont, and we are paying for it), he insisted that “the course that we have undertaken as a nation is bigger than any party or individual”.
Mbeki was there when De Klerk led his people out of the GNU, and many of us who had an ear to the ground at the time understood the deeper reasons for the NP’s withdrawal. No amount of post-hoc reasoning, or whitewashing, will change two realities: De Klerk was not comfortable with taking instructions from Mandela (as former head of state, he knew that there was no promotion from the presidency), and he was not happy with the new dispensation and the emerging constitutional order.
Reflecting on Mbeki’s statement on arrogance in the current leaders of the white minority – Steenhuisen and Zille – we may see quite remarkable continuities between the way that Mandela described De Klerk in the months and years immediately after his release from prison.
Responding to De Klerk’s remarks about the ANC’s military wing during the negotiations that led to the political settlement of 1993/94, Mandela pointed out that his (De Klerk’s) biggest weakness was to continue imagining the future of the country through the National Party lens “and the white minority [in South Africa] not from the point of view of the population of South Africa”.
I covered the Codesa negotiations closely, days and nights on end, inside and outside formal chambers, when the country was on the edge of descending “into hell” (as Peter Harris remarked in his book, Birth: The Conspiracy to Stop the 1994 Election).
Arrogance and self-righteousness
Throughout the process, the arrogance and self-righteousness of the white minority (then) were patently obvious. They presented themselves as indispensable.
To those of us who reported on politics in South Africa between 1985 and 1994, it came as no surprise when De Klerk eventually walked away from the new dispensation, because of his objections to the Constitution.
We would be reminded of the Constitution’s values when it was praised on several occasions by US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said that South Africa’s Constitution was a much better model than that of the US.
“It [the South African Constitution] really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US Constitution.” (See here and here).
Like De Klerk (then), the only plausible reason for Steenhuisen’s strop is that he cannot deal with taking instructions from, or playing second fiddle to, an African president.
Zille, of course, intimated at the indispensability, exceptionalism and preferential role and status of the DA. Without the DA, Zille said, the National Dialogue would be a sham and a hollow exercise.
To be clear: the National Dialogue will succeed or fail on its own merits. South Africa did not collapse after De Klerk turned his back on the Constitution and new dispensation; the country will survive Steenhuisen and Zille.
I should leave with this anecdote: In about 2000, during a previous incarnation, a group of men sat around a table and (heavily) criticised the appointment of a woman to a very important position. I got up from the table and said I would not have any part of the discussion because “if it were a man, and we thought him weak, we would probably give him maximum support to make sure he succeeds”.
The DA’s withdrawal from the National Dialogue is a reminder of both De Klerk’s stroppiness; the belief in its own indispensability, exceptionalism and position as a chosen political party (a continuation of the saviour complex); with the attendant belief that any initiative in the country that does not include the minority white-led party will necessarily fail – because of their absence.
I would like to believe, paraphrasing Mandela, that the National Dialogue ought to be considered as much greater than any single political party or person.
It should be considered as an initiative to spread prosperity, stability, trust and social cohesion to all South Africans, and not to please less than 10% of the population.
The best way to make the National Dialogue work is to make it work. Our tagline for the National Development Plan 2030 was “Our Future: Make it Work”.
All things considered, the DA either does not think it will work without them (it would be a sham, Zille wrote), and anyway, we should probably not forget that the NDP 2030 remains far from achieving all its objectives, and the work of the National Planning Commission remains a mystery to those of us who pay attention to these things. DM