The first leg of the national dialogue will take place on 15 August.
The CEO of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, Max Boqwana says the upcoming national dialogue is not an ANC event.
Boqwana was speaking at the North West University (NWU) in Potchefstroom, where the foundation held a national dialogue outreach session.
Some political parties had accused the ANC of planning to use the dialogue for their own benefit.
But Boqwana who sits in the organising task team said this is not the case.
“It must not be confused with the ANC’s conferences at Nasrec it is a people’s convention,” he said.
Organising the national dialogue
Boqwana explained that the organisers would need volunteers to assist in facilitating the dialogue and the events in between.
“What we expect from the university is discussion documents that challenge this nation. What we expect from the university is help with interpreters.
“We would like people who participate in that convention to use a language of their choice so that they can speak freely and express themselves,” he said.
He said the organisers need analysts from different sectors. This will help those involved in the discussion understand the country’s conditions.
“But more importantly, we expect the university community to popularise and galvanise the people, particularly the people of the North West, to be committed participants in this process,” he said.
Boqwana said they compared the national dialogue to a meeting of political activists in Soweto 70 years ago when the Freedom Charter was formed.
“That process not only designed a clear vision for a liberated South Africa, but it also sponsored South Africa with the type of leadership that will take responsibility for that struggle for the liberation of South Africa.”
He said a similar process is now needed because the wheels that are pushing the country forward are “loose or have fallen.”
Boqwana added the apartheid government had made a mistake by not embarking on a similar process.
“The second crisis of that regime is that it clearly had no plan in terms of what to do with this south Africa.
“That leadership had no ability to articulate what it stands for so as a result the country was drifting in all manner of wrong directions.”
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Why should we have a national dialogue?
Boqwana said the country now finds itself where it does not have a single ruling party since the last general elections last year.
“The people of South Africa have spoken, and one of the fearful things they have said is that the very idea of political democracy is suffering a legitimacy crisis.
“In the sense that 60% of this population stayed away from voting,” he said.
Boqwana said he had seen instances of countries on the continent that go to war when they stop engaging.
“When we stop engaging, we start shooting one another, and that is one thing that we must avoid as a nation.
“The issue of this dialogue is critical, we must ask. What do we do with this country, and what is the kind of South Africa that we want, and what is the South Africa that we do not want?” he said.
Boqwana said other issues that indicate that the country is in crisis were the high rate of unemployment, especially youth unemployment.
“The number of employed youth is 5.7 million the number of unemployed youth is 4.8 million.
“I am raising these statistics colleagues that this is not a matter of value judgement or subjective judgement it’s an indication of a time bomb that this country is possibly facing,” he said.
‘Critical that every voice should be heard’
Boqwana said South Africa is a country of inequalities. He said that to save it, there should be a collective effort.
“All of this leads to high levels of social insecurity, high levels of criminality. It’s a matter of all of us are in the same boat and if it sinks it sinks with all of us,” he said.
He said the National Dialogue should be sokonnect driven and not controlled by a political party or government.
“It’s a process where political parties will be invited, where the government will be invited, but the sokonnect in their various aspects and various constituencies and sectors will be the ones that are leading the process, which is the first important rationale.
“This conversation is not going to be the conversation of the normal noisy minority of the country it must involve the normal silenced majority of the people of our country,” he said.
He said the dialogue will reach all communities and wards in the country.
“This dialogue will not take place at a national level or at an elitist level it will go down to the wards and the voting districts because it is critical that every voice should be heard,” he said,
Boqwana said the final document will guide the country in terms of how it is governed.
“More importantly, not only to guide government, but it must also guide ourselves in terms of how we should behave.
“Why is it that when we are looking for a road from the government, we burn down the library? So this will be a vertical process and a horizontal process,” he said.
The final document will then be presented to parliament for implementation.
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