By Rachel Mohamed
There has been a lot of criticism of the first leg of the National Dialogue Convention, which concluded over the weekend at UNISA in Pretoria. One of the largest trade unions, the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), and ActionSA were not happy with the convention and chose to stay away from the convention, along with other national legacy foundations such as the Thabo Mbeki Foundation. The event aimed to map out how the dialogue will unfold over the next year.
Theo Venter, Professor of Practice at Northwest University Business School, stated on VOC News that from 1992 to 1994, there was a deepening crisis with two main players, the National Party and the ANC, with talks and negotiations taking place before the constitution’s release.
“My thing is, Friday was kind of an opening gambit. I don’t think the crisis has deepened enough, and that the time is right for what we are doing at the moment.
Firstly, there are a lot of people echoing what the political gain is and what the game plan is here. Is this a political trick that the ANC is pulling, and can the ANC be trusted, which a lot of people have doubts about?
Second, Venter emphasized that “many people already know what the problems are and why we need a national coalition, debate, or dialogue to discuss them.” Every commission, report, or national development plan—if you go through the list, the number of times we have done research on what is wrong in this country—can be done as a desktop study; you don’t have to get a thousand people at a university to discuss it.”
“The ANC is not arranging the dialogue, but a government of national unity,” he said.
Listen to the full interview:
VOC News
Photo: South African Government/Facebook
