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IOL News
4 days ago
- Politics
- IOL News
The National Dialogue must not be derailed by political gaslighting
AN ANC supporter with an election manifesto poster a election campaign meeting in Promosa, Potchefstroom on January 30, 1994. The democratic breakthrough of 1994 was not just a political event. It delivered the keys of the Republic to those long locked outside the gates of history, says the writer. Image: AFP Zamikhaya Maseti The 15th of August 2025 has been etched into the political calendar as a historic moment, the National Dialogue. At its most aspirational, it is meant to be a nation-defining platform, a civic summit for collective introspection, healing, and democratic recommitment. But even before its formal commencement, this national project risks being engulfed by the shallow political theatrics and elite tantrums that have paralysed genuine nation-building for far too long. Chief among the culprits is the Democratic Alliance (DA), which is now using the recent dismissal of Deputy Minister Andrew Whitfield, a figure occupying neither Cabinet status nor National Executive prominence, as a spark to fuel political hysteria. Let it be clear: this is not statesmanship. It is a political gaslighting strategy, a sophisticated act of deflection designed to distract South Africans from the essential questions we ought to be confronting. This political fracas, if anything, is a sobering reminder. It compels us, the ordinary and long-suffering South Africans, the real stakeholders in the future of this nation, to seize the agenda of the National Dialogue. We dare not allow it to be captured by those who wish to reduce this opportunity into a partisan tug-of-war. It must speak with bold honesty to the crises that are tearing our country limb from limb. South Africa, make no mistake, stands on the precipice of an abyss. What we are facing is not merely policy failure; it is the slow, corrosive disintegration of the national soul. Crime is no longer a statistic; it is a mode of life. Corruption is no longer a scandal; it is an ecosystem. Social cohesion, once the backbone of our fragile reconciliation, is unravelling under the weight of poverty, lawlessness, and deepening racial resentment. The rainbow has dimmed to a monochrome of despair and distrust. We are not yet a failed State. But with each passing day, with each institution that crumbles and each promise betrayed, we edge closer to that dreaded status. What once made South Africa the miracle of the world has now been bludgeoned by mediocrity, political cannibalism, and the fossilisation of revolutionary ideals. The May 29, 2024, General Elections offered perhaps the clearest mirror to our political malaise. Voter apathy was not apolitical. It was a mass indictment, a statement of no confidence in a political system that feels increasingly like an exclusive game played above the heads of the governed. People's faith in democracy is no longer low; it is at the ankles, dragging itself in the dust of betrayal. Therefore, it is not negotiable: the very first item on the agenda of the National Dialogue must be governance. Not in the abstract, but the brutally honest question: How have we been governed since 1994? When did the wheels fall off? At which exact moment did the promise of liberation give way to elite accumulation, State capture, and rudderless bureaucracy? Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading The democratic breakthrough of 1994 was not just a political event; it was a civilizational rupture. It delivered the keys of the Republic to those long locked outside the gates of history. The masses, the historically despised Third Estate, took to the streets in euphoric celebration, believing that their day under the sun had finally arrived. And it did, briefly. But somewhere between Kliptown and the Union Buildings, between The People Shall Govern and parliamentary privilege, the democratic vehicle began to wobble. The tyres of accountability deflated. The engine of ethical leadership began to cough and stall. The Dialogue must, therefore, perform a thorough diagnostic inspection of this vehicle, note every point of mechanical failure, and commit to firm, unapologetic, and irreversible repairs. Among the most urgent repairs is the deconstruction of the neo-patrimonial political culture that has infected our post-1994 polity. This culture, rooted in patronage, personality cults, and informal networks of loyalty, has turned public office into private inheritance and governance into transactional loyalty schemes. It must be dislodged root and branch if democracy is to breathe again. But systemic repair is not merely the work of the elite. A return to grassroots democracy is indispensable. The people, the ones who queued in '94 with trembling hope, must be brought back to the centre of governance, not as passive spectators but as active architects. Civil society, social movements, religious bodies, worker organisations, youth formations, these are not side actors; they are the real Parliament of the People. We must then reimagine citizenship, not as periodic voting, but as perpetual participation. The strengthening of civic institutions and the rebirth of an active citizenry is the only credible antidote to elite capture and democratic decay. Ultimately, the National Dialogue must restore the central promise uttered boldly 70 years ago in Kliptown: 'The People Shall Govern.' That is not a slogan. It is a covenant. And covenants, once broken, demand not just apologies but repair, repentance, and recommitment. Let us, therefore, put back the wheels that fell off the democratic vehicle. Let us take the Dialogue back from political actors playing hide-and-seek with our future. Let us, the people, write the next chapter of our nation, not with ink, but with intention. For if we do not steer the vehicle back onto the road, history will not be kind. And we will have no one to blame but ourselves. * Zamikhaya Maseti is a Political Economy Analyst with a Magister Philosophiae (M. PHIL) in South African Politics and Political Economy from the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), now known as the Nelson Mandela University (NMU). ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
IOL News
22-06-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
The National Dialogue must be revolutionary and people-driven
Protesters take part in the defiance campaign, in June 1952, in Johannesburg, by occupying places for white people. The campaign against the apartheid regime's of racial segregation was launched on 26 June 1952 by the ANC and led to the Congress of the People where the Freedom Charter was adopted on 26 June 1955 in Kliptown. Zamikhaya Maseti The much-talked-about National Dialogue is indeed a national conversation we didn't know we needed until former President Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki called for it. President Cyril Ramaphosa must be saluted for heeding that call. This gesture affirms that our leaders still speak and listen to one another. It is a tradition of leadership that the younger generation must urgently emulate: speak truthfully and listen earnestly. Accordingly, President Ramaphosa has announced that the National Dialogue will take place on August 15, 2025, at a venue yet to be disclosed. I will not pretend to be a seasoned logistician, but I would like to propose that Kliptown, Johannesburg, be considered as the location. I make this suggestion because Kliptown was the site where our great-grandparents gathered under difficult, illegal conditions on 25–26 June 1955, to craft a vision for a democratic South Africa. Their gathering produced the Freedom Charter, a document that became a lodestar for the liberation struggle. Today, we face an equally historic task: rebuilding the South Africa that was born of their sacrifices. A nation now fractured and drifting, in desperate need of repair. More significantly, 25–26 June 2025 marks the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter. Holding the Dialogue in Kliptown would root it in the moral soil of people's struggles and remove the sting of elitism that so often surrounds state-led initiatives. It would strip the dialogue of unnecessary extravagance. The original Congress of the People saw delegates arrive by bus, taxi, train some even on horseback. In that spirit, we must question the reportedly proposed R700 million budget for this dialogue. Such an amount is not only absurd; it is morally indefensible. I am relieved that the Presidency has rejected that outrageous and outlandish budget proposal. As South Africans of all colours, classes, and convictions, we must ask the most strategic and politically relevant questions: What should be on the table? That is to say, what must be the agenda, and who defines it? Who should be at the table? Who sits where, and who speaks for whom? Are the working class, the agrarian working class, the landless masses of the people, and the unemployed adequately represented? These are not rhetorical questions. They go to the very heart of the dialogue's legitimacy. We cannot assume that 'broad representation' will occur naturally or that it should be left solely to the Preparatory Committee. I do not claim to have all the answers, but I do insist that all South Africans must grapple with these questions. A particularly troubling issue is the class composition of the Eminent Persons appointed to guide the process. By and large, they are drawn from the polished ranks of South Africa's middle class if not the elite. The rural poor and the agrarian working class are conspicuously absent. The assumption that the inclusion of traditional leaders covers their interests is false. Many of these institutions remain untransformed, misogynistic, patriarchal, and disconnected from the democratic impulses of the poor. In short, the selection of Eminent Persons leaves much to be desired. Perhaps their exclusion reflects the disorganisation of rural voices, but that is no excuse. The National Dialogue must reflect the totality of South African life. It is ostensibly aimed at navigating South Africa through deep and interconnected crises: a crisis of governance, a crisis of political legitimacy, social fragmentation, and economic despair. The critical question is whether this initiative is a bold act of national renewal or just another elite performance, obsessed with appearances while the nation quietly disintegrates. For the dialogue to have any integrity, it must begin with representative legitimacy. The poor, the unemployed, farmworkers, shack dwellers, and students still fighting financial exclusion cannot be passive spectators. The tragedy of South African democracy is that the people are so often spoken about, rarely spoken to, and rarely allowed to speak for themselves. Will this Dialogue include the real South Africa, or will it be another exercise in managerialism, dominated by technocrats and polite middle-class professionals? The timing of this dialogue is not neutral. It must be seen in light of the failure of the political class to resolve the legitimacy crisis that followed the 2024 general elections. The resulting Government of National Unity (GNU), a patchwork of ideological contradictions, has failed to inspire public trust. This dialogue, then, risks becoming a substitute theatre, a democratic therapy session designed to manage anxiety rather than resolve it. If so, this is not dialogue it is deflection. We must insist that the dialogue confronts structural questions: economic power, historical redress, and the unresolved land question. These matters cannot be handled delicately or deferred indefinitely. We must also address the scourge of bureaucratic unaccountability. Any serious conversation about building a capable and ethical State must begin with real consequence management for public servants who loot, obstruct, or undermine public trust. This national dialogue must not be pacifying; it must be revolutionary. It must be uncomfortable, radical, and people-driven. It must speak to power, not for it. It must demand a reckoning with the nation's unfinished business. We cannot afford a dialogue that dances around the contradictions of our society. We cannot whisper reform in a house already burning. The President may have opened the floor, but it is up to the people to seize the space not as polite guests but as the rightful architects of South Africa's democratic future. If this Dialogue becomes another elite jamboree, it will bury us deeper in disillusionment. But if it becomes a genuine space for democratic reimagination, a re-founding moment, then perhaps, just perhaps, the Republic may begin to heal. * Zamikhaya Maseti is a Political Economy Analyst with a Magister Philosophiae (M. PHIL) in South African Politics and Political Economy from the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), now known as the Nelson Mandela University (NMU). ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
IOL News
15-06-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Emulating the 1976 generation will require resilience, innovation
On June 16, 1976, thousands of students in Soweto took to the streets to demonstrate against Bantu Education and the imposition of Afrikaans in their schools. We owe the 1976 generation not silence, but succession. Not nostalgia, but nation-building, says the writer. Zamikhaya Maseti As we mark June 16, 2025, forty-nine years since the uprising, we must ask not for the sake of ritual but for the sake of our republic: Where is the youth of today? What are they confronting? Do they carry the same fire, and crucially, do they have control over their economic destiny as the 1976 generation had over the political one? On June 16, 1976, the youth of this land, armed with nothing but conviction and the matchbox of defiance, took to the streets and declared war against the Apartheid state. They confronted tanks with chants. Today's youth stand at a different frontline. It is not one patrolled by army vehicles and tear gas but by unemployment, under-skilling, digital exclusion, and economic marginalisation. The war is no longer for votes but for value. And make no mistake, it is no less urgent. Recent QLFS data from Stats SA (Q1 2025) reveal that out of 8.2 million officially unemployed South Africans, 4.8 million youths aged 15–34 remain jobless, pushing the youth unemployment rate to 46.1 per cent, a yawning gap compared to the 32.9 per cent general rate. Moreover, 58.7 per cent of these unemployed youths are first-time seekers, indicating acute structural unemployment and a stalling of labour market entry. The NEET rate (Not in Employment, Education or Training) stands at 45.1 per cent, signifying profound cyclical and frictional unemployment constraints. In macroeconomic terms, this cohort's participation inertia and underabsorption exacerbate the natural rate of unemployment and depress potential GDP growth, a symptom of underleveraged human capital and insufficient aggregate demand. This is not merely a labour market problem; it is a national emergency. While the youth of 1976 wielded placards and songs as instruments of change, today's youth grips smartphones and Wi-Fi logins, but to what end? The digital economy, the new battlefield of production and innovation, has found them mostly on the periphery. They scroll. They consume. They swipe through innovations imported from elsewhere, yet their fingerprints are absent from the circuitry of invention. This is not participation; it is passive absorption. There lies a pressing obligation on the Ministry of Science and Technology, indeed, on the entire State apparatus, to respond not with speeches but with strategy. The young must be repositioned from being spectators in the Fourth Industrial Revolution to being its architects. We must ask, urgently and boldly: Where is our National Youth Tech Incubator? Where is our State-funded Digital Skills Academy, open to township youth, free at the point of use, and rich in ambition? A well-articulated and cross-sectoral Country Youth Employment Strategy is not a luxury; it is a lifeline. This strategy must locate and activate the engines of growth where youth can insert themselves, not as interns but as innovators, not as job seekers but as job creators. We must also interrogate the voluntaristic landscape of Youth employment interventions, particularly the much-lauded Youth Employment Service (YES), a Presidentially endorsed mechanism aimed at integrating first-time job seekers into the formal economy. At the surface level, YES presents as a visionary model: private sector collaboration, placement targets, and experiential learning. But scratch beneath the glossy annual reports and you find a structure held up by corporate voluntarism, not sovereign will. The State applauds from the sidelines but does not fund from the centre. There is no budget line in the National Treasury with YES's name in lights. This is the central contradiction: a government that rhetorically champions the program but refuses to place fiscal muscle behind it. Without direct state investment, YES remains a charity model in a crisis economy, admirable, but insufficient. It cannot absorb the millions locked out of labour markets, nor can it scale against systemic constraints without an injection of public capital, regulatory certainty, and structural alignment with industrial policy. Voluntarism without velocity breeds stagnation. And the youth are tired of waiting. Our macroeconomic data whispers a truth we must listen to: agriculture and manufacturing remain the pillars of our GDP, yet they stand like old factories, functional, but underutilised. These sectors require not only revitalisation but also infusion of young blood. In agriculture, particularly, the crisis is grave and immediate. The post-1994 public sector cohort of agricultural bureaucrats is now ageing, and with them, the institutional memory of land and food security is fading. We are sleepwalking toward a nutritional catastrophe. Shockingly, we have 49 South African farmers, yes, forty-nine, now refugees in the United States. They are not coming back. The Minister of Land Reform must act decisively and distribute those abandoned farms, not tomorrow, not after another feasibility study, but now, as part of a radical agrarian reset. Land is not only a historical grievance; it is a living resource. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is not merely a diplomatic trophy; it is an economic corridor. But who walks through its gates? If our youth do not take up the challenge of intra-African trade, someone else will. Already, the machinery of cross-border commerce is moving, but our youth remain untrained in the languages of export regulation, fintech, and customs compliance. This is where the State must intervene with scholarships, borderless internships, with youth-led export hubs. To shape the economy, the youth must first be armed with skills. Yes, the youth of 1976 defined their destiny. They defied an oppressive order and offered themselves to history's altar. The youth of today must do the same, except their struggle is not to enter the political system but to redesign the economic one. They must ask themselves not 'What is to be done?' but 'What must we build? 'June 16, 2025, must not pass like a calendar commemoration. It must sting. It must summon. It must stir our policymakers from their slumber and our Young people from their scrolls. We owe the 1976 generation not silence, but succession. Not nostalgia, but nation-building. * Zamikhaya Maseti is a Political Economy Analyst with a Magister Philosophiae (M. PHIL) in South African Politics and Political Economy from the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), now known as the Nelson Mandela University (NMU). ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
IOL News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Africa Day: The AU's Struggle to Silence the Guns
FLEEING residents from Sake, Eastern DRC alongside SANDF peacekeepers on February 7, 2024. The persistence of war and armed violence across regions of the continent has not only undermined the gains of economic integration, but it has also eviscerated the foundational promise of Agenda 206, says the writer. Image: AFP Zamikhaya Maseti 2025 marks 61 years since the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), a historic convergence of visionaries and revolutionaries on May 25, 1963, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This day has since become no ordinary one. It is a ritual of remembrance, a collective drumbeat for the dream of African unity, a dream rooted not in geographical proximity, but in spiritual and political solidarity. In 2001, the OAU shed its skin and emerged as the African Union (AU), not as a betrayal of its founding ideals, but as an adaptation to a new global order. The torch passed, but the fire remained. In its early reconstitution, the AU sought to move from rhetoric to resolution, symbolism to structure. In an assertion of Continental will and unity of purpose, the African Union ushered forth a landmark vision, Agenda 2063, as both a philosophical compass and policy blueprint. This 50-year vision is not a mere catalogue of developmental aspirations, but rather a strategic architecture crafted to catalyse Africa's renaissance. One of the most consequential embodiments of this vision has been the historic establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a cornerstone in the architecture of continental economic reintegration. As member states increasingly operationalise and harness the AfCFTA, what emerges is a palpable shift in the patterns of intra-African trade from fragmented, externally dependent economies to a more harmonised, internally networked market. The African continent is undoubtedly charting commendable waters on the frontiers of economic integration. However, to mistake economic consolidation for holistic development would be a perilous fallacy. The work is not complete. It is not yet Uhuru. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ Despite the rhythms of trade liberalisation and industrial corridors emerging in the headlines, a silent catastrophe haunts many parts of the continent. The very soil that cradles the Nile and once nourished civilizational brilliance is today the stage of starvation. The recently released Global Report on Food Crises, a collaboration by the Food Security Information Network and UNICEF, casts a glaring light upon this contradiction. According to the findings, more than one-third of all people globally facing acute food insecurity are located in sub-Saharan Africa. We must confront the uncomfortable truth: Africa cannot trade its way out of famine unless it feeds itself first. Economic integration without agrarian transformation is an illusion. If hunger is the symptom, then conflict is the wound that refuses to close. It bleeds across the map of Africa, an old affliction wearing new uniforms. The persistence of war and armed violence across regions of the continent has not only undermined the gains of economic integration, but it has also eviscerated the foundational promise of Agenda 2063: an Africa at peace with itself. As we stand well into the third decade of this century, the drums of war have not ceased; they have only shifted theatres. From Sudan to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), from the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique to the Sahel, the spectre of instability continues to unravel the threads of development, deepen humanitarian crises, and rob the Continent's youth of their futures. The once hopeful promise of civilian-led governance lies buried beneath rubble and charred ministries. Peacekeeping forces once lauded as the moral presence of global solidarity are now constrained, fatigued, and in retreat. The international community watches impotently, inert, ensnared by geopolitical fatigue and donor disillusionment. South Africa, Africa's economic heavyweight and long considered a regional stabiliser, has not been spared the costs of its commitments. The recent loss of 14 soldiers in a deadly engagement in the DRC marks not only a human tragedy but a brutal reminder: African peacekeeping is increasingly paid for in African blood. And the African Union? Once conceived as the moral heir to Pan-Africanism's dreams, it finds itself shackled by the limits of its diplomatic instruments. Conflict resolution mechanisms remain reactionary, underfunded, and often perceived as politically compromised. The result is a tragic irony: the very institution entrusted with 'African solutions to African problems' is itself engulfed in a crisis of credibility. Africa is bleeding. And peace has become a deferred dream. Africa's path to peace is jagged, riddled with contradictions, ambiguities, and unfinished transitions. If conflict is the fire, then constitutional fragility is the smoke that darkens the skies of continental progress. And nowhere is this drama more starkly performed than in the resurgent wave of coups d'état, particularly across the Sahel region. The return of military rule is not merely a political regression. It is an ontological crisis.
