Day 2 of the first convention of the National Dialogue started at Unisa in Pretoria amidst significantly reduced interest in the event. The hall which was packed to the rafters on the first day was evidently half full on the second with no explanation as to where the rest of the delegates, who were transported from all 9 provinces and accommodated in hotels with the taxpayer money had gone.
Most of the participants took issue with how the event had been organised including that there was no clearly identified agend to be discussed nor a sound structure of how such discussions were to take place.
A senior female traditional leader from Umthata in the Eastern Cape raised concerns about the dilalogue being ward based, saying it will not be possible to implement in the rural areas.
“Villages are very vast. I’m at ward 19. ward 19 is made up of 32 villages which are a hundred kilometres away from each other so I’d recommend that we rather have the dialogues at royal houses,” she said.
A man who did not identify himself complained about what he believes to be a rush by organisers, to select steering committees which raised suspicions as it appeared people who knew each other from political circles wanted to select whomever they knew.
“There’s a fear about the selection of the steering committees because it looks like we are going to be made to endorse selection of people we don’t know, how do we select people when we don’t know their competencies and incompetencies,” he said.
An environmental rights activist who did not identify himself said many issues were cluttered making it impossible for any of them to get the necessary individual attention.
“I find it problematic just with yesterday where the environmental justice has been put with land, human rights, land and other things. these are all major competing issues and at the end issues of the environment would not get the attention they should get,” he said prompting the unnamed programme director to admit that not enough people have been accommodated from the environmental sector.
While many insisted thats the diaogue’s steering committees should be accommodated to include as many sectors Noxolo Mboxwa, a youth activist warned against making them too big arguing they could be rendered ineffective by their size.
“My comment was to comment against going too far in accommodating people in the steering committees. A steering committee that has too many people will end up not being able to quorade, not to take decisions, not implementing anything. we want to be inclusive but we should be careful of ending up with a steering committee of 50 people,” said Mboxwa.
Despite the chaos on the previous day of the convention, the event proceeded with President Cyril Ramaphosa delivering a keynote address, a speech that raised questions among social media users as many argued he should be providing solutions instead of asking South Africans why there was so much poverty or why there was poor service delivery.
“We are the foot soldiers, we are on the ground. all of you here have bodyguards, we don’t have bodyguards. you called us here but shut us down when we speak, you are here because 2026 elections are coming,” said founder and leader of Kwanele Foundation Sihle Sibisi before being swiftly shut down by a moderator.
The same moderator got into a heated exchange with a representative of the Rastafarian community who accused organisers of not allowing delegates to speak.
“You’re not going to talk us down, nothing for us without us. this is a dialogue, spend more time listening to us than telling us what to do,” said the representative who also questioned why his delegation had been bungled into one commission confining them to only issues that are to be discussed in that group.
A wheelchair bound man also accused the organisers of including people living with disabilities as part of a box ticking exercise alleging no effort was made to accommodate them.
“I was taken to some room yesterday for a discussion that never took place and I found myself unable to come back to plennary because it’s impossible to move around in a wheelchair here which is just like anywhere else in the country. we were just brought here as a box ticking exercise,” he said.