The National Convention called by President Cyril Ramaphosa in the next two months is necessary and will help build the South African nation.
This is according to the Central University of Technology political analyst Dr. Bernard Sebake who was reacting to Ramaphosa’s call for a National Convention on 15th August, which he said will represent the diversity of the nation and set the agenda for the National Dialogue.
Sebake told YOU FM Newshour listeners that any developmental state must find it easy to call conventions to assess its performance in terms of providing services to the people.
“I think it is important that any nation that is in the trajectory of development must be able to link up to create an ecosystem of a working hand in glove with the citizens.
This to align the experience of the impact of the government and its effort to navigate to build a state that is more capable and to comprehend the challenges that are entrench by the global economy and politics generally.
This is also to assess how far the government is in serving its nation. This is to me necessary and it’s a product of nation building,” said Sebake.
Ramaphosa said that the National Dialogue is an initiative that has been in discussion by several leaders in the country and many other people for some time.
According to Ramaphosa, the dialogue could be crucial for the Government of National Unity (GNU) that was voted into power over a year ago to take stock of how it has been performing since it came into power.
“A National Dialogue is to assess the impact of the government and to get feedback where it’s not performing well.
I’m sure that dialogue does not mean to glorify party A versus party B, the outcomes of that dialogue may be able to shake the GNU to look at the pocket of deficiency in terms of directing its effort towards unlocking the challenges it is confronted with,” Sebake explained.
The political analyst also said that it’s premature to drive a notion that the National Dialogue could turn out to be one of the talk-shops with little to no solutions to offer.
“We will never know because the challenge generally is that the government has engulfed in a lot of imbizos and many other dialogues with communities with less change on the general experience of ordinary citizens on the ground.
It may turn into a talk-shop because it requires a political appetite without a political appetite and the will to change it could be one of dialogues that are not going to effect to bring about the state that is capable, comprehend, uplift and enhance the experience of its own people on the ground,” concluded Sebake.
