Issued by Christo van der Rheede on behalf of the FW de Klerk Foundation on 10/08/2025

The National Dialogue is the brainchild of several Nobel Prize Foundations and former presidents Thabo Mbeki and FW de Klerk.

Since last year, the various foundations, namely Mbeki, Mandela, Luthuli, Biko, Tambo, Tutu and FW de Klerk, along with several other Foundations, have been meeting to discuss the launch of a National Dialogue process.

First phase

During a two-day session, the Foundations agreed that a Preparatory Committee should be selected to get the ball rolling. Initially, this Preparatory Committee only consisted of the Legacy Foundations who initially called for the National Dialogue. Consensus was also reached on the fundamental principles that should underpin the National Dialogue.

These principles include:

• ⁠ ⁠The National Dialogue is driven by civil society.
• Political parties will not be involved in the process to prevent the National Dialogue from being hijacked for sectarian political purposes. That, instead, they were able to participate in discussions at all levels, as is their democratic right, but under no circumstances may they abuse  the National Dialogue for party political gain. To this end, political parties would be invited to send delegates to the First National Convention – with an equal amount of delegates afforded to all 18 represented parties in Parliament.
• A Preparatory Task Team was then elected out of the smaller Preparatory Committee, with representatives from government and NEDLAC joining in. This Preparatory Task Team formed subcommittees focusing on financing, public mobilisation, content creation, monitoring and evaluation, project management and planning, etc. The Preparatory Task Team, which is the main decision making body and also the heartbeat of the National Dialogue Project, has the core task of giving substance to the strategic and operational strategy.
• A Group of Eminent Persons was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 10 June 2025. Their role is of a conflict resolution, oversight and symbolic nature.
• NEDLAC was tasked with handling the financial administration and other secretarial duties of the National Dialogue in terms of the Public Finance Management Act.

Second phase

The Preparatory Task Team’s first task was to meet with the Presidency and reach consensus on the core principles underpinning the National Dialogue process. Also, they needed to request that the Presidency  make funding available to cover the following expenses:

• ⁠ A full-time central office with expert project management staff.
• The ⁠building of a technological system to process data to compile reports and an action plan with a timeline.
• A communication strategy and the ⁠⁠communication of reports with specific role players to compile specific implementation goals based on a realistic timeline.
• Development of a website.
• The training of facilitators.
• Other necessary logistical expenses.
• The first National Convention and other community and sectoral dialogues across the country.

Third phase

Some of the suggestions that were raised to position the National Dialogue as a community or civic-led initiative include:

• ⁠ ⁠Compile a database of community organisations and invite them to the first National Convention.
• Inform communities in a specific town or municipal district through a media campaign to come together within a specified period to exchange ideas about the local dialogue and specifically focus on local issues that are hindering progress.
• Elect three to four local people to represent local communities at the first National Convention.
• The first National Convention aims to lay the foundation for the National Dialogue and facilitate discussions on different themes.
• Provide community representatives with the necessary information and training on how to manage the local dialogue process in terms of specific guidelines. Provide information on how they should go about summarising the local issues in a report, how to submit the report to the central project office and also to suggest solutions. They should also be aware of how the information or data would be processed to compile an action plan and timeline. 

Fourth phase

The local representatives’ major task is to get the ball rolling after the first National Convention and facilitate a series of discussions or local dialogues and pass on reports to the central project office, so that the information can be processed and shared with government departments, municipalities and other role players. For example:

• ⁠Service delivery issues are taken up with the municipality, COGTA and National Treasury.
• Education issues are taken up with the provincial and national departments. This also applies to other public services such as Health, Housing as contained in the Bill of Human Rights, etc. The Interministerial Committee (made up of various Ministers in Cabinet) would also act as a rapid-response mechanism in this regard, attending to the needs of communities in real-time.
• Crime issues are taken up with the provincial and national departments of community safety.
• The same approach is followed with other matters that other government departments have to deal with.

When it comes to economic issues, it is important to distinguish between local, provincial and national issues.

At the local level, it is critical that the business sector is involved at the local level and that ideas are generated to attract investment, create jobs and to address the factors that negatively affect the environment in which small businesses and tourism in particular should flourish.

Importantly, regarding funding, it should be noted that the Preparatory Task Team always envisaged that there should be a 60/40 split between the public and private sector – with 60% of the total budget (which is dynamic and susceptible to change) coming from government and 40% from the private sector. 

At the provincial and national level, there are specific responsibilities, especially regarding policy. National policy or legislation has a significant impact on local economies. Therefore, there should be a focus on local case studies to show the relationship between them and then the proposal of feasible ideas, alternative policies or adjustments.

This information should be shared with the Department of Trade and Industry and related institutions to compile a national economic action plan and to roll it out in collaboration with relevant role players. The existing National Development Plan can be further adapted to include new economic detail, proposals and timelines.

Fifth phase

With the community report and action plan in hand, it is important that the community representatives must assemble a local project team consisting of experts to meet with the local municipality and sectors such as education, health, police, business and others to discuss the action plan and timeline and agree on its implementation.

Regarding the implementation of actions, it is important to distinguish between short-, medium- and long-term actions.

Expertise is the lifeblood of implementation. However, expertise comes at a price. In this regard, it is important that the community insists that experts be appointed in positions at municipal level and in the various public sector departments. 

Communities and their representatives can also engage their own experts to fulfil a monitoring and evaluation role to ensure that critical constitutional values such as transparency, responsiveness and accountability are reflected in all actions.

Sixth phase

The agreed action plan and timeline to which it is linked is the shared responsibility of the Group of Eminent Persons, Preparatory Task Team, Project Management Subcommittee, community representatives and communities.

Of course, it is important that the Presidency must take co-responsibility and hold the cabinet and all government departments accountable (especially Ministers sitting on the Interministerial Committee), specifically with regard to the integration of the National Dialogue action plans and their implementation.

Seventh phase

The objective of the National Dialogue is to empower communities and enable them to leverage our National Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to make our constitutional democracy a reality for every citizen and every community in our beautiful country.

Empowered and self-sustaining communities can help South Africa overcome the economic and socio-social challenges by having constructive dialogues across racial boundaries, organising themselves and making expertise available.

However, communities’ most critical role is to take co-ownership of our democratic system and hold those they elect to positions of power in local and national elections accountable. The right to vote and the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of service delivery by communities is key to freedom, peace, progress and prosperity for all South Africans. This fundamental human right must never be taken for granted. Getting the right and ethical people into positions of political power is critical for the future of South Africa.

A well-planned, participatory and community-led National Dialogue can lay a solid foundation for this.