National Development Plan has been overtaken by developments, and we need a new plan for a different context writes Yacoob Abba Omar
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of the composition of the eminent persons’ group for the national dialogue—and its meeting on July 11—signaled that the process has well and truly begun.
The August 15 national convention will be the next concrete milestone, launching six to eight months of local level, sectoral and online discussions around two pivotal questions: after 30 years of democracy, what are the problems that still need to be resolved, and what will the South Africa we envisage over the next 30 years look like?
Just as a moving bus attracts its fair share of yapping dogs, so too does the national dialogue. From the elite—be they in academia, boardrooms or heads of organisations—we get the usual growl that “we have been over-workshopped”. However, at the same time, most citizens feel alienated from the formal decision-making processes.
The organisers of the dialogue are therefore at pains to ensure that it’s not going to be yet another talk shop of the usual suspects: they are looking at every possible mechanism to ensure the vox populi are heard, including community level meetings and the lavish use of technology.
The chihuahuas in the pack of dogs have been complaining that we have just had our national dialogue recently in the form of 2024 elections. Yet voter turnout last year was about a quarter of SA’s total population, displaying a trend of steady decline in voter participation.
Some parties may be quite pleased with their small share of this small size of the population, but surely they are closing their eyes to the real crisis our democracy finds itself in. This has been at the core of former president Thabo Mbeki’s call for the national dialogue, that “the people of SA must participate in a process of determining the future of this country”.
The rottweilers in the pack have been howling that we don’t need another social compact, that the National Development Plan (NDP) is a perfectly good blueprint, but that it has largely been ignored by government. As a member of the National Planning Commission (NPC), I can attest to the fact that as commissioners we are conscious not only of the shortcomings but also of how much we still have to achieve to meet the 2030 targets.
The first NPC, led by that dynamic duo of Trevor Manuel, as Minister in the Presidency, and his deputy chair, Ramaphosa, did a brilliant job in getting us the 2012 NDP. Subsequent developments—such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, slow economic growth and rising unemployment, the July 2021 riots, ongoing corruption and rising levels of crime, the state of our democracy, the new reality of coalition governments at various levels, hollowed-out state institutions, dramatic effects of climate change, the rapid rise of various new technologies, especially AI, and deepening geopolitical crises in many parts of the world — require that we develop a new plan within a quite different context.
It is envisaged that the national dialogue process will yield a 30-year vision and an aspirational social compact, which can be translated by the next NPC into a new NDP.
Just as today we have parties that do not want to engage in the national dialogue, so too is our history replete with parties that missed the bus of history. The Nationalist Party, with its white supremacist attitude, declined the invitation to attend the 1955 Congress of the People that drew up the Freedom Charter. The IFP decided to join the historic 1994 elections at the very last moment.
In choosing to boycott the national dialogue process, parties are rendering their members voiceless. The organisers have emphasised that they want a vast army of volunteers to help organise the local level and online dialogues. Not only will that help to dramatically reduce the cost of the exercise, it will also ensure that no single party will control this process.
All South Africans should get onto this moving bus so we do not regret this moment, which offers an opportunity to steer to a better future. We can thus be the watchdogs of our democracy and our future.
Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.
*This article originally featured in Business Day and is published with permission.
