National Dialogue can become act of self-healing

South Africa should have a national dialogue. It shouldn't cost R700 million. Its outcomes should influence the next three elections if we are serious about it. If we get it right, we should have one every ten years. The problem is that South African politicians and bureaucrats continually devise ways to spend money yet consistently fail to devise methods for determining whether the outcomes of those expenditures have been achieved. 

In his opposition to the proposed cost of the national dialogue, DA leader John Steenhuisen said the recent elections were South African conversations. The problem with that statement is that South Africa, with 63 million people and 28 million registered voters, only had 16 million people turn up to vote. That's just under 27% of our total population.

If we include the demographic capacity for participation, then our elections are essentially a case of the middle and upper classes doing all the talking. The National Dialogue is a call to all South Africans to share their views on the kind of country they wish to live in. During elections, its politicians and party loyalists doing all the talking. Any opposing voices are usually shouted down. Our elections prove that many poor people are too discouraged to vote. But they do have a voice.

 But the DA leader is right: it still doesn't have to cost R700 million. South Africa has just over 49 million people aged 6 and older. This puts the unit cost at just over R14 per person if we include every citizen aged 6 and up. As someone who has done several conversations with communities across the country, the unit cost can be arrested at R2 per person.

How? By allowing these conversations to be organically facilitated by local people over many days in their own geographic spaces. Eliminate catering other than water. Eliminate flying people in to host conversations. Eliminate the need to accommodate people in expensive locations. No one gets paid to serve as a local community facilitator for the national dialogue. Don’t print any T-shirts. Allow conversations to take on diverse forms. Allow teachers to host conversations in their classrooms and feed this into the national dialogue feedback depository. Allow companies to hold national dialogue conversations.

Allow sports clubs, places of worship, pubs, and shebeens to host conversations. Appoint skilled, locally based, non-aligned community people to facilitate these local conversations. What skills are required? Not to interrogate inputs but to allow for the mature, free flow of conversations and to record it all in a non-judgmental way, and to protect the process.  

The Eminent Persons Group should prepare is a list of twenty core questions which can be used as conversation starters. Then allow people to talk. Don't judge their input. Just record it. Then thank them for coming. Within five days of every conversation, the community receives a verbatim transcript of all the inputs they have made to the national dialogue for their records. This ensures the integrity of the process. 

The worst thing that has already happened is that the Eminent Persons Group has been formed without thoroughly exploring the diverse concepts of a national dialogue. Because the default – a room filled with food and important people with t-shirts and security in over-priced facilities – will now dominate their minds.

We have the opportunity to establish a dynamic process in which a country engages in conversation with itself as a regular and organic part of its democratic identity. In a country as filled as it is with generational trauma and constant violence, this process could become an act of immense self-healing. This is not an election. It's not a grandstand for public office. Nor is it the opportunity to launch personal attacks on others or to settle community or political scores. The most empowering and non-judgmental conversation starter for the national dialogue is, "If I had it my way, I would …."

Cape Argus