OPINION | Only a citizen-led dialogue will have an impact, credibility

The news has been dominated by a high-profile fallout: five prominent legacy foundations walking away from the preparatory task team for SA’s national dialogue.

The headlines told of budget disputes, control battles, and presidential pushback. But while the political elite sparred, another story has been quietly unfolding: across the country, civil society formations are already organising for a citizen-led dialogue process that will begin its pilot phase after the August 15 convention.

And if their numbers and networks are anything to go by, they’re ready to do it, with or without the big names.

In the past two weeks, the Civil Society National Dialogue Caucus (CSNDC) mapped its footprint.

In Barberton, Mpumalanga, the Society Health and Morals Association works with more than 700 people a year. In KwaZulu-Natal, the Civil Society Unmuted Coalition SA spans all nine provinces and 52 districts. In Johannesburg, Abahlali base Freedom Park engages 1,000 residents, while in Soweto, The Nurturer NPO reaches 2,500 people across youth, women, men, LGBTQI+, and disability groups.

Faith-based bodies such as the Word of God Church operate in Gauteng, KZN, and Mpumalanga, reaching over 15,000 through HIV, TB, and justice programmes. Mining-affected communities in the West Rand are represented by the Passover Community Building Organisation, working with 3,000 people on GBV, unemployment, and social support.

In the Eastern Cape’s Buffalo City municipality, Imveli Research Training and Awareness reaches 10,000 people through schools, human rights outreach, and social justice programmes. The Human Rights Institute of South Africa connects with up to 3,000 people through provincial networks of gender activists, elders, LGBTQI+ organisers, and environmental defenders.

These organisations already have the trust, relationships, and convening power needed for meaningful community dialogue, and they are organising themselves for the national dialogue.

Within the CSNDC, the group engages directly with the planning structures, ensuring civil society can monitor formal processes and works actively towards informing, mobilising, and preparing communities to participate in local dialogues when the pilot phase begins.

This citizen-led model will ensure the conversation reaches the streets, villages, schools, faith gatherings, and the community halls where it belongs.

Too often in SA, “dialogue” has been reduced to an event: a few days of speeches, photo opportunities, and closing statements that fade from memory before the chairs are stacked away. Civil society is insisting that this must be different.

The August 15 convention should be a launchpad, not a finale. What matters is the long tail: the ward-level meetings, the school-based forums, the WhatsApp groups, and the faith-based gatherings that follow, where people can name their realities, debate solutions, and push those priorities back up into the national process.

Already, organisations are pledging venues, facilitators, and dialogue toolkits. Many are preparing to cover costs themselves to avoid delays over contested budgets. The message is simple: the dialogue belongs to the people, and the people are ready to lead.

SA’s crises are well known: failed service delivery, violent crime, rising gender-based violence, youth unemployment, deepening inequality. Voter turnout in 2024 hit record lows, showing that for many, the ballot box is no longer enough.

A citizen-led national dialogue offers something different, it is a space to confront these realities directly, outside the election cycle, with the potential to shift our politics from transactional to transformative. But it will only work if it is driven by those who are already embedded in communities and trusted by them.

On August 15, the cameras will focus on the initial gathering, but the real convention will happen in the weeks and months after, in community halls, WhatsApp groups, classrooms and in the meeting rooms of mining towns.

And when it does, it won’t be because it was handed down from above. It will be because civil society, diverse, organised, and spread across every province, made it happen.