JONATHAN JANSEN | Sure, let’s talk while the house burns — the same talk we’ve had many times

“Imagine your house is on fire,” one of Nelson Mandela’s trusted advisers asked me this week. “Does the neighbourhood watch come over and say, ‘hey, let’s have a national dialogue about the problem? No, you put out the damn fire!’”

I could not have said it better. I truly believe our president thinks we’re a nation of idiots. Take a close look at the remit of the national dialogue : “engagements that will confront the country’s challenges and forge a path into a better future”. Hello! Did we not do this before?

Remember the endless imbizos of presidents like Thabo Mbeki? Recall the anti-crime imbizos of Jacob Zuma? For three decades ministers had listening campaigns and lekgotlas and ordinary people showed up dutifully to listen to the big men speak. This must be the only country in which every citizen can write their own opinion about a piece of legislation, from the constitution to BELA, and submit it to some email address never to be heard from again. We are good at this — pretending to give people a voice and then screwing them over with the pre-decided ideological commitments of a few powerful men.

So here’s a simple question, Mr President. What happened to the National Development Plan with its object “to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030?” Here’s my favourite: “By 2030, people living in South Africa should have no fear of crime. Women, children and those who are vulnerable should feel protected.” Also, by 2030, “quality school education, with globally competitive literacy and numeracy standards”.

This is not an argument against dialogue in a broken society. It is, rather, to make the point that Pretoria cannot save us.

That’s five years away. How’s it going? Right. Not going to happen. In fact, things have got worse for the poor and squabbling over the unemployment rate offers little relief to millions of unemployed youth in our country. Reading competence is worse, as we know now. One of the same “eminents” from the NDP is on the national dialogue, others have died and “yet we are not saved” as the old preachers would have said.

It would not be South Africa if the national dialogue was not laid over with the complexity of language and structures. Here we go: National Dialogue, National Convention, Eminent Persons Group, National Dialogue Preparatory Task Team, Steering Committee, Inter-Ministerial Committee and so on. That’s right, R700m for talking through this maze when that kind of money could fix a lot of things that irk South Africans.

The sh*t in Durban’s oceans, instantly cutting off tourist revenue streams and job opportunities. The mushrooming potholes that every single day threatens life, limb and the costs of car maintenance. The daily reports of corruption within and outside the state. The dangerous ratio (1:3.75) of taxpayers (smaller) to social grant holders (growing). The never-ending gun violence that fells youth and small children in townships from Lavender Hill to Westbury. The literal implosion of the inner city of Johannesburg. The homeless standing in to direct traffic in some major urban and suburban centres. The suffocating rates of crime as households spend billions (R640bn) on security as the realisation kicks in that the state cannot protect you even as it swallows your hard-earned tax money like an insatiable guzzling monster. The steady interruption of water and electricity in suburbs and townships alike. The relentlessness scourge of gender-based violence. The growing toll of teacher burnout because of the cuts to education budgets thereby increasing the workloads of disillusioned professionals.

But no, let’s have a national dialogue about the burning house.

The president is a smart man. So why would he do something that seems so dumb? Well, he is also a politician. The appearance of action is a powerful weapon in the armoury of weak leaders in charge of a weak state. It is to impress you and to give you a sense of participation in something bigger than yourself — “a people-led process to reflect on the state of the country”. Seriously?

It is, at the same time, a distraction from the incapacity of the state to deliver on all of its previous commissions, its endless promises in every state of the nation address, and of course all those imbizos. Symbolic politics allows you to buy time when you have lost all credibility in the eyes of your citizens. In simple terms, the national dialogue is a fig leaf for political impotence and after 30 years, we should be able to see through this performance.

This is not an argument against dialogue in a broken society. It is, rather, to make the point that Pretoria cannot save us. Put differently, we are in this state of decaying politics because of the government. The dialogue that would work should be initiated by faith-based communities, independent foundations, schools and their communities, universities and their stakeholders, private companies and their shareholders, non-governmental organisations and the communities they service — all with one object in mind, and that is to mobilise civil society to fix things that are broken. Government has neither the credibility nor the capacity to lead such a project.