Since the President’s recent announcement of the National Dialogue and group of eminent persons to lead it there has been a lot of media coverage. The R700 million rand price tag is one of the big discussion points.

It turns out this is an unfunded spending priority in the Budget and Treasury still has to find some money to fund the initiative. Jabulani Sikhakhani argues that government should spend the resources that tax payers hand over to them, more judiciously.

John Dludlu writes that the odds are stacked against the National Dialogue and identifies three big issues:

• There is a lack of shared understanding of the purpose of the dialogue and how success will be defined. Civil society wants to see accountability and a plan at the end of the process. The ANC part of the government wants a new social compact to prolong its legitimacy.
• The broader Government of National Unity believes that it has been elected and should be allowed to govern.
• The initiative is misreading the level of anger, desperation and frustration on both sides of the ideological spectrum, and is missing the “big men” that can reconcile this.

Maybe people will respond better to action than to more talk. One could argue that the NDP presents a good enough vision of what South Africa can be and we should rather have a conversation about trade-offs and implementation.

Remember to have your say in our survey.