Dialogue won't bring consensus - The Citizen

The proposed national dialogue is the latest rebranding of one of the great mirages of South African politics: the search for consensus.

It is supported by the country's great shibboleth: a supposed unique capacity for negotiation and compromise. The personal brand of President Cyril Ramaphosa, pictured, is associated with both.

The idea that South Africans need to find unity in pursuit of the common good it's about "the people", not selfish, sectarian interests is popular, but misplaced. A free society with diverse interests rarely achieves consensus.

The best it can hope for is goodfaith political engagement to accommodate competing interests. Nor does South Africa have special capacities for negotiation. The transition to democracy was the triumph of maturity and pragmatism in a mutually damaging stalemate, an achievement certainly, but no signifier of national exceptionalism.

It's doubtful that Ramaphosa really has faith in the national dialogue to succeed. His own party has shown itself resilient to compromise and his conduct as head of a multiparty government demonstrates scant regard for the com peting interests within it.

The only real consensus in a democracy is built around the processes and institutions to manage divisions: elections, legislatures, courts, the public service and so on. The constitutional order, in our case. South Africa is now confronted by organised interests committed to uprooting the very institutional foundations of contemporary South Africa. Some of these are in the ANC.

Rather than a distracting dialogue, we'd be better served by clear choices as to where each of us stands.

Terence Corrigan, Institute of Race Relations