Thabo Mbeki slams DA’s national dialogue boycott as 'misplaced' and self-defeating

Former President Thabo Mbeki has criticised the Democratic Alliance (DA) for its decision to withdraw from South Africa’s upcoming National Dialogue, calling the move “misplaced and very strange indeed” and accusing the DA of acting “against its own very direct interests.”

In an 11-page detailed open letter addressed to DA leader John Steenhuisen, Mbeki responded to the party's announcement that it would not participate in the National Dialogue scheduled to begin on August 15, 2025.

The DA’s withdrawal followed the removal of its member, Andrew Whitfield, as Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, a move Steenhuisen called “excessive,” especially given that President Ramaphosa had not acted against ANC ministers implicated in corruption.

Steenhuisen had said: “Effective immediately, the DA will therefore have no further part in this process. We will also actively mobilise against it…”

Federal Chair Helen Zille went further, suggesting the dialogue was merely “a cover for the ANC’s 2026 election campaign,” adding that without DA participation, “the whole thing becomes a sham, a hollow exercise.”

“It is very good that, at last, Ms Helen Zille has openly expressed her eminently arrogant and contemptuous view of the masses of the people, that these cannot think and plan their future correctly, without the DA!,'' said Mbeki. 

He added : “Whether I would agree with such a decision or not, I would have found it logical if you and the DA had decided to withdraw from the GNU. To the contrary, I consider the decision of the DA not to participate in the National Dialogue as both misplaced and very strange indeed.”

He went on to detail the history and independence of the National Dialogue, tracing it to his April 30, 2024, speech at Freedom Park, where he called for “a new and truly inclusive National Dialogue to answer the question – what is to be done?”

He stressed that the dialogue is not ANC-led or government-controlled, but is being organised by the National Foundations Dialogue Initiative (NFDI) , a body formed in 2016 by several prominent civil society organisations and foundations, including those named after FW de Klerk, Thabo Mbeki, Helen Suzman, Desmond and Leah Tutu, Kgalema Motlanthe and Robert Sobukwe.

He explained that while the ANC supported the idea of a dialogue, he personally advised the party that civil society would reject any process controlled by political parties or government. As a result, Ramaphosa appointed a small group to engage with the foundations instead.

Mbeki described the current Preparatory Task Team (PTT) as a temporary body made up of over 50 civil society organisations, the NEDLAC secretariat, and four Presidency officials. The PTT will dissolve once the citizen-led National Convention convenes at NASREC from August 15–17, 2025, he said.

He further clarified that day-to-day operations for the Dialogue have been handled by unpaid volunteers and the costs have so far been covered by the foundations themselves. He called on National Treasury to contribute the necessary funding, supplemented by private donations.

“In fact, the costs of the preparations to date have been borne by the foundations themselves while the day-to-day work relating to the national dialogue has been carried out by volunteers who are committed to building a better South Africa. These are men and women who are ready to lead the way in ensuring that citizens claim their agency,” he said.

Addressing the DA’s claim that the dialogue is an ANC election ploy, Mbeki said: “The National Dialogue will have absolutely nothing to do with Ms Helen Zille’s fertile imagination of an ‘ANC’s 2026 Election campaign’, or what you called ‘an ANC-run National Dialogue.’”

“It would seem to me that the DA is also saying that ‘the people have forfeited the confidence of the DA’. Perhaps the DA’s equivalent of the 'Secretary of the Writers Union' should distribute leaflets along the Nelson Mandela Boulevard in Cape Town, telling the people that they should redouble their efforts to win back the confidence of the DA, or face dissolution!

''I sincerely hope that all political leaders and the parties they lead will recognise the inalienable reality that the people are our country’s sovereign authority... I have no doubt that the DA acts against its own direct interests when it decides to isolate itself from its sovereign authority when the latter decides to engage in a national dialogue to determine our country’s future.”

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