JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - 28 August 2008: Former ANC (African National Congress) chief negotiator, Cyril Ramaphosa and former National Party and government chief negotiator Roelf Meyer at the Action Far Safe South Africa, held at Vodaworld in Midrand, Johannesburg, South Africa on 28 August 2008. (Photo by Gallo Images/Foto24/Loanna Hoffman)
South Africa must organise a Codesa-styled economic model to address inequality, poverty and unemployment otherwise pay a price with an even bigger revolt than the recent unrest.
That’s according to former National Party chief negotiator Roelf Meyer, who said the country’s finest minds needed to organise a gathering similar to the Convention for Democratic South Africa to thrash out a new economic vision.
Meyer said the current economic model followed since 1994 had failed to address the socioeconomic conditions of the country’s majority because it’s an inheritance from the apartheid past.
“Let’s be honest with ourselves, we made a successful political transition, but socioeconomic transformation didn’t happen. It’s now 27 years later,” he said.
Meyer, who addressed the PSG Think Big Series webinars yesterday, said role players in the gathering should include business, government, labour, civil society and political leaders, among others.
“We have to face the reality that it’s the task of the president and the executive, but similarly it’s the task of you and I as citizens of this country – otherwise we are going to pay a price of what we have seen in the last few weeks on a repetitive basis in future,” he said.
On the constitution, Meyer said the fact that the country remained a “functioning democracy” after the recent unrest proved that “we are in good shape, we are going in the right direction”.
The supremacy of the SA constitution was demonstrated when Jacob Zuma and his administration were successfully challenged in the Constitutional Court almost monthly.
In all instances, the constitution was the winner in terms of the ConCourt adjudications. He lauded the Ramaphosa government for avoiding a Marikana massacre-like police shooting against protesters in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
“I can imagine those behind what happened – the instigators would have loved it – the situation of a repeat of Marikana,” Meyer said.
However, he expressed disappointment at the absence of intelligence.
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