Despite the vast investment in reconciliation during the Mandela years, we are stuck in a racial paradigm. Political parties have failed to talk coherently about solving the country’s most pressing problem: the need for rapidly accelerated inclusive economic growth that will provide jobs for the millions who find themselves without a stake in the establishment. Instead, parties remained stuck in identity politics and opt to call each other out on race and other prejudices, adding fuel to the fire that is burning up valuable social cohesion.
During the Betrayal of the Promise project, Jonas and Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana, the General-Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and a senior struggle activist (along with Steve Biko, he and his wife Thoko Mpumlwana were founding activists of the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa), came together to broaden the front against state capture. During the apartheid years, the SACC were a formidable force against the regime and they again became so during the capture years. Jonas connected the Betrayal of the Promise research group with the SACC, which led to a deep collaboration, including an extraordinary meeting with Archbishop Thabo Makgoba at his residence in Bishops Court, attended by many leading clerics. Powerful echoes of the struggle years rang through the meeting as the fightback against capture was discussed. The work of the Betrayal research group fed into a process started by the SACC in response to the capture crisis called the “Unburdening Panel” – a safe and trusted space for perpetrators and victims of state capture to come forward and confide in clerics. Two weeks before the release of the Betrayal of the Promise report, the SACC released their Unburdening Panel draft report:
The report set in motion a series of events exposing the facts about and extent of state capture. After this, the SACC, with the support of Jonas and in direct response to state capture, formed the National Convention for South Africa. The aim of the convention was to initiate a nationwide process to reach broad consensus on public values and standards to build a just and more equal society. At the launch, Bishop Mpumlwana described the National Convention as process to “reimagine, redesign and reorganize the future of our South Africa, a country currently in crisis. The primary vision of the national convention process is to enable South African citizens to work on and offer the country a firm foundation of public values and minimum standards –- the basis for a common, reconciled understanding of South African citizenship – that should inform the governmental environment and service for the common good, regardless of who is in government.”
