If the hope is that somehow the National Dialogue will persuade the government to do that which has been known for decades and in which there has only been failure, then it is truly a waste of time and of taxpayers' money.

The National Dialogue has certainly elicited a dialogue, at the very least between those who consider the entire initiative to be a significant waste of taxpayers' money and those who argue that there is a need for a societal engagement regarding the socioeconomic problems vexing South Africa and in which the political process has so lamentably failed the country.

Stephen Grootes contends that in the light of the failure of the established political process, if a National Dialogue "can bring people back into formal structures first through the convention process, then into politics (through voting), then it would have succeeded".

Pierre de Vos writes that it is difficult not to conclude that the National Dialogue is "an idiotic and self-indulgent scheme cooked up by decadent elites untethered from reality or greedy to share in the spoils of the lucrative consultancy work no doubt being generated by the jamboree".

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At least there is a debate in the country about whether to have a debate.

There is, however, a core question that the National Dialogue, arguably through the Eminent Persons Group, which has been appointed to pilot the National Dialogue, needs to answer, and urgently.

Government failure

Critics like de...