Money appears to be a significant motivating factor for some delegates participating in the two-day National Convention in Pretoria after misplaced expectations of financial compensation arose.
This comes after it was made known that delegates would be volunteering their services and time and wouldn’t receive any compensation.
According to the Eminent Person’s Group’s Bheki Ntshalintshali, this explains the difficulty in electing a permanent steering committee to take the National Dialogue forward.
Ntshalintshali says that delegates at the event disagreed about what constitutes a sector, with issues of regionalism and misplaced expectations of financial compensation complicating matters.
“Another misconception that we are coming quite clear on, people think there will be a lot of money in dealing with this particular issue. So if I’m the organiser and I’m the leader of these things, there will be some kind of compensation coming up and when the announcement was later made. Please, you are going to do it at your own cost, and you are going to volunteer doing this thing. I think people are a little bit disappointed. I think they were just deflated and said why is there R700 million, if we’re not going to be paid.”
Delegates have agreed to a two-week process to finalise those who will represent their sectors on the National Dialogue Steering Committee.
