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Children walking to school.
The voices of South Africa’s children must be amplified in the community dialogues that will take place in the country over the next year.
This is a proposal by a number of delegates attending the National Convention Dialogue that will outline the principles and modalities of the National Dialogue.
Over 1 200 delegates have over the last two days been in discussion around a number of priority themes, to crystalize what the nation can center its various focus areas around.
A delegate speaking on the floor of the Main Hall of UNISA’s main campus where the Convention is taking place says, “Child participation must be one of the key principles for this dialogue they make up one third of our population. Their voices are nice to hear, it needs forums but often ignored and often neglected we fear if you do not center them in your tools, the tools that we are going to be sent out from here that they will be neglected and ignored.”
Meanwhile, Steve Mashia of the Stalwarts Foundation’s Forum says it is important that participants in the National Dialogue process focus on its bigger purpose while finding solutions to procedural issues.
He explains why his organisation, the Moses Kotane Foundation, chose to stay within the preparatory steering committee of the National Convention when other legacy foundations pulled out citing a number of concerns including finances and government interference.
“It doesn’t matter what happens, once the idea or the programme is bigger than the cause itself, we have to find a way to make it work the challenges that were spoken about they were mostly administrative. If you look at what the dialogue is meant to achieve it is bigger than some of the smaller challenges.”
