Jay Naidoo: Lessons from our past – Dialogue as a weapon of peace

Key topics:

• Dialogue has shaped SA’s democracy, from the Freedom Charter to the RDP

• 2025 National Dialogue seeks citizen-led solutions to today’s crises

• Ubuntu and servant leadership offer a path of healing and unity

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By Jay Naidoo

Lessons of servant leadership in turbulent modern times: Part 1

South Africa was born as a miracle. After three and a half centuries of slavery, colonisation and apartheid, a brutal system of dispossession and racial hierarchy, we did something the world believed impossible. We sat around a common table and imagined a different country. We turned from vengeance to dialogue, from civil war to compromise. Nelson Mandela captured that covenant when he declared at his inauguration in 1994 as our founding President:

“Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will experience the oppression of one by another.”

That pledge is more than a line of history; it is the moral spine of our democracy. Yet today that light flickers. The threat is no longer only from the ghosts of apartheid but from within from our failure to sustain the servant leadership that once held up the possibility of human unity and social justice. To recover our bearings, we must remember how dialogue became the very weapon of peace that gave birth to our freedom.

From Freedom Charter to Factory Floor

In 1955 thousands of ordinary South Africans defied police blockades and intimidation to gather in Kliptown and draft the Freedom Charter. It was not the work of elites but the collective voice of people from villages, factories, churches and townships. “The People Shall Govern!” was more than a slogan; it was a statement of faith that listening could create a shared vision of justice.

The process was messy and dangerous, interrupted repeatedly by the security forces, yet it remains one of the most authentic national dialogues in our history. When the voiceless were heard, hope became tangible. The Charter’s spirit still calls to us: democracy is not a gift from above, it is forged in the conversations of the people.

During apartheid the factory floor became another crucible of dialogue. The democratic trade union movement, forged in the furnace of oppression, turned collective bargaining into both a tool of survival and a rehearsal for freedom. Shop stewards, elected by and accountable to their peers, were guardians of fairness. Employers and workers negotiated protocols to resolve disputes before they erupted into conflict.

The struggle for fair wages became a school for servant leadership. Workers and managers alike learned to negotiate, to compromise and to lead from within. Out of those crucibles emerged the leaders who would later guide South Africa toward a peaceful transition. Democracy was practised long before it was legislated.

Political Negotiations and an Imperfect Peace

By the early 1990s the country stood on the brink of racial civil war. Violence ripped through townships and hostels. Yet across negotiating tables, often in secret and at great personal risk, leaders from every side chose dialogue over destruction. The National Peace Accord of 1991 became a fragile but decisive turning point. Business leaders, unions, churches, political parties and even elements of the security forces hammered out a framework for peace and created local peace committees that gave ordinary citizens a stake in protecting fragile trust.

From those talks came the political negotiations that produced South Africa’s first democratic election and the Constitution whose preamble still calls us to unity. The peace we achieved was imperfect: apartheid’s economic edifice remained largely intact and many wounds of dispossession were left to fester. Yet it was peace and it was the building block for a constitutional democracy based on “one person, one vote” and a non-racial future. That was the central objective of Mandela’s generation, and it was fulfilled.

If there have been failings and there are many we must also point the finger back at ourselves. Dialogue today must examine not only the shortcomings of government and political parties but also our own as citizens, civic leaders, media and public institutions. Acknowledging our failures is often half the solution. Servant leadership demands nothing less.

Read more:

The RDP and People’s Forums – Development Through Dialogue

Even before Mandela’s release, COSATU began shaping a vision for post-apartheid democracy. The Reconstruction and Development Programme grew out of People’s Forums, grassroots assemblies where communities defined their own priorities and practised governance through the ethic of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.”

Though later displaced by technocratic planning and elite capture, this moment remains a reminder that development rooted in citizen participation builds trust and accountability. It is a lesson we urgently need today: policies imposed from above cannot heal the wounds of exclusion; only inclusive dialogue can.

Progress and the Road We Failed to Travel

We must acknowledge how far we have come from the insanity and brutality of apartheid. The right to vote for all, a progressive constitution, institutions of oversight, an independent judiciary—these are extraordinary achievements. Yet we must also face how much further down the road of transformation we could have travelled if leadership of integrity had prevailed across every stratum of society.

Too often political parties, civic leaders and sections of business have become gatekeepers, enjoying the largesse of public funds with impunity. Leaders have lingered in office for decades, their imagination dulled by power. The technological revolution has passed many by. And my own generation, including myself, has run out of ideas, still clinging to politics and ideologies that no longer answer the needs of a crumbling world.

Dialogue as Sacred Work

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warns that humanity now faces “the most dangerously divided and polarised period since the Second World War.” The storms of war, climate catastrophe and rising authoritarianism mirror the turmoil within our own hearts. Imperial power returns in a new fascist tide of darkness. South Africa’s story teaches that peace is possible only when we embrace responsibility, humility and courage.

Each of us is accountable. Our silence, apathy or complicity sustains systems of oppression; equally, our choices for compassion and dialogue can heal them. True dialogue is slow and demanding; it is seldom celebrated. But it is sacred work. It requires honesty, the courage to stay when truths cut deep, and the imagination to envision economic and ecological models that heal rather than exploit.

A Call to Servant Leadership

South Africa does not need new strongmen offering easy answers. It needs servant leaders those who listen deeply, unite through humility and heal through courage. Human rights and social justice are not privileges; they are our birthright. Servant leadership reminds us that true strength is not domination but service, leadership that brings people together, honours their dignity and builds trust across divides.

As we prepare to host the G20 and as the world watches, we must send a clear African message: humanity has a birthright to peace; Africa is not a battleground for superpower rivalries; and this century can indeed be Africa’s century if we awaken spiritually, respect one another and respect the Earth that sustains us.

Mandela once said, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.” Our climb is far from over. But the path is clear: to recover the spirit of servant leadership, to protect the miracle of our democracy, and to show once more that dialogue, rooted in integrity and Ubuntu, is the most powerful weapon of peace.