Opinion article by Dr Harlan Cloete, Centre for Gender and Africa Studies, University of the Free State 

While debates continue in South Africa about the need for a national dialogue, I was reminded of its urgency during a recent visit to the Netherlands. Invited by the Rotterdam Municipality to serve on an international advisory board on cultural transition, I spent time in Amsterdam’s Maritime Museum. There, a statement stopped me in my tracks:

“The colonial history of the Atlantic region impacts the present in many ways. You can see it in street names, public statues, and buildings. It also comes to the fore in institutional racism, the groundwork for which was laid in colonial times. People of colour face the negative effects of colonialism every day –  not least in the Netherlands. In theory, every Dutch person is equal, yet in practice, Dutch people of colour find their opportunities limited by racism, however unintended.” 

This resonates deeply in South Africa, a country colonised twice by the Dutch, followed by grand apartheid, which entrenched inequality in land, property, livestock theft and cultural recognition. The  legacy of this colonial/apartheid era is still so evident in the everyday experience of people of colour in South Africa. 

The organisers involved in this week’s national dialogue should well revisit the late Prof Sampie Terreblanche’s comprehensive 1997 submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). He argued that 

One of Terreblanche’s boldest recommendations was a wealth tax, both as a structural intervention and a symbolic act, modelled on West Germany’s 1991 Solidarity Surcharge (Solidaritätszuschlag), which helped rebuild East Germany after reunification. In Germany, it became a national effort with broad public legitimacy. In South Africa, both the ANC and  business sadly dismissed the idea of a wealth tax. And look where it brought us. Today, the World Bank confirms what many already know: South Africa remains the most unequal country in the world. This conversation must be central to the national dialogue. We cannot continue sidestepping the stubborn structural inequalities that keep the majority excluded from economic opportunities and trapped in poverty. This Terreblanche truth-telling and honesty should form the backbone of a national dialogue that should in my view start locally. 

Take my hometown, Paarl. Known for producing more Springbok rugby players than any other place and home to the world’s biggest schoolboy rugby rivalry, it is also a tale of two cities. People of colour are the political majority yet remain an economic and cultural minority. The entrance to town (exit 59 on the N1)  still honours Jan van Riebeeck, a symbol of Dutch colonial conquest. Investment in the eastern part of town has been minimal, while the west continues to flourish. Schools like Paarl Boys’ High, Girls High, Paarl Gymnasium and La Rochelle enjoy world-class facilities, rugby fields, tennis courts, swimming pools and six astro hockey fields on the west side. Meanwhile, the Winelands generate massive profits, yet less than 1% of the land is in black ownership with little or no tangible investment in the east. The opulence visible in parts of Paarl reflects the resource mobilisation capacity of white South Africans, rooted in more than two centuries of conquest, slavery, violence, and brutal economic exploitation as articulated by acclaimed author André P Brink.

The National Development Plan (2012) envisions a very different South Africa by 2030, but this will remain a pipe dream unless we confront honestly and directly the trauma, legacies, and structures of inequality left by colonialism and apartheid that still haunt the descendants of its victims. And while we are at it, we must dispel the myth that corruption began in 1994. In truth, it has long been woven into South Africa’s political and economic fabric, and acknowledging this is essential if we are serious about change. What is needed is a new solidarity, rooted in truth-telling and the steps Terreblanche outlined: confession, repentance, conversion, and sacrifice.

A genuine national dialogue must mean hard conversations, especially with those who have benefited most from South Africa’s history and who continue to benefit so proportionally.  But if we are serious about economic justice, reconciliation, and building a shared future, those honest conversations are needed to take the country forward. In this the truth cannot be sugar coated. 

University of the Free State economist Dr Arno van Niekerk’s Inclusive Economy andUbuntu Economics frameworks offer values-based approaches to tackling inequality, unemployment, and poverty (he should be a keynote speaker). Yet current wealth tax debates focus too narrowly on revenue generation. The late Professor Terreblanche’s vision of a wealth tax as both a structural and symbolic tool to dismantle entrenched inequality and to build infrastructure should take centre stage in the national dialogue and worth a debate on how we envisage a shared more equitable future.