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[nectar_dropcap color=”#27ccc0″]T[/nectar_dropcap]he largest gathering of civil society organisations since 1994 convened at Rhema Church’s sizeable premises in Randburg this Mandela Day, to call for action to ‘recapture’ SA from the ‘power elite’.

Leading up to this event, PARI collaborated with the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation to convene the Public Servants Roundtable – a strategic workshop at the Apartheid Museum that focused on the public service component of #OperationRecapture. The invitation read as follows:

“It has become abundantly clear that our country is being robbed of its future by those who have no respect for our democracy and the institutions that serve to safeguard that democracy. 

The aim of the conference is unite all South Africans around a declaration – to be discussed and adopted at the Conference for the Future of South Africa – and a programme of action that will galvanise all sectors of society in united action, in a broad front, to push back against the abuse of power and the destruction of the state.

The organizers are keenly aware public servants are at the forefront of opposing corruption. 

Since about 2010, state institutions have been deliberately weakened. Persons of integrity, persons with knowledge of the core business, have been and are hounded out of the governmental institutions. Agents of fraud and corruption are the replacements. They paved the road for accelerated unethical and unlawful activities. The attack on public servants is a central part of the strategy of those who are endeavoring to capture the state.”

After a series of problem statements around the current level of state capture, including a presentation of the Betrayal of the Promise report, the Conference for the Future of SA broke into five commissions to develop the various components of the final Declaration of the People’s Demands:

  1. Campaigns
  2. Legal and constitutional interventions
  3. Public servants (facilitated by Ivor Chipkin)
  4. The role of Parliament
  5. Building state integrity (facilitated by Mbongiseni Buthelezi)

The conference was hosted by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation and Save SA.