NGOs and Social Justice in South Africa and Beyond [1 ed.] 9781869143299, 9781869143282

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NGOs and Social Justice i n S o u t h A f r i c a a n d B e y on d

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Thinking Africa is a series produced by the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University and University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. For more information on the project, visit http://www.ru.ac.za/politics/thinkingafrica/ or write to: Leonhard Praeg: Series Editor Thinking Africa Political and International Studies Rhodes University Private Bag 94 Grahamstown 6139 South Africa Email: [email protected] Previous series titles: The Return of Makhanda: Exploring the Legend by Julia C. Wells (2012) On African Fault Lines: Meditations on Alterity Politics by V-Y Mudimbe (2013) A Report on Ubuntu by Leonhard Praeg (2014) Ubuntu: Curating the Archive edited by Leonhard Praeg and Siphokazi Magadla (2014) Violence in/and the Great Lakes: The Thought of V-Y Mudimbe and Beyond edited by Grant Farred, Kasereka Kavwahirehi and Leonhard Praeg (2014)

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N G O s A N D S O CIAL J USTICE I N S O UTH AFRICA A N D B EY O N D

Edited by Sally Matthews

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Published in 2017 by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press Private Bag X01 Scottsville, 3209 Pietermaritzburg South Africa Email: [email protected] Website: www.ukznpress.co.za © 2017 University of KwaZulu-Natal All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from University of KwaZuluNatal Press.

ISBN: 978-1-86914-328-2 e-ISBN: 978-1-86914-329-9

Managing editor:  Sally Hines Editor:  Lisa Compton Proofreader: Sean Fraser Typesetter:  Patricia Comrie Indexer: Christopher Merrett Cover design:  MDesign Cover photograph:  Steven Lang / Grocott’s Mail

Print administration by DJE Print Solutions, Cape Town

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C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations ix Introduction: Rethinking the Role of NGOs in Struggles for Social Justice Sally Matthews and Patronella Nqaba Part I: Thinking NGOs, Emancipation and Social Justice 1 Can NGOs Play an Emancipatory Role in Contemporary Africa? Firoze Manji 2 Navigating the Pitfalls of State Democracy: Thinking NGOs from an Emancipatory Perspective Michael Neocosmos

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3 Black Liberation and the Notion of ‘Social Justice’ in South Africa Thapelo Tselapedi

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Part II: NGOs in Practice 4 ‘We Give Off a Lot of Heat But Not a Lot of Light’: NGOs and Land Advocacy in Zimbabwe, 1995–2005 Kirk Helliker

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5 Exploring the Relationship Between Service Delivery and Advocacy: The Case of GADRA Education Ashley Westaway

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6 Thinking Through the Role of NGOs in South Africa: Lessons from GADRA Education Patronella Nqaba

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7 The Obscure Anatomy of the NGO Sector Injairu Kulundu

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  8 Infiltration and Instigation: How White Suburban Activists Act Out Left Politics on Black Bodies 142 Koketso Moeti Part III: Conversations   9 NGOs: Bringing False Hope and Empty Promises Gladys Mpepho (in conversation with Thembani Onceya)

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10 Collaboration and Co-option: Reflections on the Relationship Between NGOs and Social Movements Ayanda Kota (in conversation with Sally Matthews)

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11 There Is No ‘Outside the Law’: Social Movements, the Law and Social Justice Tshepo Madlingozi (in conversation with Sally Matthews)

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Conclusion: Dilemmas, Possibilities, Unity and Struggle Mazibuko Jara

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Notes on the Contributors 177 Index 181

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n edited book is always a team effort, but this book was particularly so, coming as it did out of a colloquium that included several participants who are not contributors to the final volume. For this reason, I would like to acknowledge the input of all who were involved in the Thinking Africa colloquium on NGOs and social justice in Africa held in Grahamstown in September 2014. Special thanks go to Nthabiseng Seroba, who assisted me throughout the colloquium process, and to my Thinking Africa colleague Leonhard Praeg, who encouraged the production of this volume. I would also like to thank all the students who were part of the 2014 Poverty and Privilege postgraduate course and who helped put the colloquium together and contributed to making the discussions invigorating and refreshing. The members of the Unemployed People’s Movement, and in particular Ayanda Kota, also deserve special mention as their experiences and insights have assisted me in reflecting on the very important but fraught topic of the involvement of NGOs in struggles for social justice. But a book cannot be written if there is not also a hidden crew of supporters providing support and encouragement at home. For this reason, I would like to thank my husband, Pedro Tabensky, and my children, Noah and Litha Tabensky, for keeping me going, putting the pieces back together when necessary, and for sitting with me around the kitchen table watching the birds outside when the sometimes onerous questions I grapple with in the world of work have got me down.

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ANC African National Congress (South Africa) APF Anti-Privatisation Forum (South Africa) CA complementary approach CBO community-based organisation Canadian International Development Agency CIDA Congress of South African Trade Unions COSATU CREATE Community-Based Resettlement Approaches and Technologies (Zimbabwe) DA Democratic Alliance (South Africa) Department for International Development (United Kingdom) DFID donor-organised non-governmental organisation DONGO ELF-NGO Environmental Liaison Forum-Non-governmental Organisation (Zimbabwe) FCTZ Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe FES Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Germany) foreign-funded non-governmental organisation FFUNGO Farm Orphan Support Trust (Zimbabwe) FOST GADRA Grahamstown Area Distress Relief Association (South Africa) GAPWUZ General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe GDP gross domestic product GONGO government-organised non-governmental organisation GRATEBP Grahamstown Tertiary Education Bridging Programme (South Africa) International Fund for Agricultural Development IFAD INGO international non-governmental organisation Intermediate Technology Development Group ITDG KWA Kunzwana Women’s Association (Zimbabwe) LPM Landless People’s Movement (South Africa) LRNSA Land Rights Network of Southern Africa LRRP Land Reform and Resettlement Programme (Zimbabwe) MDC Movement for Democratic Change (Zimbabwe)

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MST Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil) Mwelekeo Wa Non-governmental Organisation (Zimbabwe) MWENGO National Association of Non-governmental Associations NANGO (Zimbabwe) National Constitutional Assembly (Zimbabwe) NCA NGO non-governmental organisation NSC National Senior Certificate NUM National Union of Mineworkers (South Africa) National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa NUMSA official development assistance ODA OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PAC Pan Africanist Congress (South Africa) PFP Progressive Federal Party (South Africa) QUANGO quasi-non-governmental organisation South African Communist Party SACP structural adjustment programme SAP school governing body SGB SIDA Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency Surplus People Project (South Africa) SPP TAC Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa) TCOE Trust for Community Outreach and Education (South Africa) TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa) UDF United Democratic Front (South Africa) UPM Unemployed People’s Movement (South Africa) US AFRICOM United States Africa Command United States Agency for International Development USAID WLLG Women and Land Lobby Group (Zimbabwe) ZANU-PF Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front Zimbabwe Regional Environment Organisation ZERO ZimRights Zimbabwe Human Rights Association Zimbabwean Women’s Resource Centre and Network ZWRCN

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INTRODUCTION

Introduction Rethinking the Role of NGOs in Struggles for Social Justice Sally Matthews and Patronella Nqaba

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ew would dispute the assertion that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have come to play a very prominent role on the African continent. Statistics suggest that the NGO sector has grown phenomenally over the last few decades, both in Africa and globally. For example, Kaldor et al. (2012: 19) report that the number of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) has more than doubled between 1989 and 2000. After 2000, this phenomenal growth slowed down somewhat; however, even in recent years the number of INGOs continues to reflect ‘a stable, consolidated growth pattern’ (Kaldor et al. 2012: 19). Similarly, Keane (2003: 5) reports that there are around 50 000 INGOs operating at the global level and that 90 per cent of them have been formed since 1970. A further indication of the growth of the influence of NGOs is the fact that donor support to INGOs from member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)1 grew by 384 per cent between 1994 and 2004 (Kaldor et al. 2007: 328). These INGOs now disburse more money than the United Nations (excluding the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank), and more than two-thirds of European Union aid is disbursed through these INGOs (Keane 2003: 5). Although these statistics relate to INGOs (which are arguably more visible and easier to count than NGOs), there is every indication that the phenomenal growth of INGOs has been accompanied by a similar proliferation of NGOs within various countries throughout the world, including on the African continent. Statistics on the growth of NGOs in Africa are hard to come by as not all countries collect reliable statistics on this phenomenon, but indications are that the growth in the number of NGOs over the last few decades has been very pronounced. For example, a Kenyan study reports that in Kenya the number of NGOs grew by 400 per cent between 1997 and 2006 (Kanyinga et al. 2007: 15), and South Africa’s NGO Pulse reports that South Africa has more than 100 000 registered

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non-profit organisations, as well as an estimated 50 000 unregistered ones (Stuart 2013). Furthermore, several commentators refer to the way in which the number of NGOs has increased in Africa. For example, Matanga (2010: 115) talks about the ‘proliferation of development NGOs in Africa’, and Manji and O’Coill (2002: 568) refer to the ‘explosive growth’ in the number of Western and local NGOs in Africa. While it is evident that the number and influence of NGOs in Africa has grown over the last few decades, it is important to note that there are some concerns around declining funding for NGOs generally and for South African NGOs in particular. The global financial crisis of 2007–08 inevitably had knock-on effects for aid flows and thus for NGOs. Zealand and Howes (2012) note that the financial crisis did not initially appear to have dented official development assistance (ODA) flows, with such flows showing continuous growth from 2000 all the way to 2010. However, their analysis highlights significant declines in ODA flows in 2011 and 2012, which they attribute to low economic growth in donor countries and pressure from austerity measures. They also note, however, that these declining aid flows are likely to be offset, at least to some extent, by a rise in donor aid from ‘emerging donors’ (such as countries like China, India and Brazil) and private philanthropy. Teka and Magezi (2008) argue that expectations of declining funding as a result of the financial crisis resulted in many NGOs embracing cost-cutting measures such as laying off staff or not starting new programmes. They also note that, in times of decreased funding, NGOs adopt the strategy of ‘cultivating’ donors, which might involve very careful proposal writing aimed at attracting the interests of particular donors. South African NGOs faced particular challenges that differ from those faced by NGOs in other parts of Africa. This is because the transition to democracy in 1994 resulted in changes in donor funding. Kihato (2001: 1) notes that after 1994 many donors who had previously supported South African civil society organisations began channelling money towards the new government. Furthermore, she notes that overall aid flows to South Africa declined after 1997 because of growing confidence in the government and the reduced threat of violent upheaval (Kihato 2001: 12). Regardless of the likely effects of these recent funding downturns, it is evident that NGOs today play a very important role on the African continent. However, it is not all that clear exactly which organisations are considered to fall under the umbrella term ‘NGO’. Broadly, the term ‘NGO’ is used to refer to any non-profit

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organisation that is independent from government and can be understood to be a values-based organisation. The term encompasses a wide range of organisations that differ in size, geographical location and function (Riddell and Robinson 1995: 26). While many NGOs are dependent on charitable donations and voluntary service, in recent years they have become increasingly professionalised (Clarke 1995; Lehmann 2007). Although various forms of NGOs exist, each with its distinctive focus, NGOs tend to be involved in one way or another with development initiatives that are concerned with service delivery, capacity building or policy influencing. Some researchers (for example, Mercer 2002) distinguish between NGOs and smaller, more community-based or ‘grassroots’ organisations, regarding NGOs as fairly well-resourced organisations with paid staff members, but others use the term more loosely in a way that includes smaller, less well-resourced organisations that might be dependent to a significant extent on volunteers. Some authors have attempted to provide typologies of NGOs in a quest to differentiate between the very different organisations that could all conceivably fall into the NGO category. For example, Gotz (2008: 232) rather sarcastically runs through a long list of related acronyms existing in the literature, such as the GONGO (a government-organised NGO), the QUANGO (a quasiNGO) and the DONGO (a donor-organised NGO). These terms all point to the way in which NGOs may not actually be what they appear to be – in other words, they might actually be affiliated to the government or strongly influenced by outside donors while purporting to be local, non-governmental actors. Other typologies focus on the differences between the intended beneficiaries and/or the activities of various NGOs. For example, Yaziji and Doh (2009: 5–7) differentiate between self-benefiting NGOs (such as groups like Alcoholics Anonymous or trade unions) and other-benefiting NGOs (such as Doctors Without Borders). They also note that NGOs can be differentiated in terms of whether they focus on advocacy (such as Amnesty International) or service (such as Red Cross), although many organisations (such as Oxfam) combine aspects of both advocacy and service. A further common way of differentiating NGOs is to look at their level of operation and therefore to distinguish between those that operate at a local, national or international level (see, for example, Ball and Dunn 1995: 29).2 In this book, the term ‘NGO’ is applied in a fairly broad way, although most contributors use it to refer particularly to larger, better-funded organisations, and most understand it to refer most saliently to organisations that are involved in efforts to use funding from Western countries and organisations to promote ‘development’

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in Africa. In terms of the classifications discussed above, this book is particularly concerned with the activities of NGOs that operate at national and international level, although more locally based NGOs also enter into the discussion (see, for example, chapters 5 and 6, by Westaway and Nqaba respectively). The focus of the book is on NGOs that aim to benefit others rather than the members themselves, so self-help organisations and trade unions are excluded, as are organisations such as burial organisations and stokvels. In terms of the activities of NGOs, both advocacy and service NGOs are included in the discussion. It is worth also briefly commenting on the difference between an NGO and a social movement, as this is also relevant to the discussion. Some contributors to the book (notably Madlingozi and Kota) discuss the differences and overlaps between NGOs and social movements, but generally the approach of this book is that social movements are more organic, less formal, member-based organisations that protect the interests of their own members, while NGOs tend to have more formal structures and paid professional staff, and aim to provide services to or advocacy on behalf of a particular constituency. The history of NGOs in Africa It is not possible to understand the current role of NGOs in struggles for social justice without understanding the history of their role in Africa. The roots of NGOs in Africa are found in the arrival of missionaries on the continent, who dispensed charity and were involved in the provision of education and health services (Amutabi 2006; Manji and O’Coill 2002; Shivji 2007). The missionaries and other voluntary organisations were considered to be key weapons in the ideological warfare that helped sustain colonialism, as they provided support for the idea that colonialism was in the interests of Africans through the discourse of colonialism as a ‘civilising mission’. Voluntary welfare provision was a good vehicle through which the agenda of social control could be pushed because it was apparently apolitical and therefore not subject to much interrogation and critique. However, the approach of the missionaries and other charitable organisations was often one that obscured the causes of the poverty that charitable initiatives sought to address, and which understood poverty and deprivation as being a consequence of the failings of Africans themselves as opposed to being a result of the colonial societal structures. After the end of colonialism, the discourse favoured by voluntary organisations shifted from one that spoke about ‘civilising’ Africans to one that promoted the

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idea of ‘development’. However, despite this shift, Manji and O’Coill (2002) point to many continuities between the ideologies and practices of colonial missionary organisations and those of the development NGOs that emerged after the end of colonialism. In particular, both sets of organisations approached questions of poverty and suffering in African countries through the lens of charity and paternalism, rather than the lens of emancipation and justice. Both the idea of a civilising mission and the idea of development suggest that Africans are in need of guidance and assistance from the West, which is portrayed as benevolent and generous. While the history of NGOs in Africa can thus be traced back to the colonial period, it was in the 1980s that they were increasingly recognised as important institutions in the broader development and aid sectors in Africa as well as elsewhere (see Brodhead 1987: 2; Doh and Teegan 2003: 2; Srinivas 2009: 614; Welch 2001: 1). The ‘magic bullet phase’, as it has been referred to by Lewis and Kanji (2009), came as a result of NGOs attracting greater recognition and increasingly forming part of mainstream development policy all over the world. During the Cold War, many powerful states favoured channelling aid through the state, as this allowed them to use aid for leverage. With the end of the Cold War, the need to use aid as leverage was somewhat reduced. Thus, bilateral and multilateral donors who had previously channelled funds through states shifted towards a new policy agenda that looked towards providing aid through private organisations. Furthermore, the 1980s saw increasing global support for neoliberal policies. Neoliberalism, in brief, is an approach that opposes state intervention in the economy in favour of self-regulating markets (Thorsen and Lie 2007). The adoption of neoliberal policies led to a decrease in state provision of social services, which left a gap in society that has increasingly been occupied by private social agents, such as NGOs. In the case of Africa, the indebtedness of African states gave international organisations the leverage they needed to push for the adoption of neoliberal policies (Manji and O’Coill 2002: 578). International financial institutions adopted the view that Africa’s lack of ‘development’ was best addressed through the introduction of socalled structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) that were subsequently imposed on several African countries. SAPs encouraged a reduced role for the state. As a result of this ‘rolling back’ of the state, the influence of NGOs grew tremendously, and many countries became increasingly dependent on these organisations for the provision of goods that had previously been provided by the state (Heinrich 2001: 10; Manji and O’Coill 2002: 578; Matanga 2010: 115; Shivji 2007: viii).

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By the 1990s, the NGO sector had grown considerably and NGO-led development was increasingly considered the main alternative to state-led development. As a result of this, NGOs continued to grow in capacity and influence (Drabek 1987: x; Lancaster 1999: 228). However, there is evidence, as discussed above, that the recent financial crisis has slowed the growth of NGOs somewhat. Furthermore, this financial crisis has called into question the neoliberal orthodoxy that led to the shift away from funding the state towards a preference for aiding NGOs and other non-state actors, and this could potentially slow the growth of NGOs both on the continent and worldwide. Another recent challenge to NGOs is seen in the increased influence of alternative forms of organisation evident in both the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. While NGOs have long portrayed themselves as being the mouthpieces of the excluded and marginalised, the Arab Spring and the various Occupy protests were driven by what Bayet (2013: 588–9) calls ‘non-movements’, with NGOs playing little, if any, role. Similarly, Veneklasen (2011) speaks of the role of ‘Facebook revolutions’ and ‘leaderless movements’, highlighting how different these forms of organisation are to the operation of NGOs, which she derides as entailing a ‘handful of sharp professionals and policy talking points, a wonkish celebrity and clever slogans’ rather than solid organising, mobilising and consciousness raising. It is clear that many question the idea that NGOs are capable of advancing the interests of those neglected or oppressed by the state. While the relevance of NGOs has thus been rightfully questioned and challenged (and will be further questioned and challenged in this book), their ubiquity and influence throughout Africa and beyond cannot be denied. NGOs are undeniably powerful actors with access to large sums of donor money and with a prominent voice in continental and international discussions about development, economic growth, human rights and other issues related to social justice. NGOs and social justice in Africa As NGOs have experienced growth in influence, their role has come under greater scrutiny. While NGOs have found much favour with the donor community, this increased favour has had the effect of increasing suspicion of NGOs on the part of many advocates of radical change in the direction of greater equality and social justice. In the wake of their increased influence, we must ask whether or not NGOs are able to contribute meaningfully to struggles for social justice. However, this question becomes hard to answer as it is difficult to pin down

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what is meant both by the term ‘NGO’ and the term ‘social justice’. Some of the problems relating to how to define NGOs have been mentioned above, but it is important to stress that the term ‘social justice’ is no easier to define. According to Barry (2005: 4–5), the term emerged in the heady period of early industrialisation in Europe and came about in order to advance a concept of justice considered to be a virtue not only of individuals but also of societies. The term ‘social justice’ became associated with broader struggles of socialist and socialdemocratic movements; it was used primarily as part of an attempt to highlight the shortcomings of capitalism, to argue for the need to create mechanisms to ensure a more equal distribution of income and, more broadly, to build a fairer, egalitarian society. While the term is used in a variety of ways, Miller provides a neat summary of what ‘social justice’ usually points to: it typically refers to the way in which ‘good and bad things in life should be distributed among the members of a human society’ (Miller 1999: 1). When we regard a particular policy or practice as socially unjust, we typically mean that ‘a person, or more usually a category of persons, enjoys fewer advantages than that person or category of persons should enjoy’ (Miller 1999: 1). However, as Miller acknowledges, on further investigation several difficulties relating to the term become apparent. What are the ‘good and bad things in life’ that should come under the scope of social justice? Can we properly understand social justice as something that relates principally to the distribution of particular goods? What do we mean by ‘human society’, particularly in a globalising world where questions of global inequalities and global justice have come to attract more attention? These questions preoccupy those concerned with social justice globally, but there are also particular ways in which the term ‘social justice’ is used in African contexts. In South Africa, for example, it is often used in relation to concerns around continuing racial and other inequalities stemming from the apartheid and colonial past. While most authors in this book do not spend much time discussing exactly how to define social justice, the term is critically interrogated by Neocosmos and Tselapedi (in chapters 2 and 3 respectively), both of whom object to the way in which many of those working in the NGO sector use the term. Ultimately, we as contributors to this volume do not think the best way to respond to the lack of clear meanings of terms like ‘NGO’ and ‘social justice’ is to try to pin down unequivocal definitions that can be used to make easy distinctions between NGOs and other organisations, and that can assist us in deciding whether or not NGOs play a positive role in struggles for social justice. Rather, our point

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of view is that the question of what NGOs are and what is meant by ‘social justice’ needs to be part of broader discussion about emancipation and justice. What is clear from much of the literature is that while NGOs have long portrayed themselves (and have been portrayed by others) as acting out of legitimate moral concern for the well-being of those they serve, and as playing an important role in furthering development and bringing prosperity to Africa and other relatively poor regions, there are good reasons to be sceptical about many of these claims. It is not self-evident that NGOs do indeed play a positive role in struggles for social justice, and therefore we need to think carefully about whether and how NGOs can help bring about a more just and equitable world. It is thus important to be attentive to the many criticisms of NGOs that have emerged over the last couple of decades. Critics argue that NGOs typically make use of a technocratic approach to poverty and development that leaves unchallenged the power relations that exist in the societies where they operate (Shivji 2007; Wallace 2003: 216). Poverty is treated as though it is a technical rather than political problem and therefore can be solved with political technologies that are based on mechanisms and procedures devised by NGO workers who are deemed as being experts in the field. By understanding the problem in this way, NGOs participate in the depoliticisation of poverty by stabilising and institutionalising power relations and thereby preserving the status quo (Gorden 2004: 2; Manji 1998: 25; Nancy and Yontcheva 2006: 5–6). Through this process, the poor are inevitably blamed for their poverty. In contrast with technocratic approaches that empower development ‘experts’, critics argue that political struggles are necessary in order to allow for a space where human agency can be asserted and where all members of society can freely participate (Manji 1998). When NGOs adopt technocratic approaches, people who lack technical knowledge of the kind certified by universities and other educational institutions are sidelined. NGOs favour employing those with technical skills rather than those who are most affected by the problems the NGOs purport to be addressing. Furthermore, knowledge about NGO work tends to be produced by those with the requisite academic skills, meaning that the ways in which those with less formal education experience the work of NGOs lack visibility. We know what educated elites think about the work of NGOs because they are the authors of books and reports on the subject, but we have less of a sense of how NGOs are experienced by those who supposedly benefit from their work.

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Another criticism of NGOs relates to concerns that they are ultimately more accountable to their donors than to the communities they supposedly serve. As discussed above, the end of the Cold War and disillusionment with the role of the state in advancing development led to a rapid increase in the amount of development aid directed towards NGOs. Part of the appeal of NGOs was their supposed closeness to the ‘grassroots’ and their responsiveness to the communities within which they work, but as larger amounts of development aid began to be channelled through NGOs, they have become increasingly responsive and accountable to their donors. Consequently, the work of local NGOs has ‘to mesh with strategic plans . . . written thousands of miles away [and] be designed according to non-translatable project concepts and be subject to distant and unchallengeable funding decisions by the funders of the funders’ (Powell and Seddon 1997: 8). The above criticisms all suggest that while NGOs may be able to provide certain useful products and services that might address certain particular needs, they are less likely to be able to play a role in advancing social justice, regardless of how we choose to define it. However, outside of the activist and academic circles where the above-mentioned critiques of NGOs are generated, NGOs are often seen to be very important and praiseworthy organisations that play an important role in improving people’s lives. It is not at all evident that NGOs are generally considered to be agents of disempowerment and social control. As Zeleza (2006: xiii) points out, NGOs are seen by many to represent ‘Africa’s vigorous and reawakened civil society’ and as ‘popular instruments for more accountable and transparent participatory development’. Furthermore, at scenes of great suffering, NGOs and other humanitarian actors are often present to assist people and alleviate their pain, for which many are profoundly grateful. In contexts where states have been unable or unwilling to provide adequate welfare services, NGOs have stepped in to provide education, health care and other very important services. Furthermore, despite the criticisms of their generally apolitical stance, there are countless NGOs that are involved in advocacy and activism work aimed at getting governments and international institutions to attend to the needs of the marginalised and vulnerable. Are condemnations of NGOs thus undeserved? Content overview This book does not attempt to provide a final and conclusive answer to the question of whether and how NGOs can be involved in struggles for social justice. Rather, each contributor takes up the question of the role of NGOs in struggles for social

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justice in his or her own way, resulting in a rich and varied conversation about the role of NGOs in Africa. The book originated at a colloquium entitled ‘NGOs and Social Justice in Africa’ held at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in September 2014. At this colloquium, academics, NGO workers, social movement activists, students and other interested members of the public hotly debated the role of NGOs in advancing social justice. No firm conclusions were reached, but many thought-provoking ideas were put forward. These ideas have now been consolidated into the contributions that make up this volume and which are intended to encourage further discussion and reflection on how best we can respond to the varied and persisting injustices that characterise the contemporary African (and indeed global) scene. While the focus of most chapters is on South African NGOs, the book also includes chapters that take a broader view of the role of NGOs in other African countries. Furthermore, the commentary on NGOs provided here is relevant beyond the continent, as NGOs play a similar role in other countries and face similar criticisms relating to their ability to promote social justice. Part I of the book contains three chapters that explore conceptual questions related to the general topic of NGOs and social justice. Chapter 1, by Firoze Manji, reflects on what we mean by emancipation and introduces a very useful distinction between what he calls ‘licensed freedoms’ and ‘emancipatory freedoms’. Licensed freedoms are freedoms that occur within constraints imposed by others and are delimited by those in power, while emancipatory freedoms are those that are seized through people’s collective power and which transcend the constraints of any given historical period. NGOs, Manji suggests, have been far more successful at achieving licensed freedoms. By this he means that at the very best it might be argued that NGOs have contributed to the improvement of the lives of Africans, but in ways that do not entail the emancipation of African people and their ability to determine their own destiny. In practice, NGOs effectively depoliticise the processes that lead to impoverishment of the vast majority. Chapter 2, by Michael Neocosmos, provides a further, related distinction – that between ‘representation’ and ‘presentation’. Neocosmos argues that NGOs and other civil society actors supposedly ‘represent’ interests or identities, but that emancipation is not achieved through such ‘representation’. Rather, argues Neocosmos, ‘an emancipatory politics can exist only when a collective subjectivity is self-created and exceeds the interests of that particular group by orienting its practice to principles of universal equality’. Those who participate in emancipatory

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politics are engaged in ‘presentation’: they become a subject by presenting themselves on the scene of history. According to Neocosmos, NGOs are unlikely to help create emancipatory political agency as they do not involve a collective self-affirmation that goes beyond – or ‘exceeds’ – the expression of interests and identities. Chapter 3, by Thapelo Tselapedi, turns a critical eye on the concept of social justice and the way in which it has been understood by those he describes as the ‘metropolitan left’. His focus is on the intellectual orientation of those who dominate the NGO sector in South Africa and elsewhere. Contrasting this orientation with that of the black radical tradition, Tselapedi argues that the metropolitan left’s blindness to issues relating to race has made it unable to understand ‘the black grammar of suffering’ and, more generally, unable to respond adequately to the challenges it purports to address. Part II consists of five chapters from contributors who have worked or are currently working within the NGO sector. These chapters reflect carefully and (self-)critically on the nature of NGO work in Africa in a way that reveals some of the shortcomings of NGOs in terms of their ability to contribute to struggles for social justice. Chapter 4, by Kirk Helliker, looks critically at the role of Zimbabwean NGOs in advocacy around land reform. Helliker shows that these NGOs were disconnected from rural people and did not understand their realities. This disconnection and the NGOs’ focus on struggles for civil and political rights resulted in them being unprepared for the radical land reform programme that began in Zimbabwe around 2000, and thus unable to respond meaningfully to it. Helliker’s discussion of these Zimbabwean NGOs points to some broader questions around the ability of NGOs anywhere to understand properly the realities of those they purport to assist. Chapters 5 and 6, by Ashley Westaway and Patronella Nqaba respectively, should be read together, as Nqaba relates some of Westaway’s insights to broader discussions of the role of NGOs. Westaway uses the experiences of the organisation he runs (GADRA Education) to reflect on the tensions between a welfarist approach and an approach that prioritises advocacy. NGOs have often been accused of being welfarist in that they provide specific services to address particular problems while not addressing the underlying causes of these problems. Through a discussion of the different ways in which GADRA Education has combined the provision-ofservices approach with that of advocacy for structural change, Westaway suggests that these might be complementary rather than opposing strategies. In GADRA’s

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case, the effective provision of service delivery has provided the organisation with the credibility required in order to play a role in advocating for structural change. Building on Westaway’s discussion, Nqaba highlights what the experiences of GADRA Education tell us about the question of whether or not NGOs depoliticise development. These two chapters are followed by a contribution by Injairu Kulundu, who, in Chapter 7, reflects on her experiences as a young black woman working in the NGO sector. Kulundu teases out some of the contradictions that plague the NGO sector in order to show that, despite these contradictions, it is possible both for NGO workers and for the people they work with to shift and subvert the values of NGOs and their funders. While Kulundu’s critical stance towards NGOs is clear – indeed, she argues that many NGOs are little more than brokers who mediate the effects of a profoundly unjust social order – she also emphasises that those who interact with NGOs in various ways are not just passive victims. Rather, they are able to shrewdly and adeptly navigate the NGO world to bring about at least some advantages for themselves. Kulundu concludes that NGO spaces are not simply and only debilitating, and that one can work subversively in them for positive ends. Chapter 8, the final chapter in this section, is by Koketso Moeti, who draws on her own varied experiences in the NGO sector to argue that the white leftists who dominate much discussion on the left in South Africa are insulated from the effects of their critiques, which work themselves out on black bodies. She points to a continuing problematic division of labour among the South African left, where white people are disproportionately represented among those who produce knowledge about leftist struggles, while black people are called upon to mobilise people to the causes decided upon by white leftists. Moeti concludes that more self-reflection and self-interrogation is required. Part III brings together some contributions that do not fit the format and style of a typical academic book, but rather consist of conversations about the role of NGOs. While knowledge and understanding are arguably best advanced in dialogue, academic book chapters and journal articles do not always invite this dialogue. Furthermore, the traditional requirements of academic writing mean that those who prefer to express themselves in other ways (or who lack the credentials to secure space in academic books and journals) are excluded from written discussions on topics about which they have helpful insights. In order to include such insights, Part III presents edited transcripts of three conversations among people all concerned with thinking about whether and how NGOs can play

12

INTRODUCTION

a role in struggles for social justice. These conversations highlight some of the key tensions that arise when NGOs seek to work alongside social movements and other community activists to advance struggles for social justice. All the conversations focus particularly on the experiences of South African social movement activists working with NGOs, but their insights are of relevance beyond the South African context. The first conversation, in Chapter 9, brings out the ideas of Gladys Mpepho, who was chairperson of the Grahamstown-based Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) at the time she was interviewed by Thembani Onceya, a fellow UPM member and a student at Rhodes University. In conversation with Onceya, Mpepho argues that in her experience NGOs behave in ways that are very similar to the ways in which government and political parties behave: their contribution to the community comes with an agenda and evidently enriches them, while community members remain poor. Mpepho argues that if NGOs are to play a more positive role, they ought to trust community members’ ability to decide how to use funding, and they ought to be willing to move out of their comfort zones to actually engage more practically in the daily struggles of the marginalised. The second conversation, in Chapter 10, is between Ayanda Kota, a founding member of the UPM, and Sally Matthews, who interviewed him in relation to his experiences with NGOs. Like Mpepho, Kota argues that NGO workers often behave in ways that are indistinguishable from the behaviour of government and political party officials, and that they resist coming out of their comfort zones and actually doing the hard work of struggling on the ground for justice. Kota also points to the dangers of co-option of members of social movements by NGOs. NGOs sometimes weaken social movements by offering them funding with strings attached, or even by employing promising social movement leaders. The effect is to make leaders accountable to the NGO rather than to the social movement from which they come. The arguments by these two members of the Unemployed People’s Movement resonate with the ideas of Tshepo Madlingozi, who, in Chapter 11, talks with Sally Matthews about his experiences working with the Khulumani Support Group. Like Mpepho and Kota, Madlingozi argues that the mode of operation of NGOs is predominantly a statist one. Madlingozi’s experience in using the law to try to bring about outcomes favourable to social movements leads him to argue that while social movements can and should use the law tactically to win particular victories, the use of the law and of human rights discourse is unlikely to bring about

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the radical change that such social movements seek. Madlingozi asserts that social movements and the NGOs that assist them need to chart a very difficult course that eschews an ivory-tower purism that avoids the use of the law altogether while also recognising that the hegemonic legal system is one that, as a whole, works to oppress African ways of being-in-the-world and is thus incapable of being used to achieve radical change. Given that the contributions to this book all arose from the colloquium ‘NGOs and Social Justice in Africa’ held at Rhodes University in 2014, it is apt that the conclusion to the book is an edited version of the concluding presentation at that colloquium. In his closing talk, Mazibuko Jara, who has years of experience in political party structures, the NGO sector, academia and social movement circles, uses this experience to distil some key points out of the colloquium discussions. Jara seeks to go beyond simply stating the shortcomings of NGOs and expressing moral outrage about their failings. He argues that whatever role NGOs might play, they are not up to the task of bringing about the radical change required if social justice is to be achieved; we therefore have to think beyond NGOs. However, as Jara makes clear, political parties and social movements in their current form are also not up to the task. This means that we need to think beyond existing structures when trying to build a radical emancipatory project. Drawing on his varied experiences in South African left organisations, Jara points to some of the more promising NGOs and other political platforms that provide pointers to how we can best organise in emancipatory ways. He concludes that we should not limit our imaginations by only asking what NGOs can do, but rather open up our minds to think more broadly about how we can build new practices and new ways of organising that can help open up possible paths to a more just future.

Notes 1. The OECD is a group of high-income countries that includes most of the big-donor countries. Members of the OECD cooperate to stimulate economic growth and trade and to promote liberal democracy and free-market economies. 2. Ball and Dunn (1995) also discuss a range of other possible ways of differentiating between NGOs, such as by looking at their activities or at the ways in which the organisations are governed.

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INTRODUCTION

References Amatubi, M.N. 2006. The NGO Factor in Africa: The Case of Arrested Development in Kenya. New York: Routledge. Ball, C., and Dunn, L. 1995. Non-governmental Organisations: Guidelines for Good Practice. London: Commonwealth Foundation. Barry, B. 2005. Why Social Justice Matters. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bayat, A. 2013. ‘The Arab Spring and Its Surprises’. Development and Change 44(3): 587–601. Brodhead, T. 1987. ‘NGOs: In One Year, Out the Other?’ World Development 15 (Supplement 1): 1–6. Clarke, J. 1995. ‘The State, Popular Participation, and the Volunteer Sector’. World Development 23(4): 593–601. Doh, J.P., and Teegen, H. 2002. ‘Nongovernmental Organizations as Institutional Actors in International Business: Theory and Implications’. International Business Review 11: 665– 84. Drabek, A.G. 1987. ‘Development Alternatives: The Challenge for NGOs – An Overview of Issues’. World Development 15 (Supplement 1): ix–xv. Gorden, K. 2004. ‘Depoliticizing Effects of International Development as the Praxis of Liberal Institutionalism’. http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/QEs/Gorden.Dev.QE2.pdf (accessed 1 August 2014). Gotz, H. 2008. ‘Reframing NGOs: The Identity of an International Relations Non-starter’. European Journal of International Relations 14(2): 231–58. Heinrich, V.F. 2001. ‘The Role of NGOs in Strengthening the Foundations of South African Democracy’. International Journal of Voluntary and Non-profit Organisations 12(1): 1–15. Kaldor, M., Albrow, M., Anheier, H., and Glasius, M. (eds). 2007. Global Civil Society 2006/2007. London: Sage. Kaldor, M., Moore, H.L., and Selchow, S. (eds). 2012. Global Civil Society 2012: Ten Years of Critical Reflection. New York: Palgrave. Kanyinga, K., Mitullah, W., and Njagi, S. 2007. The Non-profit Sector in Kenya: Size, Scope and Financing. Nairobi: Institute for Development Studies. Keane, J. 2003. Global Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kihato, C. 2001. ‘Shifting Sands: The Relationship Between Foreign Donors and South African Civil Society During and After Apartheid’. Research Report No. 86. Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg. Lancaster, C. 1999. Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lehman, G. 2007. ‘The Accountability of NGOs in Civil Society and Its Public Spheres’. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18(6): 645–69. Lewis, D., and Kanji, N. 2009. Non-governmental Organisations and Development: Routledge Perspectives on Development. New York: Routledge. Manji, F., 1998. ‘The Depoliticisation of Poverty’. In D. Eade (ed.), Development in Practice: Development and Rights. Oxford: Oxfam: 12–33. Manji, F., and O’Coill, C. 2002. ‘The Missionary Position: NGOs and Development in Africa’. International Affairs 78(3): 567–83.

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Matanga, F.K. 2010. ‘NGOs and the Politics of Development in Africa’. Development 5(1): 114–19. Mercer, C. 2002. ‘NGOs, Civil Society and Democratization: A Critical Review of the Literature’. Progress in Development Studies 2(1): 5–22. Miller, D. 1999. Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nancy, G., and Yontcheva, B. 2006. ‘Does NGO Aid Go to the Poor? Empirical Evidence from Europe’. IMF Working Paper 06/39. Washington, DC. Powell, M., and Seddon, D. 1997. ‘NGOs and the Development Industry’. Review of African Political Economy 24(71): 3–10. Riddell, R.C., and Robinson, M. 1995. Non-governmental Organisations and Rural Development. London: Clarendon Press. Shivji, I. 2007. Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa. Nairobi and Oxford: Fahamu. Srinivas, N. 2009. ‘Against NGOs? A Critical Perspective on Non-governmental Action’. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 38(4): 614–26. Stuart, L. 2013. ‘The South African Nonprofit Sector: Struggling to Survive, Needing to Thrive’. http://www.ngopulse.org/article/south-african-nonprofit-sector-struggling-survive-needingthrive (accessed 1 August 2014). Teka, Z., and Magezi, V. 2008. Global Financial Crisis and Donor Funding Implications: Should NGO Beneficiaries Be Concerned? Durban: Aids Foundation of South Africa. Thorsen, D.E., and Lie, A. 2007. ‘What Is Neoliberalism?’ http://folk.uio.no/daget/What%20 is%20Neo-Liberalism%20FINAL.pdf (accessed 1 August 2014). Veneklasen, L. 2011. ‘Citizen Action and the Perverse Confluence of Opposing Agendas’. https:// www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lisa-veneklasen/citizen-action-and-perverse-confluence-ofopposing-agendas (accessed 1 August 2014). Wallace, T. 2003. ‘NGO Dilemmas: Trojan Horses for Global Neoliberalism?’ Socialist Register 2004: 202–19. Welch, C.E. 2001. NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Yaziji, M., and Doh, J. 2009. NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zealand, K., and Howes, S. 2012. ‘End of the Aid Boom? The Impact of Austerity on Aid Budgets’. Development Policy Brief. Development Policy Centre, Crawford School, Australian National University. http://devpolicy.org/end-of-the-aid-boom-the-impact-of-austerity-onaid-budgets-and-implications-for-australia20120504/ (accessed 1 August 2014). Zeleza, P.T. 2006. Foreword to M.N. Amutabi (ed.), The NGO Factor in Africa: The Case of Arrested Development in Kenya. New York: Routledge.

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Can  NGOs  Play  an  Emancipatory  Role  in  Contemporary  Africa?

Part I Thinking NGOs, Emancipation and Social Justice

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Can  NGOs  Play  an  Emancipatory  Role  in  Contemporary  Africa?

CHAPTER 1

Can NGOs Play an Emancipatory Role in Contemporary Africa? Firoze Manji

W

hether we are considering the struggles against enslavement and slavery, against imperial expansion and colonisation, against exploitation of labour, dispossessions and landlessness, against the oppression of women and racism or, indeed, against any other form of oppression and exploitation, the fundamental feature of all emancipatory struggles has always been a rather basic one, a demand so basic that it seems almost banal when expressed in this way: the audacity of a people to reclaim their humanity. The struggle for emancipation is, I would suggest, the struggle of a people to invent, assert, release and ultimately realise their full potential as humans – and, being humans, to realise their full potential as social beings. History shows that every attempt by the oppressed (by definition, those whose humanity has been denied) to assert their humanity has faced the violence of denial. The Haitian revolutions and the slave revolts in the Americas and the Caribbean are testament to that, as were the waves of resistance against colonial rule across the African continent. That violence has taken many forms: physical elimination, imprisonment, torture, and other forms of physical and sexual violence. The violence associated with Africa’s interaction with imperialism does not require elaboration here and has been well documented by others (see, for example, Rodney 1973). But there are other forms of violence that are insufficiently recognised: repression of cultural life, suppression of a people’s history (and therefore their source of identity), and the violence associated with the rewriting of history aimed at dehumanising or invalidating the legitimacy of the oppressed, or defining a people as those to be saved by noblesse oblige. Freedom and emancipation The opposition to repression, oppression and exploitation has produced the struggle for two distinct forms of freedoms: emancipatory freedoms and licensed

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freedoms. Crudely put, emancipatory freedoms are those that have been taken, while licensed freedoms are those that have been conceded or granted. Emancipatory freedoms imply the collective power of people to determine their own destiny. Emancipatory freedoms are an expression of what Lewis Gordon (2008) characterises as a historical aspiration, one that continues to exist and transcends the constraints that might have been negotiated in any given historical period. Emancipatory freedom implies, therefore, an assertion of dignity, of selfworth, a commitment to a project that frequently transcends even the threat or possibility of death, a proclamation and assertion of, and an insistence upon, a claim to be part of humanity. This is in contrast to what I would describe as licensed freedoms. Licensed freedoms are those whose parameters are set by constraints imposed by others than those who seek their own freedom. Those seeking licensed freedoms accept the authority of those who set the limits. Cattle in a field have the freedom to roam around the field to their hearts’ content, but the fence around the field delimits their freedom. There is no question of breaching the fence or of contesting the right of the farmer to decide on the limits of the freedom granted within that field. The freedom of the cattle is a licensed freedom. A similar but more prosaic and perhaps more insightful description comes from an exchange between activists from two South African social movements – Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Rural Network – reproduced in a pamphlet published by the South African Church Land Programme: Someone in the group told the story of a pig that had been kept in a cage. Then one day, the pig was released from the cage and tied to a tree instead. And the pig celebrated, saying, ‘I am free now.’ We all laughed about this story – then our story-teller added: ‘But you know, even if you cut that rope, the pig will still just circle around the tree and not move away.’ . . . When we think of the thousands of people filling stadiums on Freedom Day chanting ‘we are free’, we think they are like the pig (Church Land Programme 2009: 28). Licensed freedoms are granted and delimited by those in power, albeit that such freedoms may sometimes be a product of the outcome of periods of struggle, negotiations with rulers or even noblesse oblige. But the power and legitimacy of those who decide to set the limits are not fundamentally challenged.

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Can  NGOs  Play  an  Emancipatory  Role  in  Contemporary  Africa?

The two forms of freedom are not necessarily independent of each other: struggles for emancipation and self-determination can, and often do, lead to negotiations for concessions from the ruling class, with new parameters set for the subsequent exercise of a constrained, delimited licensed freedom. But those engaged in a struggle for emancipatory freedoms will not halt their struggles with the concessions granted, but will seek to push the boundaries of those delimited freedoms and eventually challenge the authority of those who dare to delimit their freedoms. By definition, emancipatory freedoms require a conception of the ‘long arc of history’, an ability to think in terms of historical eras. NGOs in relation to the struggle for emancipation Elsewhere I have discussed the role of transnational liberal NGOs that have an operational remit in the process of the depoliticisation of poverty in Africa (Manji 1998). A subsequent paper (Manji and O’Coill 2002) also dealt with the active collusion – and, in some cases, the active participation – of missionary societies and the early NGOs in torture and other forms of violence carried out by colonial powers against the movements for freedom. The essential argument is that many NGOs are, in the era of neoliberalism, increasingly playing the role of their missionary predecessors. In the colonial period, missionaries played a central role in the provision of social welfare as charity as well as in sweetening the bitter pill of colonialism. They were an integral part of colonial rule, providing services to native populations that the state would not, and serving to dominate the mental universe of the colonised – ‘the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world’, as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986: 16) put it. There are parallels with the modernised (or perhaps moderniser) missionaries – that is, the development NGOs. Under neoliberalism, the state privatised the commons (the commons that were fought for during the struggle for independence in which much blood and life were lost): land, water, energy, communications, transport, health care, education, and so on. So services which people formerly had a right to were once again something they had to beg for from the so-called charitable organisations. In that sense, development NGOs were adopting the missionary position. It was these NGOs, heavily funded by the aid agencies, that moved in to privatise social welfare, to provide the sweetener for neoliberalism, to occupy the mental universe by telling the neocolonised that development, not emancipation, was what they needed; that the key task was ‘fighting poverty’, not fighting the looting

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that was the principal feature of neoliberalism. And in so doing, NGOs play the vital service to capital of depoliticising poverty. For them, the problem is ‘poverty’, not the political and economic processes that result in mass pauperisation. They perform this role much as the missionaries of the past did: by eliminating any reference to history. People are just poor. There is no question of explaining how they became poor. It is the ‘native condition’. In the past, the native was uncivilised. Today, they are judged to be underdeveloped. They are no longer the makers of history who defeated the rich and well-armed colonial powers, but rather passive objects of development. The transformation of people from citizens with the right to public services to the humiliating status of the beggar can be considered a form of violence. NGOs and the white saviour complex Like their missionary predecessors, NGOs today are driven by what has come to be known as the ‘white saviour complex’. The recent overthrow, on 31 October 2014, of Burkina Faso president Blaise Campaoré by mass uprisings almost exactly 27 years after he had seized power through the assassination, on 15 October 1987, of Thomas Sankara – popularly referred to as the ‘Che Guevara of Africa’ – provides an excellent case study of the conditions in which the saviour complex flourishes, thrives or dies. It illustrates well the role of NGOs as putative ‘saviours’, and their role in carrying out their own form of violence against the African people. The République de Haute-Volta (Republic of Upper Volta), as Burkina Faso was once known, and which was once part of the French Union, obtained independence from France in 1960. This tiny impoverished country was grossly underdeveloped, with an illiteracy rate of 90 per cent, the world’s highest infant mortality rate (280 deaths for every 1 000 births), inadequate basic social services (one doctor per 50 000 people), and an average yearly income of $150 per person (Harsch 2014: chap. 2). Its people had been rendered into the perfect image that nourishes the white saviour complex, as described by Walter Rodney: ‘A black child with a transparent rib-case, huge head, bloated stomach, protruding eyes and twigs as arms and legs was the favourite poster of the large British charitable operation known as Oxfam’ (Rodney 1973: 236). Following a series of coups and counter-coups that eventually led Thomas Sankara and his comrades to power in 1983, an extraordinary revolution was launched in the country. From being a highly indebted and highly illiterate country,

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Can  NGOs  Play  an  Emancipatory  Role  in  Contemporary  Africa?

unable to feed itself and with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, the Sankara-led revolution achieved extraordinary transformations in the space of only four years. The country became self-sufficient in food, its infant mortality rate was halved, school attendance doubled, ten million trees were planted to halt desertification, and wheat production was doubled. Land and mineral resources were nationalised; railways and infrastructure were constructed; and 2.5 million children were immunised against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy were outlawed, and women were actively involved in decision making at all levels. Rather than export cotton, Sankara helped develop the textile industry to enable people to be clothed with locally manufactured products. In order to achieve all this, Sankara did not ask for aid – on the contrary, he shunned it (Harsch 2014: chap. 6). Moreover, he argued that the debt owed by the country was odious and therefore should not be paid (Sankara 1987). During the short period of Sankara’s rule (1983–87), the country was marked by the almost complete absence of foreign aid agencies and their local counterparts, the development NGOs. Saviours cannot thrive where a people retake control of their destinies, assert their dignity and humanity, create the structures for self-determination, organise to produce and make collective decisions, take pride in their own cultures, and seek neither aid, grants nor charity. Indeed, the very name of the country – Burkina Faso, ‘the land of upright people’ – that Sankara introduced in 1984 is anathema to the saviour industry. The assassination of Sankara and his comrades at the hands of Blaise Campaoré in 1987, supported and celebrated by France and the rest of the imperial world, was to bring about a reversal of all the gains of that short period. Under Campaoré, the country quickly returned to the conditions of the former République de HauteVolta. Cotton was once again grown for export, accounting for 30 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) of $1 500 per capita, one of the lowest in the world (Harsch 2014: chap. 7). Today, Burkina Faso is classified as one of the highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs), with more than 80 per cent of its population living on less than $2 per day, and nearly 44.5 per cent on less than $1.25 per day. Infant mortality rates have been increasing. Literacy levels have fallen back to around 25.3 per cent, with less than 10 per cent of primary school students reaching secondary school (UNDP 2015: 234–66). In contrast to the programme of ‘land to the peasant’ initiated under Sankara, Campaoré’s policies were more like ‘land to the elite’. Corruption ran deep, with

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millions allegedly being siphoned off from aid and mining company handouts. In fact, a large part of the economy was funded by international aid. Privatisation of water and other utilities was the order of the day. A number of transnational mining corporations were allowed to excavate gold and other minerals, with almost no benefit to the population at large. And the Campaoré regime was not averse to using violence and assassinations to deal with its opponents. These were the conditions needed for the flowering of agents of the saviour industry. In contrast to Sankara’s time, Campaoré’s rule was characterised by increasing involvement of the transnational development NGOs and an exponential growth in the number of their local Burkinabé counterparts. Oxfam-Québec’s involvement in Burkina Faso, for example, escalated after Campaoré took power in 1987. The number of Burkinabé NGOs is thought to be in the hundreds, each dependent on foreign aid, each ready to present Africans as victims in need of rescue, not least from themselves, as the basis for getting grants. These NGOs flourished under a regime that had retreated from its responsibilities for providing social services, and which systematically dispossessed its people by privatising the commons. The regime actively encouraged this growth of NGOs supported by international aid as the basis for absolving itself of any responsibility for improving the lives of the majority. For saviours to exist, there must be those in need of ‘saving’. Put another way, saviours require victims. Victimisation – that is, the process of making other humans victims – is necessarily a fundamental requirement for the existence of a saviour complex. Thus, it has become conventional in the West to describe Africans only in terms of what they are not: they are considered chaotic not ordered, traditional not modern, tribal not democratic, corrupt not honest, underdeveloped not developed, irrational not rational, lacking in all of those things the West presumes itself to be. White Westerners are still today represented as the bearers of ‘civilisation’, the brokers and arbiters of development, while black, post-colonial ‘others’ are still seen as uncivilised and unenlightened, destined to be development’s exclusive objects. But to fulfil this image of Africa requires the complicity of the African state and African NGOs, each to carry out its own form of violence. First, as the case of Burkina Faso illustrates, it requires the violence associated with destroying the emergence of self-worth, self-determination and dignity that was the achievement of the short-lived revolution led by Sankara. That violence is also necessary if the new rulers are to use the state as a source of private accumulation by dispossession for the benefit of a few.

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Can  NGOs  Play  an  Emancipatory  Role  in  Contemporary  Africa?

The local NGOs, whose survival is dependent on receiving handouts from the development industry, are complicit in nurturing the image of the subservient, incapable, primitive African – the victim that needs saving. The complicity of African NGOs, and indeed of African leaders, in perpetuating a form of self-hate of the African identity, a modern manifestation of Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks (1963), is a painful and too-often-unacknowledged form of violence. But portraying Africans in this way is necessary for the survival of the international development agencies and their local collaborators. To raise funds effectively, or to justify aid, Africans are portrayed as suffering victims, starving, emaciated and pleading for help. Graphic images of starving children are used by ever-growing numbers of competing charities to gain the attention of the public. But repetitive portrayal deadens the appeal. So to elicit responses, each image depicting poverty has to be more graphic that the last. The spiral leads to what may be characterised as ‘development pornography ‘(Sankore 2005). Licensed freedoms and memory losses The social movements that emerged in the post-Second World War period included those who sought to fight for emancipatory freedoms and those who fought for licensed freedoms (and, of course, there were also those against granting any kind of freedoms at all). The nationalist parties sought the support of the growing mass movements that had swept the continent in this period on the basis that the cries for freedom of the masses would be advanced through negotiations with their colonial masters. This was the case in almost all instances. Where the leadership refused to comply with negotiations, as in the case of Patrice Lumumba, Amílcar Cabral and others, coups d’état, assassinations and other interventions have been used to prevent the formation of governments that would seek to demolish the state. The mobilisation of millions across the continent created the conditions for concessions to be drawn from the colonising powers, and was often supported by the US, who was keen to break the monopoly of the European powers over access to natural resources and the markets of Africa. In the majority of cases, the negotiations resulted in the nationalists being convinced that it was not necessary to transform the state, but rather that they could take over the existing colonial state machinery. That state was a colonial state, one that was set up to serve, protect and advance the interests of imperial power and its entourage of corporations and banks. That state had a monopoly over the use of violence. It had police forces,

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armies and secret police, and it had used force and, where necessary, violence to protect the interests of the way in which capitalism operated in the peripheries. All that the nationalist governments did on coming to power was to do a bit of window dressing in the form of deracialisation of the state and change the uniforms of the repressive arm of the state to reflect the new colours of the national flag. It was hardly surprising thereafter that the very same state machinery was used against the mass movements, a phenomenon witnessed in South Africa, for example, with the killing of striking mineworkers in Marikana in 2012. Whereas large sections of civil society characterised this event as an aberration, was not the state, the inherited apartheid state, simply fulfilling its core purpose in protecting the interests of transnational capital? Looking across the continent, one sees a strong tendency among NGOs to fail to distinguish government from the state. In all cases in Africa, the colonial state has been occupied by elected government (or the government formed by seizing power through a coup d’état), but the fundamental nature of the inherited colonial state has been left intact. With the downfall of the USSR, the credibility of socialism as an alternative to capitalism has collapsed. But with it has been a disintegration of the capacity to envisage what the pathways to emancipation might be. The pitiful cry of civil society that ‘another world is possible’ stands in strong contrast to the shouts of social movements that another world is necessary. Margaret Thatcher, it seems, has come out victorious, and we are left with civil society organisations that are largely the children of TINA (there is no alternative to capitalism). So licensed freedoms are all the rage, with no challenge made to the state and its class nature, nor to the operations of capital and its extraction of superprofits from Africa. Large sections of civil society beg only that capitalism in the peripheries should behave ‘nicely’. Forgotten is the bloody and genocidal history of capitalism in the peripheries. And that raises the issue of memory loss. The objections to a vision of the future based on licensed, negotiated freedoms is not just the old argument about reform versus revolution. It is that when the horizon is limited only to the farmer’s fence or the rope that tethers the pig, then perforce this must be accompanied by the need to erase memories of the past. As Rodney put it: ‘To be colonised is to be removed from history, except in the most passive sense’ (Rodney 1973: 225). Or, in the words of Milan Kundera:

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The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write a new book, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster . . . The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting (Kundera 1979: 4). Erasing the memory of a people, redefining their identity, limiting their ability to envision a future in which they are no longer victims or objects of development driven by other people’s agenda but rather determinants of their own history – this has been, I would argue, one of the major roles of NGOs since the beginning of the neoliberal era. Representation and presentation One of the characteristics of many NGOs is the assumed belief that their work allows them to represent the views of the oppressed and exploited. There is a fundamental arrogance in this approach for which they are given legitimacy by the development industry and by many governments. There is an assumption that because NGOs support projects with and for the ‘poor’, they can represent the latter’s interest in international forums. These so-called representatives are rarely elected by, nor are they accountable delegates from, organised sections of the oppressed and exploited such as social movements, trade unions or associations of farmers, women, youth, and so on. Their claim to representation is frequently reinforced by imperialist governments through their inclusion in ‘multilateral’ forums comprising ‘representatives’ of ‘stakeholders’. Yet, not all NGOs are of the same ilk. The term ‘NGO’ includes a heterogeneous spread of organisations. There are those that understand that their role is fundamentally political and that within the political economy there is no such thing as neutrality. They recognise that they have a role in pushing the boundaries of delimited freedoms. They perceive the need to challenge the legitimacy of the ruling classes to rule. And they recognise that the current situation of the disenfranchised, exploited and oppressed has historical origins, and that the future cannot be created without an understanding of that history. But among such NGOs we can distinguish two types. The first type is those that assume that, because of their analysis and knowledge, they can represent the oppressed and exploited. Such positioning results frequently in clashes with the social movements on behalf of whom these NGOs claim to speak or act.

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The second type is perhaps the rarest of them all: NGOs that see their role not as representing the oppressed or exploited, but rather as facilitating and supporting the latter in presenting their own views on their own behalf. The core element of such NGOs is an understanding of solidarity. Solidarity is not about fighting other people’s battles. It is about establishing cooperation between different constituencies on the basis of mutual self-respect and concerns about the injustices suffered by each. It is about taking sides in the face of injustice or the processes that reproduce injustice. It is a relationship between equals. It is about taking actions within one’s own terrain that will enhance the capacity of others to succeed in their fight against injustice (Manji 1997). For example, Canadian mining companies currently amputate vast natural resources from Africa, and in the process they cause widespread environmental destruction and exploit mineworkers who work in dangerous and harmful conditions. Solidarity from Canadian NGOs involves not making representations on the behalf of those who suffer, but rather confronting the mining companies within Canada itself and enabling the voices of the exploited to be heard on their own terms. Growing dispossession . . . Today, the extent of land-grabbing, natural resource extraction – which, strictly speaking should strictly be called ‘resource amputation’ (Manji 2014) – privatisation, freedom for transnational corporations to loot and avoid taxation, and the extent of collusion with this theft by the local elites is unprecedented and accelerating. Our governments, whether in Africa or indeed in the US, Europe or elsewhere, are ever more accountable to the corporations and banks. Everything is becoming commodified and speculated upon. Millions of people are unable to buy basic foods, not because of any shortage of food, but because food is speculated upon as commodities on the stock exchanges. Africa’s genetic resources are being looted and farmers are being imprisoned by the agro-industrial complex. African countries are being turned increasingly into occupied territories by the United States Africa Command (US AFRICOM). Every aspect of human development, even climate change, is being reconstructed as a ‘security’ issue, permitting the militarisation of life in the peripheries of capitalism – and perhaps also in the centres of capitalism, if the events in Ferguson, Mississippi, in the United States are anything to go by.

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And just as we have seen an unprecedented centralisation and concentration of capital globally, so we are seeing a similar process among development NGOs, with ever-larger global enterprises such as Oxfam, Save the Children, ActionAid, CARE International and World Vision, to name but a few, being formed with ever-larger volumes of funds. Many of these Northern aid agencies have now set up offices in Africa so as to be perceived as organisations of the South – as if geographic location changes anything. They now have the power to do deals directly with African governments and to speak on behalf of ‘civil society’. Backed with resources far exceeding those of local organisations, they are able to play the missionary role to a far greater extent than before. They offer no challenge to the neoliberal agenda – indeed, their income depends on not contesting that ideology. As Danny Sriskandarajah (2014), the secretary general of CIVICUS, recently wrote: Often overly reliant on state funding, we have allowed our work – our ambitions even – to become constrained by donor requirements, by the need to avoid biting the hand that feeds us. Where once a spirit of volunteerism was the lifeblood of the sector, many NGOs today look and behave like multinational corporations. The largest of them employ thousands of people around the world and their annual budgets run into hundreds of millions. They have corporate style hierarchies and super-brands. With such extensive infrastructure to maintain, the inherent agility and innovation of peoples’ movements has moved beyond our grasp. Saving the world has become big business. And all this matters because we are losing the war; the war against poverty, climate change and social injustice. Many courageous, inspirational people and organizations are fighting the good fight. But too many of us – myself included – have become detached from the people and movements that drive real social and political change. The corporatization of civil society has tamed our ambition; too often it has made us agents rather than agitators of the system. With declining ‘aid’ budgets, many of these NGOs are turning to multinational corporations (or the tax-evading foundations that these corporations establish). Pleading ‘pragmatism’, many of them collude with the multinationals by giving a ‘progressive’ cover to them through programmes of ‘corporate social responsibility’.

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For example, several Canadian NGOs have been given millions of dollars for social programmes such as building schools and health centres in areas where extractive industries are mining oil or other mineral resources while destroying the environment. The silence of the NGOs on the role of these extractive industries is not hard to understand. If the missionaries of the past were part of the machinery of colonial domination, today’s missionaries are part of the machinery of exploitation by multinational corporations and finance capital. Accompanying these developments have been claims that Africa has been experiencing exceptional growth – the so-called Africa rising – with GDP increasing at an average of 5–6 per cent per year. As I have argued elsewhere (Manji 2014), these levels of growth are illusionary and the benefits are accruing primarily to transnational corporations in the Global North. . . . and growing discontent But there is another aspect of rising, one that gives us hope for the future and for the potential self-determination of the African people, and which needs to be given greater attention: the rising of the people across the continent, which I highlighted in an essay titled ‘African Awakenings: The Courage to Invent the Future’ (Manji 2012). I argued there that in addition to the outbreak of revolutionary situations in Tunisia and Egypt that resulted in the ousting of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak respectively, there had been popular uprisings in Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Djibouti, Gabon, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Togo, Uganda, Western Sahara and Zimbabwe. More recently, we have witnessed uprisings in a number of other countries, including Nigeria, Chad and, most recently, in Burkina Faso, where Campaoré was deposed. Each of these uprisings has been fuelled by decades of dispossession and pauperisation that accompanied the latest phase of capitalism, popularly referred to as ‘neoliberalism’. Yet, when the millions took to the streets of Tunisia, Egypt and Burkina Faso, this was not the result of the work of NGOs, nor was it appeals for more development aid. It is in popular mobilisations like these that the hope for emancipatory freedoms is rekindled. Conclusion The majority of NGOs today constitute an obstacle to the emancipation of the oppressed and exploited. This is not to suggest that such formations are by their nature ‘anti-emancipation’, but rather that emancipation is a political task. Most

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NGOs perceive themselves to be ‘apolitical’ or, if they recognise the political nature of their work, arrogantly assign themselves a role of representation rather than enabling the oppressed and exploited to present themselves. The principal role that NGOs can play in contributing to the struggle for emancipatory freedoms must take the form of solidarity with the oppressed and exploited. For in that approach there is hope for creating a world in which all human beings can reach their full potential.

References Church Land Programme. 2009. Living Learning. Pietermaritzburg: Church Land Programme. Fanon, F. 1963. Black Skins, White Masks. New York: Grove Press (revised English edition 2008). Gordon, L. 2008. An Introduction to Africana Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harsch, E. 2014. Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press (Kindle edition). Kundera, M. 1979. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Manji, F. 1997. ‘Collaboration with the South: Agents of Aid or Solidarity?’ Development in Practice 7(2): 175–8. ———. 1998. ‘The Depoliticisation of Poverty’. In D. Eade (ed.), Development in Practice: Development and Rights. London: Oxfam 12–33. ———. 2012. ‘African Awakening: The Courage to Invent the Future’. In F. Mani and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions. Oxford: Pambazuka Press. ——— 2014. ‘Development or Amputation? The Role of Extractive Industries’. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/extractive-industries-africa201481083038209883.html (accessed 18 February 2015). Manji, F., and O’Coill, C. 2002. ‘The Missionary Position: NGOs and Development in Africa’. International Affairs 78(3): 567–83. Rodney, W. 1973. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Oxford: Pambazuka Press (revised edition 2011). Sankara, T. 1987. Speech on Foreign Debt at Organisation of African Unity summit, Addis Ababa, July. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx2PoOY3ADo (accessed 25 September 2016). ’. http:// Sankore, R. 2005. ‘Behind the Image: Poverty and “Development Pornography”  www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/27815 (accessed 1 August 2016). Sriskandarajah, D. 2014. ‘Can NGOs Build People’s Power or Have We Lost Our Way?’ http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-sriskandarajah/ (accessed 1 August 2016). United National Development Programme (UNDP). 2015. Human Development Report 2015: Work for Human Development. New York: UNDP. Wa Thiong’o, N. 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey.



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CHAPTER 2

Navigating the Pitfalls of State Democracy Thinking NGOs from an Emancipatory Perspective Michael Neocosmos

T

rying to understand the character of NGOs under contemporary capitalism in the Global South generally, and in Africa particularly, raises the issue of politics, especially of politics that conceive themselves, or are conceived, as existing outside the parameters of the state. If politics is always subjective – something that I take for granted – what kind of thinking, and thus practice, do NGOs enable? In fact, it is important to ask whether it is possible to think of NGOs in general in this context or whether the differences between them are so extreme as to render any subjective generalisation of little more than rhetorical value. I shall argue that despite the major differences between NGOs on the continent, it is possible and indeed necessary to understand NGOs in relation to an idea of emancipation (equality, justice, freedom, dignity), which some of them (a minority, to be sure) do uphold and many more argue is their purpose. I will suggest, however, that what NGOs possess in common is a particular conception that understands politics in statist terms – specifically, a state conception that operates with a view of politics as representing the social – and, moreover, that they do so in a definite manner that consists in interpellating individuals as subjects. The latter is a component part of an ideology fundamental to capitalism; it is an imaginary relation to the idea of the human and thus to human emancipation. Contrary to much left opinion, there is no major political distinction between NGOs and social movements, simply because they all represent interests or identities exercising their citizenship rights within a domain of civil society.1 Rather, politically, all such civil society organisations generally operate within the limits of practice and thought largely set out by the state or ‘in dialogue’ with the state – in other words, today within the globally hegemonic discourse of good governance, human rights, democracy, and so on. As a result, ‘excessive’ modes of politics with a potential for emancipatory practices today are more likely to exist outside or at best at the margins of civil society and are excluded from any ‘public

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sphere’. An emancipatory politics today can only be found in a small number of sites where excess beyond the various domains of politics regulated by the state is made possible (Lazarus 2015). It is probably useful to begin by noting that any attempt at defining NGOs (i.e., at limiting them empirically) is largely doomed to fail. This is because it is always possible to find exceptions to whatever definition is used. While the dominant definition is made negatively in terms of their institutional distance from the state, it is clear that many NGOs fulfil (e.g., social) state functions and even substitute themselves for state power when there is no state in several parts of Africa. Issa Shivji’s (2008) article on DONGOs (donor-organised NGOs), GONGOs (government-organised NGOs), FFUNGOs (foreign-funded NGOs), and so on – NGOs classified largely in terms of their funding – is a good illustration of this problem. On the other hand, Adam Habib’s (2004) classification of South African NGOs in terms of their relation to the state (cooperative, adversarial, etc.) fails to take into account the fact that the state regularly excludes a number of organisations (local or foreign) from formal existence as it refuses to recognise their legitimacy (rightly or wrongly). For their part, Western NGOs have regularly been supportive of Western military intervention in order to enforce ‘democracy’ on authoritarian states. It should also be noted that governments understand NGOs not in terms of their institutional distance from themselves (‘non-governmental’ organisations), but rather in terms of their legal distance from private business (‘non-profit’ organisations). In other words, irrespective of the kind of NGO in question, their relations to the state are such that they are necessarily legitimated by the state.2 Institutional distance from the state is thus a spurious distinction, at least politically. Without this legitimacy conferred by power, NGOs could not exist. Today this fact implies thinking exclusively within neoliberal political conceptions. The fundamental reasons for this problem (state/non-state) are to be found in the notion of ‘civil society’ often conflated with NGOs themselves. Although it has a long pedigree going back to the Enlightenment, the idea of civil society is today, in neoliberal thinking, equated with NGOs themselves (while sometimes social movements are added). Civil society is understood as the ‘domain of freedom’, as it is said that here individuals can organise in order to pursue their interests collectively. This is necessary for the neoliberal theory of politics as, for it, these interests collectively represent the ‘general will’ or the ‘national interest’ in Africa. The state, unfortunately, does not do so as it is dominated by the interests of ‘narrow elites’ – at least this was the argument in favour of ‘civil society’ advocated by the

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World Bank (1981) and others as part of the political liberalisation arguments of the 1980s. Accompanying economic liberalisation and so-called structural adjustment at one remove, these views were often enforced as ‘conditionalities’, as is well known. Although NGOS had been in existence for many years – after all, the (mission) churches were perhaps the oldest such organisations in Africa – the rise of NGOs in the political economy of the South at this time was usually seen by Western ‘Africanist’ scholars as hegemonic (along with social movements) in the arena of anti-government politics. They were therefore easy to associate with the increasing depredations of neoliberal economics. Thus Arundathi Roy argued not only that the rise of NGOs has accompanied the spread of neoliberalism, but that it has had a systematically depoliticising effect: they [NGOs] defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance . . . It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neo-liberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs (Roy 2004: 6). Partha Chatterjee (2004), on the other hand, has stressed the role of international NGOs in spreading human rights discourse, which, he argues, forms one of the main pillars of imperialism today. It is important to emphasise this point, as these NGOs are constitutive of the currently hegemonic conception of democracy and human rights. It is also important to recognise that in the new form of imperialism – which does not have an obviously clear centre – it is not simply that the power of African governments to make decisions on their own economies is undermined. Perhaps more importantly, national sovereignty is undermined by human rights discourse itself, as international NGOs argue aggressively for imperial intervention in order to enforce Western conceptions on recalcitrant peripheral governments. This process has taken a number of forms, including the trial of gross violators by the International Criminal Court in The Hague (so that they are not accountable to their own people) and the advocating by international NGOs of Western military interventions. The most notorious example was perhaps the invasion of Afghanistan by the US and its NATO allies in 2001 on the basis of the need to ensure rights for women in that country. The connection between imperialism and human rights is explained by Chatterjee as follows:

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Liberals are now saying that . . . international law and human rights must be established all over the world. Where these are violated, the guilty must be punished, without undue regard for the privileges of national sovereignty. If the leaders of states themselves have little concern for the law, if they themselves ride roughshod over the human rights of people, then why should the excuse of national sovereignty be allowed to come to their rescue? In that case human rights would never be established . . . The liberal democratic countries must come forward to accept their responsibility in creating the institutional space for the operation of an ideal global sovereignty. The name for this sovereign sphere . . . is empire (Chatterjee 2004: 98). Of course, not all NGOs turn people into victims – in other words, ‘depoliticise’ systematically or explicitly. At least some do attempt to ‘politicise’,3 while others are agents of empire, and many see themselves as resisting imperial political depredations. Yet, I shall show that if one begins from the perspective of trying to think an emancipatory politics, it is not possible to suggest that NGOs contribute to thinking emancipation, as long as they remain NGOs. In other words, the thought and practice (for me, the two are the same in politics) of emancipation requires a break from NGO subjectivity, which, despite what may be thought, is always contained within a state subjectivity that disables the thought of a universal notion of emancipation. The enabling of emancipatory politics requires a transcending or exceeding of NGO (or, for that matter, of social movement or party) thinking into a universal egalitarian practice, something which NGOs in themselves, due to their function in society (and, one may also add, due to their consequent structure), cannot possibly enable. In order to make sense of this argument, we must understand, broadly speaking and very briefly, what an emancipatory politics (or subjectivity) consists of. Then we must situate the notion of ‘NGO’ in its historical context as an ideology. Finally I will show, following Louis Althusser, that NGOs fulfil a crucially important ideological function for the reproduction of state power and thus for capitalism itself today in the South. Much like universities and the churches (as well as other institutions), they can be understood as ‘ideological state apparatuses’ that ‘interpellate individuals as subjects’ and which have arisen largely due to a hegemonic crisis of colonial politics occasioned by resistance to liberalisation in the 1980s. They are ‘ideological’ in the strict sense of enabling the imaginary ‘naturalisation’

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of individual subjecthood under neoliberal democracy and of fusing it with the thought of emancipation. Therefore NGOs, however progressive they may be, cannot be vehicles for human emancipation – a process that presupposes the overthrowing of capitalism and all its political ramifications by people themselves.4 Emancipatory politics and the politics of representation Thinking emancipation does not involve a utopian conception of a future society. It concerns a politics of the ‘here and now’ founded on an ‘excessive’ collective subjectivity that is valid for all and not only for certain sections of society however poor or oppressed.5 Of course, political excess can only be found in relation to the thought of the politically excluded (not necessarily the socially excluded) – that is, those who have no say in deciding their lives for themselves; those whose life is decided for them because of their exclusion from the state and its legitimated ‘public sphere’. What ‘in relation to’ means here concerns the fact that people are capable of thought: namely, that at certain times people (anyone, but primarily the politically excluded) are capable of thinking beyond their social location in the world, in ‘society’. In any particular context, these may consist of the poor, the rural poor, the colonised, excluded ethnicities, blacks, women or whatever. However, and this is the crucial point, an emancipatory politics can exist only when a collective subjectivity is self-created and exceeds the interests of that particular group by orienting its practice to principles of universal equality.6 We can refer to this as ‘disinterested interest’. In other words, emancipatory politics is founded on a universal politics that eschews interest and its expression in identity as a matter of principle: its only interest is ‘disinterest’, so to speak. If such a universality is absent, identity politics can easily collapse into particularisms or communitarianisms, which can then easily degenerate into versions of fascism. Emancipatory politics is therefore not identitarian – it is radically anti-identitarian – unless that identity itself expresses some form of universality (e.g., as in ‘national freedom’, i.e., ‘self-determination’). It follows that, for me, the notion of ‘social justice’ is an oxymoron. In so far as it is social, there can be no justice for all, only for some; in so far as there is universal justice, it is not social (i.e., not ‘state-delivered’), because it is now founded on a politics of universal equality and not on a spurious notion of ‘equality before the law’. Of course, this is not unconnected to the idea of egalitarianism embodied in eighteenth-century notions of ‘natural right’ developed by John Locke7 and argued for vehemently, although ultimately unsuccessfully, during the French Revolution,

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when the ‘Thermidorian’ notion of ‘socially embedded right’ emerged victorious.8 It should be recalled that Toussaint Louverture made his case for the abolition of slavery in Saint Domingue precisely on the basis of ‘natural right’ and not on any ‘social’ notion of justice: It is not a circumstantial freedom given as a concession to us alone which we require, but the adoption of the absolute principle that any man born red, black or white cannot be the property of his fellow man (cited in Césaire 1981: 278; my translation). At another point Toussaint says: For too long gentlemen . . . we have been victims of your greed and your avarice. Under the blows of your barbarous whip we have accumulated for you the treasures you enjoy in this colony; the human race has suffered to see with what barbarity you have treated men like yourself . . . We are your equals then by natural right, and if nature pleases itself to diversify colours within the human race, it is not a crime to be born black or an advantage to be white (Aristide 2008: 6, 7; emphases added). This is why Edward Said (1993: 280) could comment that Toussaint ‘appropriates the principles of the [French] Revolution not as a Black man but as a human’. Moreover, very similar points to those of Toussaint are made by Frantz Fanon, but now within the context of a historical sequence of ‘national liberation’. It is the fact of colonialism itself, not this or that national expression of it, which is opposed to humanity; the matter concerns a universal and not simply a particular process of domination: The enemy of the African under French domination is not colonialism insofar as it exerts itself within the strict limits of his nation, but it is the form of colonialism, it is the manifestations of colonialism, whatever be the flag under which it asserts itself (Fanon 1967: 171). Unfortunately, there is no escaping the fact that all politics founded on interests are state politics, even though people may initially react to their oppression from a defence of interest in relation to a state or the market. This is because state

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politics is ontologically founded on a defence of interests and hierarchies. This is true irrespective of the nature of the state: democratic, authoritarian, colonial, postcolonial, neocolonial or whatever. In other words, state subjectivities can only think interests and hierarchies, which it is the state’s job to regulate in the interests of the ruling oligarchy (or, for some, in the ‘general’ or ‘national’ interest). It follows that political identities are the subjective representations of interests and cannot in and of themselves possess an emancipatory content; they can only do so if they come to possess a universal subjectivity (e.g., freedom, equality, dignity) that ‘exceeds’ interest in some way. We can say that politics in ‘political society’ represent social groupings via parties, and politics in ‘civil society’ represent identities via NGOs and social movements. Civil society is here understood as a particular domain of politics (there are others) in which organised interests relate to the neoliberal state and to each other in terms of citizenship and other rights conferred by the state (Neocosmos 2011). Sometimes NGOs are distinguished from social movements along the lines that the former are said to have clients while the latter are said to have members. These sociological characteristics are said to make the latter more progressive as membership supposedly has the capacity to make the politics of social movements more representative of their constituency. However, sociological characteristics do not translate automatically into politics; the recent case when mineworkers at Marikana rebelled against the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of South Africa in 2012 clearly shows that this imputed correspondence is not always the case, and that trade unions (for example) are not in themselves more representative simply because they happen to possess a membership. In this chapter I make no distinction between the two. Both ultimately represent sectional interests and are run by a leadership that is said to represent the interests of a social group, such as a class, a nation, an ethnicity or whatever. The core problem is the whole idea of representation itself. It is therefore more important to comment on a politics of representation that lies at the heart of the manner in which the state conceives politics in general so that political subjectivity is said to ‘represent’ the social in one way or other. The kind of politics inherent in emancipation is not one of popular representation but rather one of ‘presentation’, or ‘the direct interference of the masses in historical events’, as Leon Trotsky (1967: 15) put it in his magisterial text on the History of the Russian Revolution. In other words, in emancipatory politics people collectively become a subject. This is called a process of ‘subjectivation’; it is a collective

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process of becoming, and without it we cannot begin to speak of emancipation.9 In other words, a politics of emancipation must be a self-actualising process of subjectivation founded on a universal conception of equality. There can be no state politics or identity politics of emancipation; the idea of an egalitarian state is simply an oxymoron. This means that all notions of ‘radical democracy’ (which purport to extend state democracy into the popular) or ‘civil society democracy’ or ‘identity politics’ or ‘social justice’ cannot begin to think emancipation. There can be no emancipation of any particular section(s) of society. The idea of emancipation is only understandable at the level of humanity. It is forgotten, for example, that, for Marx, the emancipation of the proletariat did not only concern them, for it meant simultaneously the emancipation of humanity as a whole, as the freeing of the proletariat meant the end of the class system and the division of labour as such (e.g., Marx and Engels 1846: 78). Of course, the idea of human emancipation must take seriously the oppressive nature of the division of labour in capitalist society but cannot assume any longer that the overcoming of these divisions can pass through control of the state. Emancipation must be thought differently today, as it should be clear that the capturing of state power has historically had the effect of reproducing inequalities and hierarchies so that fundamentally there is no real change towards equality. This process has appeared as a ‘law of history’ in Africa, which, as Mbembe (2013) has recently pointed out, Fanon dreaded. What this means is that emancipatory politics cannot be thought of in terms of forming or joining parties; these operate within a politics of representation that it is imperative to think beyond. As I have already noted, parties, NGOs and social movements all operate within a notion of politics that is said to represent the social. The point is not to represent but to enable presentation. How can we begin to think an alternative to a politics of representation? Although the work of Lenin is not taken seriously these days, because it has been read dogmatically, there is much in his work that is of value if read critically. For example, Lenin was fully aware that something more was required for an emancipatory politics (he called it ‘social-democratic politics’) than what was given by identity politics (for him, ‘trade union politics’). He saw this excess in the universalising ideology of the (proletarian) party, but there is no need to follow him in this respect. Parties themselves are unable to be truly universal in their ideologies, simply because they operate within state conceptions of politics. Elite

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theorists at the time (Pareto, Michels, Mosca and even Weber) were aware of this, although they insisted on reading these state subjectivities in terms of collective psychological characteristics (‘lions’, ‘foxes’, representing psychological types, etc.) (Beetham 1974). What was called an ‘iron law of oligarchy’ by Pareto or a ‘law of the small number’ by Weber is, of course, central to state bureaucratic thinking and practice. These conceptions of representation, although not necessarily of their effects, were quite simply generalised throughout the twentieth century. For Lenin, for example, It is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes . . . that as a rule and in most cases . . . classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by leaders. All this is elementary (Lenin 1920: 41). It followed, for Lenin, then, that ‘politics is a concentrated expression of economics’ and, even further, that ‘politics must take precedence over economics, to argue otherwise is to forget the ABC of Marxism’ (Lenin 1921: 83). Of course, politics here refers to policies and party positions – that is, to state politics devised by leaders on the basis of their scientific knowledge of Marxism; Lenin’s point was made after the seizure of power and is quite categorical nevertheless. Ultimately people are not endowed with independent thought, as leaders represent people and decide on their behalf how best to express their interests. But emancipatory politics today cannot be thought within the limits of state politics. Politics must be thought beyond party as well as NGO and movement politics; all these are state politics because they think politics as representing social location, interests and identities. Representation, of course, means that political subjectivities represent social place – leaders are said to represent social groups or classes – and that the division of labour between intellectual and manual labour (inter alia) is rarely confronted. This is why in all popular movements a central issue is the control of the leadership by the people themselves. In South Africa in the 1980s, for example, a central feature of this process was called ‘report-backs’, but this issue is a universal one during periods of popular upsurge. Noteworthy is a noticeable decline of such ‘report-backs’ along with the ‘bureaucratisation’ of trade unions in South Africa (Buhlungu 2010). For Fanon, as we know, presentation is not represented; it amounts to a collective process of subjectivation:

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The living expression of the nation is the moving consciousness of the whole of the people; it is the coherent and enlightened praxis of men and women. The collective construction of a destiny is the assumption of responsibility on a historical scale (Fanon 1990: 165; translation modified). We have here, therefore, the twin idea that the nation (in this case, but it could be any collectivity) is produced and that it is made (‘imagined’, to use Benedict Anderson’s well-known term) from the actions of men and women – of people in general – not by any structural developments (markets, print capitalism, etc.) or, for that matter, by any intellectual narratives (as in, for example, Chatterjee 1986). This process, which Fanon sees as people ‘making themselves’ as they make the nation, refers, in Alain Badiou’s (2013) terms, to a ‘subjective becoming’ in which political choices are made; it is the ‘untidy affirmation of an original idea propounded as an absolute’ (Fanon 1990: 31). It amounts to a clear excess over what exists, over the simply given or extant. The latter, in Badiou’s view, is simply a state subjectivity: Ordinary history, the history of individual lives, is held within the state. The history of a life is, in itself, ordinarily bereft of decision or choice; it is a part of the history of the state of which the classical mediations are the family, work, the motherland, property, religion, customs, and so on (Badiou 2010: 189; translation modified). Central to a politics of representation is implicitly a notion of ‘trusteeship’, which Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton (1996) have seen as central to the idea of development as devised by the colonial state and subsequently generalised during the postcolonial period. Rather than people being understood as capable of thinking for themselves, they must be represented by states, the middle class, NGOs, those with knowledge, academics, and so on. This process is today thought as natural. It is not simply that politicians set up their personal NGOs in order to create a clientele independent of direct government connections. It is that an NGO in and of itself requires leadership by and representation through the knowledgeable; otherwise, no access to funding is forthcoming, whether the funders be the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the churches, the philanthropic or political foundations, or the World Bank. Funding is only available to those who represent, as representation is the fundamental notion of a state politics congruent with capitalism.

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The rise of the NGO-legitimised state democracy in Africa As I have noted, the rise of NGOs in the twenty-first century is directly linked to the rediscovery of ‘civil society’, and to the replacement of the social-democratic consensus by the neoliberal consensus at a world level towards the end of the 1970s and early 1980s. At the same time, development NGOs prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s become supplanted by human rights NGOs (Shivji 2007). This process corresponded to a change in Western radical politics from an orientation towards Africa (and the Third World in general) as the centre of global emancipation in the 1960s and early 1970s, and hence of Africans as agents of history, to the view of Africans as victims of history from the mid-1970s onwards. The systematic alteration in the manner in which Africans (and people from the Third World in general) were viewed in Europe (and sometimes viewed themselves), from political agents during the struggles for liberation to victims of famine, war and disease, began to occur during the mid-1970s as a result of a number of changes, including the subversion of popular agency by the state and the latter’s subservience to the West (and, one could add, the collapse of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement). By the late 1980s, the European youthful militants of anti-imperialism and ‘Third Worldism’ had transformed themselves (most evidently in France) from political activists into advocates of human rights discourse and humanitarian interventions. Probably the best illustration of this was the formation of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) by ex-leftists. As a result: a whole world disappears – the war in Vietnam, the iconography of Che, Mao and Ho Chi Minh . . . – which is to say a militant or combative third world, so that another can be ‘heroically’ discovered years later: the third world as figured in the Human Rights discourse . . . Fanon’s ‘wretched of the earth’ as the name for an emergent political agency has been essentially re-invented: the new third world is still wretched, but its agency has disappeared, leaving only the misery of a collective victim of famine, flood, or authoritarian state apparatuses (Ross 2002: 156–7). For Mahmood Mamdani (1991), the dominance of human rights discourse in Africa was an effect of an explicit US ideological offensive in the second half of the 1970s, after the independence of the ex-Portuguese colonies. In South Africa, a similar process of ‘victimisation’ occurred, but only in the 1990s, and then directly as an effect of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process, during which erstwhile political agents were interpellated by the TRC as victims seeking

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redress, via claiming their human rights, from state institutions. It has been the rise and hegemony of human rights discourse that has ultimately sealed the fate of emancipatory thought, whether popular or statist, on the continent, as freedom as a notion became displaced by mere physical survival (so-called bio-politics). Initially, neoliberal structural adjustment programmes were deployed within existing political arrangements on the continent, and it is only with the popular struggles against authoritarian regimes and liberalisation that the idea of democracy increasingly came to the fore. By the 1980s, the failure of ‘development for all’ (in that development benefited only a few) meant the collapse of the social-democratic or developmental state form, for the latter lost legitimacy among its own people as African peasants asked themselves, ‘When will independence end?’ (Mustapha 1996), and urban movements contested the authoritarian state. During the early 1990s, differing conceptions of democracy were contesting hegemony within society, as noticed by Claude Ake, for example, who contended that there were ‘several democracies vying for preferment in a struggle whose outcome is as yet uncertain’ (2003: 127). By the mid-1990s, the nature of democracy was no longer the object of contestation, as it had become solidified as a form of state. Thus, during the popular struggles in Africa in the 1980s – the so-called second independence struggle – against the depredations of neoliberal structural adjustment programmes, neocolonial domination therefore faced a short-lived crisis of hegemony, which it was quickly able to overcome by emphasising a critique of the state, on the one hand, and the centrality of civil society in providing democratic alternatives to the state, on the other. It should be recalled that state and civil society were understood as polar opposites in much of this ‘Africanist’ US political science literature (e.g., Chazan et al. 1992). The transformation of the Organisation of African Unity into the African Union, and the whole idea of the so-called African Renaissance, the African Peer Review Mechanism, and so on, were all precisely indicative of this process whereby parties were supplemented by ‘civil society organisations’ (i.e., NGOs) in order to ‘broaden’ the representation of the people. ‘Good governance’ was precisely about ensuring that representation went beyond political society to include civil society, as the former was seen as inefficient and leading to corruption within the state. In this manner, the threat posed by popular forms of democracy (e.g., in South Africa, Nigeria and elsewhere in the 1980s) was forestalled and state democracy was entrenched, thus ensuring the reproduction of the ideological hegemony of capital in a new state-political form.

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The restricted role played by parties within the new state democracy was evidenced by their inability to mobilise people around a vision for a better future. In postcolonial Africa, as throughout the world, there has gradually developed a crisis of political representation as parties have failed to be more than a vehicle for the circulation of elites. Neoliberal thinking has largely failed to resolve this particular crisis of legitimacy, expressed in Europe as ‘the end of politics’, as (especially socialdemocratic) parties have failed to construct an alternative to the neoliberal project – a phenomenon that largely explains the rise of Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. As a result of the statisation and apparent consequent decline of support for parties in Africa and elsewhere (often expressed in lower voter turnout), the organised interests of civil society have increasingly been relied upon today to be the representatives and mobilisers of the nation and, ultimately, the legitimisers of democracy through their supposed ‘watchdog’ role, inter alia. What follows, then, is the perceived necessity for such interests to be institutionalised (e.g., as ‘stakeholders’, as members of corporatist institutions, as members of the African Union, etc.) and for the politics of civil society to be identical to state politics and compradorial politics. The ‘watchdog’ role of NGOs is particularly useful for state ideology, of course, in so-called single-party democracies, or ‘predominant-party systems’, as political scientists deftly put it State politics, then, have become hegemonic within the realm of civil society, and the dominant mode of political subjectivity is to think within parameters structured by the state. In this new way, (part of) the nation also becomes the state (rather than constituting a people distinct from it) and a political consensus is constructed around a parliamentary mode of politics. Thus state political hegemony is today secured also through civil society organisations and not only through parties. Emancipatory politics therefore cannot be thought in terms of an objective institutional distance from the state – the notion of the emancipatory character of civil society widespread in the 1990s and 2000s is false. Rather, emancipation must begin from a subjective distancing from the state. This means extracting the thought of emancipatory politics from an expressive relation to the social and insisting rather on an excessive relation to the social. Until recently (say 2006/07), the state consensus in South Africa was being constructed around human rights discourse, although there has been a radical shift away from that discourse since 2008. While the discourse of development in Africa in the immediate postcolonial period still retained some element of political agency and choice (e.g., as manifested in the notion of ‘self-reliance’), the discourse of

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human rights no longer did in any real sense, as it was constituted by a discourse of victimhood of people and trusteeship of power. Active citizenship, with which NGOs promise to replace passivity, has been founded on an idea of victimhood – that is, precisely on passivity by people themselves.10 Agency from within human rights discourse consists in petitioning the state, not in prescribing to it; hence its usual shift from the political to the juridical, away from political practice towards legal claims on entitlements. Even when the juridical is supplemented with direct political action, that agency can only be processed by trustees of the people’s welfare, not by people themselves. In fact, it can be asserted without too much fear of contradiction that the implicit neoliberal ‘social contract’ involves a tradeoff between the promise of the provision of state-guaranteed (i.e., institutionalised) rights and entitlements, on the one hand, and the abandonment of any real form of self-controlled political agency and choice, on the other. A refusal of this contract today leads to a contestation of the neoliberal consensus itself. This is, in fact, what the South African shack-dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, for example, have been doing as they redefine in their practice citizenship, democracy and nation (see, for example, Selmeczi 2012). Today there is no state social project, only ‘good governance’ in formal subservience to the West (law/rights). The politics of the new state regime are said to be governed by the ‘right to rights’, but this is true only of the domain of civil society, not of other domains of politics such as ‘uncivil society’ and ‘traditional society’ (Neocosmos 2011). Some have the right to exercise their rights (e.g., the middle classes, the formally employed); others (foreigners, poor, shack-dwellers) do not, as they do not relate to the state within civil society but within ‘uncivil society’ or ‘traditional society’ (Neocosmos 2011, 2016). For example, the local state systematically violates human rights, often with impunity, when dealing with shack-dwellers and the poor more generally in Durban, South Africa (Pithouse 2008). Given the absence in public discourse of any name (or given the vacuity of existing names) that may suggest movement/change/vision to something better (e.g., development, revolution, transformation, freedom, equality), the only thing that remains is formal democracy and human rights subsumed under ‘good governance’. There is nothing else provided to thought, not even a glimmer of a better future. Hence the ‘democratising mission’ (Wamba-dia-Wamba 2007) of the West (following upon its earlier ‘enslaving’, ‘civilising’ and ‘development’ missions, in chronological order) as the core ideological feature of the new imperialism is crucial for these politics.

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NGOs interpellate individuals as subjects The position I have taken here follows the philosophers Alain Badiou (2010, 2012, 2013) and Jacques Rancière (2003, 2004, 2006) in insisting on the fact that political subjects are always collective, not individual, and in stressing that such subjects must be created; they are never given. Unlike liberal thinkers, I do not hold that individuals are given as subjects. They may, however, enter into the formation of a collective political subject. This is not the case for the neoliberal literature, in which civil society, as I have noted, is understood as the domain of freedom where individuals can express their subjecthood through a defence of their interests. Today, in the twenty-first century, when Marxist and social-democratic conceptions of emancipation have largely become politically redundant as they cannot think emancipation outside the state, human rights discourse is not simply said to be about limiting state control over society (‘civil society’, ‘market’ or whatever), but its importance is extended to refer to the enabling of popular struggle; it is said to be ‘empowering’ of the social. Writing about rights and development in South Africa in particular, Peris Jones and Kristian Stokke (2005: 2), for example, assert that, given the obvious depoliticisation of development as much of its rhetoric has lost its radical edge, ‘we need to encourage a democratic politics of rights’. What this means, they suggest, is not only that states should protect and promote rights, but also that ‘citizens, and their organizational representatives, be considered legitimate participants and active agents in the process’. The point that they are concerned to argue, then, ‘is not only that formal rights are guaranteed and institutionalised . . . but that a politics of acquiring and transforming such rights are enabled’. Such a politics here is equated with an ‘active citizenship’ in civil society. Jones and Stokke add that ‘the missing link for this transformative potential for human rights is not so much about asserting legal claims’; rather, it lies in enabling political struggles in which human rights ‘crystallize the moral imagination and provide power in the political struggles’. Whatever ‘crystallizing the moral imagination’ may mean politically in practical terms, the authors provide little evidence that human rights discourse may enable political agency and active citizenship; this is simply taken for granted. It may, in fact, primarily enable legalistic agency and state politics at best. All politics, if it is to attempt to be emancipatory, must rather start from an excessive political perspective, one that opens new political possibilities by ‘prescribing’ actions to the state. Human rights discourse cannot enable such an excessive and prescriptive politics, which falls well outside its ambit of thought. The active citizen is, in

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Badiou’s words, ‘a living pillar of the established order’ (Badiou 2014, 9 October 2013). In sum, within the domain of civil society and human rights discourse, politics is thought within the parameters of passivity and agency. Agency is of itself what matters in popular politics for this thinking; hence the idea of ‘empowerment’, which is an expression of it. People are passive victims of oppression; they therefore need to be ‘empowered’ by those in the know, particularly NGOs. I will always remember the astonishing proliferation of ‘empowerment’ programmes in the 1990s in South Africa after the country had been liberated overwhelmingly by its own people. Of course, this process was fundamentally depoliticising, as the right to think – to exceed the subjective limits of ‘social place’ (which is what many South Africans experienced in the 1980s) – was gradually denied. Depoliticisation concerns the dismantling of excessive collective politics and its replacement by the individual socially located political agent. Therefore, whereas NGO politics are limited by the dichotomy between active and passive citizens, emancipatory politics can only be grasped within the parameters of expressive and excessive political subjectivities: a politics that represents (expresses) interests and a politics that exceeds them in order to emphasise a principled politics of equality. In actual fact, human rights discourse becomes subjectively hegemonic during the absence or weakness of popular struggles, and not during their presence. The absence of popular discourses and practices of collective democracy, and their replacement by the platitudes of the state-liberal version, make it possible for human rights discourse to be seen as the only intellectual reference for a left politics, a politics that cannot ultimately be enabling of excessive thought. The supposed liberatory potential of human rights discourse is fundamentally moral rather than political, conservative rather than transformative, legal rather than political. For it is the same conception of human rights that provides the justification for the intervention of power on behalf of victims: victims who, because of their lack of agency, must be politically represented by local or international NGOs, state or transnational institutions, and finally by empire itself. It is these two sides of human rights discourse, the side of agency and the side of representation and trusteeship, neither of which can exist without the other, which provide the dominant framework for thinking transformation today – a framework that is not developed ‘at a distance’ from state thinking but simply at a distance from state institutions. It is within the interstices of this antinomy that the law exists, as human rights discourse is unavoidably caught within the contradiction that it is only the state power, with its legal and other institutions, which is capable of emancipating

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humanity. According to this mode of thought, only institutionalised power can bring about freedom, (social) justice and equality, helped by the pressure exerted by organised interests which people express as subjects. NGO subjectivity operates squarely within this overall state understanding of politics, not recognising that, unfortunately, the state cannot emancipate anyone, as that requires the abolition or the distancing of the state in thought and practice – that is, a politics that distances itself from state thinking. But the expressive subjectivity of liberalism11 cannot possibly treat people as political subjects, as expressing interests is not what produces human beings who reason. No reason is required in order to simply reflect interests. Animals do it all the time, as they are supposed to act in terms of their own interests, referred to as ‘instincts’. Humans reason, they think, which means that they are able to transcend their interests at times and therefore to conduct their lives outside the limits of state thinking. Political subjectivation must therefore be understood as a process of becoming which can be objectively analysed and understood and not simply as a ‘reflection’ or ‘representation’, as in the Hegelian ‘in itself/for itself’ formulation sometimes used by Marx. In fact, to assume that subjecthood consists in merely possessing a consciousness of one’s interests, as in identity politics, is an ideology of the state (Marx would have said a ‘bourgeois ideology’). Individuals are told that they are subjects and that this is reflected in their joining interest groups or political parties. Nothing could be further from the truth, and yet this misconception persists. It does so primarily during periods when emancipatory thought is absent and when state politics are hegemonic and uncontested. Althusser (1971) has discussed this occurrence in his theory of ‘ideological state apparatuses’. Although developed within a classical Marxist framework, this argument is still of relevance and particularly illustrative in so far as NGOs are concerned. For Althusser, capitalism requires to be reproduced and this reproduction partly takes place through an ideological process. Ideology, for him, is ‘an imaginary relation to real relations [which] is itself endowed with a material existence’ (1971: 156). As he puts it, ‘an ideology always exists in [a state] apparatus, and its practice, or practices. This existence is material’ (1971: 156). For Althusser, the state is composed of both repressive apparatuses (the police, the army, the judiciary, etc.) and ideological apparatuses (churches, education, the family, etc.). Both of these reproduce the dominance of the bourgeoisie: the former, through coercion; the latter, through ideology (i.e., consciousness). He continues:

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In every case, the ideology of ideology . . . recognizes, despite its imaginary distortion, that the ‘ideas’ of a human subject exist in his actions, or ought to exist in his actions . . . This ideology talks of actions; I shall talk of actions inserted into practices. And I shall point out that these practices are governed by the rituals in which these practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological apparatus . . . (1971: 158; emphasis in original). What all state ideology does, for Althusser, is ‘hails or interpellates individuals as subjects’ (1971: 164). Moreover, ‘the existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing’ (1971: 163). For him, this process of ‘interpellation’ is real and is constitutive of individual subjectivity despite its imaginary character, while at the same time ‘the interpellation of individuals as subjects presupposes the “existence” of a Unique and central Other Subject in whose Name the . . . ideology interpellates all individuals as subjects’ (1971: 167). In the religious example used by Althusser, the ‘Other Subject’ is God, but more generally it can be understood as the state or the law (the State or the Law). Althusser ends his discussion by noting the ambiguity of the term ‘subject’, which for this ideology refers both to an individual endowed with consciousness, reason, and so on, as well as to an individual subject of power (as in Mamdani’s Citizens and Subjects, for example). In fact, for Althusser, the ambiguity derives precisely from the ideology itself, as the imaginary subjecthood of individuals subjects them to the power of the state as well as to the capitalist division of labour assigned to them ‘in production, exploitation, repression, ideologization, scientific practice, etc.’ (1971: 169–70) and, we may add, in NGOs today. This ideology thus ‘naturalises’ subjecthood as simply given by birth, as it does the capitalist division of labour itself. Conclusion I have already noted that we cannot understand political subjects as given but only as produced collectively. This means also that individuals are not given naturally as subjects, but only as possible component parts of a subject. The formation of a subject must be understood as a process that can be analysed, and it is only a state politics that sees individuals as subjects by virtue of their mere existence and agency. Subjectivation is a process that exists only at particular times in particular places or sites; it is not a permanent feature of humanity. It requires

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the will to exceed interest and identity – to exceed, therefore, what the state says is possible in order to propose the apparently ‘impossible’: the excess over interest and place. For Badiou, what the state declares as being impossible can be transformed into a possibility by an aleatory event: It has been stressed profusely that the state was the real oppressor, but in a more fundamental way, the state is what distributes the idea of what is possible and what is impossible. The event, for its part, will transform that which has been declared impossible into a possibility; the possible will be torn away from the impossible (Badiou 2013: 11; translation modified). There is no space to discuss Badiou’s idea of the event here, other than to stress its ‘excessive’ character, and to note the fact that, for him, it is the subjective fidelity to such an excessive occurrence which lies at the core of thinking an emancipatory future, and not mere agency as such. This presupposes that people are allowed to think for themselves, as it is only through self-presentation that an emancipatory politics can begin to occur. Unfortunately, the politics of NGOs remain within what Althusser terms ‘ideology’: they can only think within the boundaries of state politics as representation, as they fundamentally cannot allow the right to think beyond place, and usually not beyond the place of victims. These politics must of necessity be transcended for an emancipatory future to become thinkable in the present.

Notes 1. ‘Civil society’ is here understood as a domain of state politics founded on a specific mode of state rule. Within civil society, the state rules citizens as bearers of rights and defenders of interests. Citizens possess the right to rights (Arendt 1973), so that the state rules them through the law (the ‘rule of law’). Civil society cannot be understood as constituting the liberal ‘domain of freedom’, because interest (or identity) politics is not emancipatory in itself for it lacks a universal character. Civil society is not the only domain of politics on the African continent. We can also speak of a domain of ‘uncivil society’ based primarily on the rule of violence, and of a ‘traditional society’ founded on the rule of custom. In each domain political subjectivities differ. For greater elaboration, see Neocosmos (2016: part 2). 2. And we may add ‘and vice versa’, as NGOs serve precisely to legitimate the democratic (in the neoliberal sense) character of the state itself within civil society. 3. One such NGO in South Africa is the Church Land Programme in Pietermaritzburg, which insists on listening to organised popular movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo and

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others and refuses to impose its preconceptions on the movements it helps. Its views are governed by a particular form of liberation theology, but this is a rarity among NGOs. 4. I must stress that there is no prescription intended here. In other words, I am silent on whether any particular NGO should be supported, joined or not; the same is valid for social movements, political parties or any other organisation. 5. For a detailed discussion of the idea of ‘excessive subjectivity’, see Neocosmos (2016). 6. It is worth referring here to the recent upsurge in popular movements worldwide, starting with North Africa in 2011; some of these movements have attempted to propose a universal conception of humanity. See Badiou (2012). 7. Although Locke himself was not opposed to slavery; see Losurdo (2014). 8. For a detailed discussion, see Gauthier (1992). 9. This process of becoming a political subject is far from being automatic; it depends on the collective overcoming of problems, proposing collective solutions and resolving contradictions. In other words, a subject of political emancipation exceeds the subjective limits of a social movement, for there is nothing in the social as such that suggests emancipation; on the contrary, the social is unambiguously particularistic. During the twentieth century, the absence of universality in social interests was to be overcome and emancipation made possible by a political party that could conceive the universal. This was the core argument of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?, written in 1902. For a brilliant recent discussion, see Lih (2008). Today, in the twenty-first century, it is beginning to be understood that a party is not a necessary requisite for universality and is actually an obstacle to emancipatory thought, as it represents interests within ‘political society’ and thus operates unambiguously within state conceptions of politics. See Badiou (2010). 10 . In South Africa, one of the absurd indicators of this change and its accompanying political disorientation has been the attempt by an NGO, the Foundation for Human Rights, to develop a ‘Victim’s Charter’, an evident oxymoron. The absurdity consists in the fact that the idea of a charter is exclusively focused, in that country, on the Freedom Charter, which has constituted, since 1955, the core expression of popular nationalist agency. Victims, of course, have little or no agency by definition, and the charter would be written for them by the NGO. 11 . And indeed of Marxism. After all, the proletariat is, for it, both a subject of politics and a subject of history, its consciousness governed by its interests and expressed by its party.

References Ake, C. 2003. The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA. Althusser, L. 1971. ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’. In L. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: New Left Books. Arendt, H. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt. Aristide, J.B. (ed.). 2008. Toussaint L’Ouverture: The Haitian Revolution. London: Verso. Badiou, A. 2010. The Communist Hypothesis. London: Verso. ———. 2012. The Rebirth of History. London: Verso. ———. 2013. Philosophy and the Event. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Badiou, A. 2014. Seminaire 2013–2014: L’immanence des Vérités 2 (Notes de Daniel Fischer). http://www.entretemps.asso.fr/Badiou/13-14.htm (accessed 1 April 2015). Beetham, D. 1974. Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics. London: George Allen and Unwin. Buhlungu, S. 2010. A Paradox of Victory: COSATU and the Democratic Transformation in South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Césaire, A. 1981. Toussaint Louverture: La Révolution française et le problème colonial. Paris: Présence Africaine. Chatterjee, P. 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? London: Zed Press. ———. 2004. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press. Chazan, N., et al. 1992. Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Cowen, M.P., and Shenton, R.W. 1996. Doctrines of Development. London: Routledge. Fanon, F. 1967. Toward the African Revolution. New York: Grove Press. ———. 1990. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books. Gauthier, F. 1992. Triomphe et mort du droit naturel en Révolution: 1789–1795–1802. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Habib, A. 2004. ‘State–Civil Society Relations in Post-apartheid South Africa’. In J.A. Daniel, A. Habib and R. Southall (eds), State of the Nation: South Africa 2003–2004. Cape Town: HSRC Press. Jones, P., and Stokke, K. 2005. ‘Democratising Development: The Politics of Socio-economic Rights’. In P. Jones and K. Stokke (eds), Democratising Development: The Politics of Socioeconomic rights in South Africa. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Lazarus, S. 2015. Anthropology of the Name. London, New York and Calcutta: Seagull. Lenin, V.I. 1920. ‘Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder’. In Lenin Collected Works, Volume 31. London: Laurence and Wishart, 1974. ———. 1921. ‘Once Again on the Trade Unions: The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin’. In Lenin Collected Works, Volume 32. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965. Lih, L.T. 2008. Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context. London: Haymarket. Losurdo, D. 2014. Liberalism: A Counter-history. London: Verso. Mamdani, M. 1991. ‘Social Movements and Constitutionalism in the African Context’. In I. Shivji (ed.), State and Constitutionalism: An African Debate on Democracy. Harare: SAPES Books. ———. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. London: James Currey. Marx, K., and Engels, F. 1846. ‘The German Ideology’. In Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 5. London: Laurence and Wishart, 1976. Mbembe, A. 2013. Critique de la raison nègre. Paris: La Découverte. Mustapha, A.R. 1996. ‘When Will Independence End? Democratisation and Civil Society in Rural Africa’. In L. Rudebeck and O. Tornquist (eds), Democratisation in the Third World: Concrete Cases in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective. Uppsala: Seminar for Development Studies. .

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Neocosmos, M. 2011. ‘Transition, Human Rights and Violence: Rethinking a Liberal Political Relationship in the African Neo-colony’. Interface 3(2): 359–99. http://www. interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/ 2011/12/Interface-3-2-Neocosmos.pdf (accessed 1 January 2012). ———. 2016. Thinking Freedom in Africa: Towards a Theory of Emancipatory Politics. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Pithouse, R. 2008. ‘The Politics of the Poor: Shack Dwellers’ Struggles in Durban’. Journal of African and Asian Studies 43(1): 63–94. Rancière, J. 2003. ‘Politics and Aesthetics’. Interview with Peter Hallward. Angelaki 8(2): 191– 211. ———. 2004. ‘Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’ South Atlantic Quarterly 103(2/3): 297–310. ———. 2006. Hatred of Democracy. New York and London: Verso. Ross, K. 2002. May ’68 and Its Afterlives. Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press. Roy, A. 2004. ‘Public Power in the Age of Empire, Part III’. Socialist Worker, 17 October. Said, E. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Selmeczi, A. 2012. ‘Abahlali’s Vocal Politics of Proximity: Speaking Suffering and Political Subjectivisation’. Journal of Asian and African Studies 47(5): 498–515. Shivji, I. 2007. Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa. Oxford: Fahamu. ———. 2008. ‘The Making of an African NGO’. In R. Walsh (ed.), Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits: An Anthology. Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse. Trotsky, L. 1967. The History of the Russian Revolution, Volume 1. London: Sphere Books. Wamba-dia-Wamba, E. 2007. ‘Democracy Today: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo’. Pambazuka News, No. 295. http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/ 40306 (accessed 1 January 2008). World Bank. 1981. Accelerated Development for Africa: An Agenda for Change. Washington, DC: World Bank.

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CHAPTER 3

Black Liberation and the Notion of ‘Social Justice’ in South Africa Thapelo Tselapedi

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his chapter does not concern itself with known views about the ‘white teacher’ and ‘black pupil’ phenomenon that occurs in South African civil society. Nor is it concerned with the sometimes undemocratic and at times unlawful practices exercised by some within the urban-based NGO sector, or with the decent objective of a number of these organisations in fighting for evicted persons to get shelter or for other dispossessed groups to attain some rights or recognition. Rather, the chapter deals with the limited intellectual orientation of the sector, specifically the neoMarxists/liberals, or what Steve Biko called ‘that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names – liberals, leftists etc.’ (Biko 1978: 20) but what I choose to refer to as the ‘metropolitan left’. I opt for this term because ‘metropolitan’ captures the urban location of the subject while simultaneously articulating the subject’s likely middle-class status. And the word ‘left’, used in conjunction with ‘metropolitan’, is meant to convey the view that the intellectual orientation of this subject advances a programme inconsistent with its class interests – essentially, a contradiction in terms. In the context of South Africa, the institutions that occupy this space are usually manned, in the main, by white people. Given the history of black-white relations in the country, the effect of this is that they occupy a tenuous position. I therefore focus on this group of ‘do-gooders’ because of their ideological influence on public power, where societal norms and values are constructed.1 In an attempt to understand the urban-based NGO sector,2 I rely on the writings of a number of black3 radical intellectuals. Accordingly, the chapter comprises four main parts. In the first section, I provide the historical context and sketch the development of the South African black radical tradition. In the second section, I characterise the significant divisions between this black radical tradition and the South African liberal tradition. In the third section, I identify and interrogate

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the problematic limitations of the metropolitan left in understanding the post1994 black ‘grammar of suffering’. In the fourth and final section of the chapter, I summarise my overall argument. History and context The pre-1994 South African liberation movement waged a struggle against what was then termed ‘colonialism of a special type’4 and what others in academia broadly conceptualised as a reprehensible nexus between race and class oppression. With the launch of the Freedom Charter, the 1950s heralded a moment in which the liberation movement expressed a formulation that included both white and black people as architects of a new South Africa. The 1962 programme of the South African Communist Party (SACP), titled ‘The Road to South African Freedom’ and influenced by the likes of Moses Kotane, captures this position: Only the complete emancipation of the non-white peoples can create conditions of equality and friendship among the nationalities of South Africa and eliminate the roots of racial hatred and antagonism which are the greatest threat to the continued security and existence of the white population itself. The national liberation of the non-whites which will break the power of monopoly capitalism is thus in the deepest interest of the bulk of the whites (Bunting 1975: 26). This period marked early ruptures within the anti-colonial struggle. This development is all the more significant in so far as it resulted in the formation of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), an organisation that was uncompromising in its insistence that Africa is for Africans. The black radical tradition in South Africa emerged at this point. In a sharp epistemic break with the political philosophy of non-racialism that came post-1955, the Black Consciousness Movement of the late 1960s (the time when the South African liberation movement lacked presence, ideologically and programmatically, within the country) restored the centrality of the question of race and criticised the role of white liberals in a struggle in which black people must be their own liberators. Class analysis could not, nor was it adequate, to account for the question of race, as earlier Africanists such as Anton Lembede and A.P. Mda (in the 1940s) and Robert Sobukwe (1950s) argued. However, Lembede, Mda and Sobukwe had differences on how a democratic South Africa would come about.

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Lembede ‘called on Africans to break their reliance on European leaders and ideas by building up their own organisations. A key to this strategy was making the ANC [African National Congress] and African leadership central to the African national struggle’ (Msumza and Edgar 1995: 18). However, within the ANC and the ideological struggles therein, the Africanists struggled to be accommodated. Lembede therefore prefigured the failed attempts of R.V. Selope Thema in 1950– 51 to establish a breakaway faction from the ANC and the successful efforts to achieve the same by Sobukwe in 1959. Writing in the 1970s, Biko was in unison with the Africanist impulses within the ANC, but primarily with those which by then had been brought into the PAC. He argued that ‘race started as an offshoot of the economic greed exhibited by white people’ (Biko 1978: 88). However, what set Biko apart was his argument that racism, as a result of generations of exploitation and oppression, became ‘a serious problem on its own’ (Biko 1978: 88) and thus had to be conceptualised separately. This is not to say that he viewed race as foundational to capitalism; rather, for the Black Consciousness Movement, working with white people was, for the time being, not an option, at least not before black people asserted and constituted themselves as a conscious and anticolonial bloc. However, Biko and others correctly recognised that racism was part of the structure of capitalism. In this context, therefore, the idea of white ‘radicals’ or ‘revolutionaries’ in the liberation of black people stood as a contradiction in terms. Importantly, Sobukwe and Biko were not advocating for a class-centred analysis. Precisely because the question of racism could be separated from economic oppression/exploitation, black people had first to work on African/ black unity to coalesce around a common struggle for liberation. The logic of Black Consciousness was that because economic exploitation/oppression was used to convince white people of a natural or inherent inferior status of black people, black people had in turn internalised this view of themselves. The result was the emergence of a colonised mind. Accordingly, for liberation to occur, black people must decolonise themselves and be free from that logic, because only free men and women can struggle for freedom. Theoretically, Biko followed on from Sobukwe and Lembede when he warned against collaboration with whites: for these thinkers, white liberals should not interfere with the praxis of black struggle. The danger, as Sobukwe (1949) argued, was that whenever Europeans ‘co-operate’ with African movements, they keep on demanding checks and counter-checks, guarantees and the like, with the

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result that they stultify and retard the movement of the Africans and the reason is, of course, that they are consciously or unconsciously protecting their sectional interests. Consequently, the question of structural inequalities has to be looked at historically and contextually. Indeed, the dispossession of black people in South Africa is not an isolated incident or an aberration. It should instead be viewed as consistent with slavery and colonialism more generally. As such, beginning my analysis without taking into account this historical and global context of ‘black being’ and ‘political ontology’ can only lead to what the US sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959: 50–75) referred to as ‘abstracted empiricism’: effectively, where we look at the singular and not the whole, or at individual behaviour without reference to its historical context. Locating blackness in history, the South African sociologist Bernard Magubane had this to say: There is no question that racism in the West derived directly from the lucrative trade in African slaves. The teachings of the Church provided its theological underpinnings and its intellectual justification is littered in Enlightenment philosophy . . . as the enslavement of the African developed, it became a total system of social, economic, political and sexual exploitation of ‘black’ by ‘white’, based on force and violence and the ideology of white supremacy (Magubane 2007: 19). In line with Magubane, the postcolonial thinker Frantz Fanon argued that European opulence is literally scandalous, for it has been founded on slavery, it has been nourished with the blood of slaves and it comes directly from the soil and from the subsoil of that underdeveloped world. The wellbeing and the progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races. We have decided not to overlook this any longer (2001: 76). In South Africa, as in other parts of the world, there continues to be a silencing of the issues raised by Fanon, Magubane and others. Indeed, historically, left-leaning intellectuals and academics in South Africa, many of whom were/are white, have

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tended to offer class-centred analyses of these structural issues. Such ahistorical class analyses were/are usually advanced at the expense of race analysis. Given the reality that the world of white radicals is not racialised, it is not surprising that race features marginally in their contribution to black liberation praxis. In this regard Biko commented in an interview: A number of [white liberals] are defensive . . . A number of whites in this country adopt the class analysis, primarily because they want to detach us from anything relating to race. In case it has a rebound effect on them because they are white. This is the problem. So a lot of them adopt the class analysis as a defense mechanism and are persuaded of it because they find it more comfortable. And of course a number of them are terribly puritanical, dogmatic, and very, very arrogant (Gerhart 2008: 34). This practice continues to this day. It is for similar reasons that Magubane (1979) once accused white ‘neo-Marxists’ (a term he used pejoratively) of being ‘apolitical’ in their analyses. Of course, Magubane erred in labelling them apolitical in that their class-centred analysis was in and of itself a political stance. Biko’s foregoing words are instructive in this regard. However, this does not diminish Magubane’s argument, in that he is in unison with Biko in pointing out the self-serving nature of class analysis on the part of white neo-Marxists. The universalising tendency of class analysis not only negates the race question but has, as its subtext, the problematic assumption that black workers and their white counterparts are, in the final analysis, fighting against a common enemy – namely, capitalism. Magubane (1979) rejected outright this line of reasoning. He argued that in equating the struggle of black workers to that of their white counterparts, neoMarxists and liberals were, in spite of themselves, reinscribing the very notion of white hegemony and superiority. In the context of apartheid, Magubane maintained, white workers were beneficiaries of the same capitalist system that neo-Marxists claimed they were fighting against. Indeed, it is well known that white workers were often hostile to their black counterparts. (That they belonged to different trade unions, organised along racial lines, is a case in point.) Thus, in offering class analysis, white intellectuals need not offer any auto-critique, since they have universalised the veracity of class as a unit of analysis. This is, as mentioned earlier, a reinscription of whiteness in and of itself. It comes as no surprise, then, that in the wake of the 1994 moment, ‘South Africa [had] a gender

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commission, a minorities’ commission, a human rights commission, but not a race commission’ (Mamdani 1997: 1). However, it is important to point out that there were some in the Marxist tradition – for example, Neville Alexander (1979), Patrick Bond (2006) and Hein Marais (2001) – who gave some prominence to the question of race. For this reason some argue that the Marxist tradition is a broad one. However, although I do not respond to each of the aforementioned, I want to quote Steven Friedman’s recent comments on this debate: Marxists tended to distinguish themselves from liberals by their militancy in fighting apartheid, not their analysis of society. The new radicalism insisted that all of white society – in particular English-speaking business – derived benefit from racial domination and so had a stake in its survival. Liberals and Marxists alike had argued that apartheid was a constraint on the capitalist economy; the new writing insisted that capitalism needed racial domination (Friedman 2014: 527). While the question of race figured in the writings of those within the Marxist tradition, it did not receive the prominence that the black radical tradition had given it. In fact, the question of race continued to be subservient to that of class. The Caribbean-born academic and political philosopher Charles W. Mills engages quite a number of what he collectively refers to as ‘intra-Western ideologues’, be they liberal, leftist, neo-Marxist, and so on. He says: From the perspective of people of color, these intramural and intrawhite debates all fail to deal with the simple overwhelming reality on which left and right, contractarian and communitarian, comprehensive or political liberal should theoretically be able to agree: that the centrality of racial exclusion and racial injustice demands a reconceptualization of the orthodox view of the polity and calls for radical rectification (Charles W. Mills 2008: 1383). For Mahmood Mamdani (1997: 1), the reluctance to confront the race question only served to ‘make light of the legacy of race’, so that there continues to be an assiduous avoidance of the fact that ‘racial domination in South Africa was a form of colonial domination’. Thus, to ‘recognise the colonial context of racial

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domination is to acknowledge that we can learn something from other colonies on the continent [and elsewhere for that matter]’ (Mamdani 1997: 1). This context of the racial and colonial domination of black people frames the general discussion in this chapter. The purpose is to contextualise and historicise, and locate in the global context, the current misfortunes that continue to plague the majority of black South Africans. Magubane (1987: 6) argued that while other societies have also experienced the problem of race and class, ‘North America and South Africa experienced this particular problem in its most pathological form’. Continuing to question the veracity of class analysis, which ipso facto silences the centrality of race in colonial dispossession, he points out: The social heritage of settler colonialism in North America and South Africa was not merely a rigid class structure with an elite of wealth, status and power at the apex and, at the bottom of a pyramid, a mass of poverty-stricken, marginal, powerless, and subordinate people. Such class structures have flourished elsewhere. The tragedy of settler colonialism was a class structure further stratified by colour and physiognomy – by what anthropologists call phenotype; an elite of white or near whites and a mass of people of colour. Ruling classes in North America and South Africa learned quite early that they would perpetuate social inequalities far more effectively when exploitation and the maladministration of the fruit of exploitation are buttressed by racism . . . The class structure defining white settlement in North America, South Africa and other such colonies is the result of what has been called ‘the fact of conquest’. The wars against indigenous peoples took the form of genocide, theft, and swindles (Magubane 1987: 9). In order to offer illuminating insights, any analysis of the present-day inequalities in South Africa must grapple with these historical realities – the persistent fact that inequality is widest between black and white people is indicative of this very reality. In relating the dispossession of black people in South Africa to its continental and global context, the aim is to highlight the fact that, ontologically, the ‘grammar of suffering’ for black people on the continent and for those in the diaspora remains the same. This is the net effect of generations of exploitation, which led to the durable idea of black inferiority, thus prompting racism to stand alone as a phenomenon deserving its own conceptualisation. Therefore, black

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unity has always been crucial. But present-day black nationalism has also always been contested. In ‘Robert Sobukwe: An Assessment’, the essayist Lewis Nkosi posed the following question to Sobukwe’s PAC: ‘How can black nationalism totalize the complex nature of a multi-racial society?’ This is a question also posed to those in fidelity with the black radical tradition, and it is one that must be answered. Nkosi then contextualised the question differently: While [Albert] Luthuli can, with his great flexibility, command the sympathy of even the most conservative elements among the white populace without giving ground on essentials, Sobukwe alienates even those liberals from whom he has least to fear. Yet, with all these faults, he still remains an imposing figure in South African politics (Nkosi 1962). The contrast that Nkosi posed between the two men, one that represents the differing postures of the ANC and the Black Consciousness bloc, may have been valid during apartheid. However, the passage of time allows one to challenge the idea that the flexibility of Luthuli, which arguably can be said to have carried on through Nelson Mandela, drew in the sympathy of the ‘white populace without giving ground on essentials’. The point is that the triumph of the Luthuli bloc, of the ANC, may have given ground on essentials in the democratic dispensation. I will return to this point later in the chapter. South African liberalism vs black radicalism The South African black radical tradition has always been at odds with its white liberal/leftist counterparts. This is true whether one considers those black intellectuals who were in the academy (mainly abroad) or those who were in the liberation movement. While significant theoretical distinctions ought to be made between white liberals and leftists/Marxists, despite not being the same ‘in terms of their ideologies, [they were the same] in terms of their significance for the black struggle’ (Biko in Gerhart 2008: 34). The net effect has been the channelling of the black struggle towards class-centred praxis at the expense of race. In this respect, I have and will continue to refer to the two together, to consider them both as part of what I call the metropolitan left, and to contrast both liberals and Marxists with the black radical tradition. Writing about the kinds of silences and erasures inherent in mainstream liberalism, I outline in this section significant divisions between the black radical tradition and the South African liberal tradition.

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Post-1994 South Africa is said to enjoy one of, if not the, most liberal and/or progressive constitutional democracies in the world. This constitutional democracy is an outcome of a ‘negotiated settlement’ between two previously antagonistic racial groups, or, more precisely, an oppressed black nation and an oppressive white minority. Significantly, however, while the black majority were oppressed primarily as a nation, the outcome of the touted ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, ushered in in 1994, still very much favours the beneficiaries of apartheid. No doubt significant improvements have been made, partially evidenced by a steadily growing, albeit debt-ridden, ‘black middle class’. However, twenty years on, the black majority is still trapped in the shameful remnants of apartheid ghettos referred to as ‘townships’ or ‘locations’. Yet this is precisely what the post-1994 social justice project is meant to address. The US philosopher John Rawls argued that ‘the most fundamental idea in [one] conception of justice is the idea of society as a “fair” system of social cooperation over time from one generation to the next’ (Rawls 2001: 5). However, in South Africa, as is true in much of the racialised world, oppression and exploitation, not some ‘fair’ system of cooperation, has been passed on from one generation to the next. Furthermore, in their origin, liberalism’s ‘schedules of rights and prescriptions for justice were all colour-coded’ (Charles W. Mills 2008). This historical fact notwithstanding, liberalism has sought to present its prescriptions as objective values across history and context. The South African liberal tradition is no exception. Predominantly, social justice is marked out by the ‘ideal theory’ strand of liberalism, which holds a sanitised or idealised view of the polity that ignores racial subordination (Charles W. Mills 2008: 1380). Adherents to this strand of liberalism in South Africa gaze towards Euro-American history and context, resulting in a ‘disconnection with the collective memories of the nonEuropean’ (Adesina 2005: 31). As such, the notion of social justice has had an intimate relationship with liberalism. Accordingly, black people have been turned into class and gender subjects in democratic South Africa, while everyone else, including black people, have been stripped of race. In effect, the post-1994 era has changed the terms of reference of the new struggle. For example, Dennis Davis and Marlese von Broembsen (2008) stated: ‘Now, fourteen years into this democracy, the new challenge is the achievement of social justice as set out in our constitution.’ This kind of approach effectively replaces the Freedom Charter with the Constitution, not that the two are mutually exclusive. The Constitution came to represent the aspirations of the oppressed black and of the embodiment of the pact between black and white

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people in the new dispensation. Consistent with a sanitised view of the polity, however, a number of urban-based NGOs have selectively championed aspects of the Constitution. Given the way the social justice sector has advanced its claims, it is as if the Constitution had, at one fell swoop, deracialised society. In contrast to this liberalism, the liberatory praxis of the black radical tradition attempted to connect with the collective memories of the oppressed majority of South Africa. While Biko acknowledged that ‘the color question in South African politics was originally introduced for economic reasons’, he argued that what made South African society racist is that white people ‘despise Black people, not because they need to reinforce their attitude and so justify their position of privilege, but simply because they actually believe that Black is inferior and bad’. Continuing with this line of argument, he stated that ‘it is still true that the system [i.e., apartheid] derives its nourishment from the existence of anti-Black attitudes in society’ (Biko 1978: 88). The question concerning the primacy of racism over the class question, or the converse, in South African society is a long-running debate among political actors and thinkers across the political divide, and one that continues to this day. For the most part, however, the question is a settled one to the extent that those who hold the view of class primacy are over-represented, even dominant, in the NGO sector and civil society generally. Nevertheless, for its own part, the SACP conceived of this debate in terms that recognise the intersectionality between class, race and gender struggles; unfortunately, this conceptualisation has not yielded any clear political programme, at least not one that has wide traction in present-day South Africa. Given the post-1994 ‘structure’ of South African society, the primacy of class over race has won the day. That is because whites, as a bloc, continue to feed at the top of the system, while the black majority are a cultural and economic minority – or oddity, to be more pointed. And so the primacy of the class view has the disadvantage (although not all the time) of blunting or eschewing calls for historical redress in precise conceptual and programmatic terms because its acknowledgement of the aforesaid structure does not go beyond material inequality. The contention here is that, while having noble intentions, white (neo-)Marxists/ liberals who champion social justice in South Africa are blunted by their racial prejudice. This prejudice is no longer rooted in material differences but is located in not seeing the Other as a person with his or her own specificity – that is, with his or her own culture, history and worldview.

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This group of ‘do-gooders’, as Biko called them, or the ‘metropolitan left’, as I like to refer to them, have contributed to (intellectual) formulations incapable of addressing persisting challenges of racism, poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment (all racially skewed). Nevertheless, calls to revisit and unpack this historically settled debate have gained momentum in different sections of South African society. Andile Mngxitama has made similar calls, and recently Steven Friedman has occasionally made mention of this. The good thing about such a debate is the underlying awareness that South Africans cannot continue to be viewed under the distorting lens of ‘metropolitan’ accounts, as if sites of whiteness (academia, mainstream media, corporate South Africa, etc.) make up the totality of the country. And this danger of the distorting lens precisely demonstrates my contention of the limits, emanating from their prejudice, of the metropolitan left. Earlier on, I argued that the agenda of the metropolitan left, a liberal project in the main, was inconsistent with black radical thought. The divisions between the black radical tradition and the South African liberal tradition are too great to ignore. Accordingly, I extract four key limits, some of which have been previously mentioned, to demonstrate that this left cannot understand the ‘grammar of suffering’ of the black majority. These key issues also point out the limits of the metropolitan left, which I will now outline. The intellectual poverty of the metropolitan left The first problem with the approach of the metropolitan left is its preference for focusing on class rather than race when discussing justice. Historically, this was also true of the older SACP and its relationship with the liberation movement. The relationship between racism and class is particularly sharp in South Africa. Will resolving class conflict end racism or will resolving racism end class conflict? Let me start here: I argue that, for Biko, racism is structural to capitalism but is not foundational to it. That is, although racism is not a prerequisite for capitalism, it is a phenomenon that has structured social and economic relations and is embedded in the fabric of South African society. In essence, the movement from one class to the next or the maintenance of a particular class position is mediated through racism, at least for the black majority. Thus, in South Africa multiracial social and professional networks are likely to indicate class mobility. Furthermore, Biko pointed out: ‘The thesis is in fact a strong white racism and therefore, the antithesis to this must, ipso facto, be a strong solidarity among the blacks on whom this white racism seeks to prey’ (Biko 1979: 90).

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However, some changes are apparent in the post-1994 era. Importantly, democracy in South Africa has impacted on the race and class question in this way: while the black middle class chiefly experience racism, the black working class and the poor largely experience class discrimination. So the thesis to be opposed is no longer ‘white racism’ only. Divisions among black people are thus more pronounced, but this does not mean racism no longer operates. The following example explains the way in which class and race intersect in contemporary postsegregationist societies such as South Africa and the US. Rebecca Carroll, a black American journalist, recounts this exchange in her article describing her experience of newsroom racism: Years later, in a conversation about Trayvon Martin [the seventeen-year-old black American killed by a neighbourhood watch volunteer] with another boss, I said something like, ‘Racism is real.’ My white boss came back with an answer that still astonishes me: ‘But you don’t experience racism, right? I mean, you’re attractive and educated – I can’t imagine that you would ever experience racism’ (Carroll 2014).   Let me be pointed in explaining the problem in this way: the statement by Carroll’s boss is problematic primarily because it is akin to arguing that ‘ugly’ people don’t get raped. A good response to the statement is that one therefore does not understand rape. Similarly, I argue that the issue of racism in the boss’s statement is a silencing or erasure of racism’s depth. But it is more insidious then that. Its insidiousness occurs when the primacy of the class question over the question of racism ‘functions as a mechanism of exclusion while also concealing the exclusion that it produces’ (Vazquez 2012: 1). That is, the question of class (and how the question of class is framed) sidesteps the issue of racism and suggests that racism and class discrimination are mutually exclusive. The second problem with the analysis of the metropolitan left is that it tends to avoid the fact that present problems are historical problems. This left has tended to see post-1994 South African problems as resulting purely from ‘corrupt’ and ‘incompetent’ black government, which seeks only to amass wealth and boost a ‘black elite’ – as if, in some writings it seems, being black and well-off are mutually exclusive. We have seen all too often the unrelenting onslaught on the current government from civil society. Such critiques tend to come dangerously close to saying things were better under the apartheid regime.

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No doubt the ANC-led government is failing on many levels. However, the idea that one must oppose a government simply because it is government reflects a peculiarly counterproductive Hegelian mindset that sometimes comes through as nostalgia for ‘the good old days’. Its source is in classical English liberalism, a tradition from which derives much of what counts for liberalism in South Africa today. In the face of Afrikaner nationalism and monopoly of the political space, oppositional discourse derived from classical liberalism would seem to occupy a higher moral ground. I argue that the continued adherence to this tradition has the inherent tendency to justify, rationalise and acquiesce with injustice and inequity, and to continue a defence of class/race/gender privileges. The defence of these privileges is often couched in the language of individual freedom and opposition to government encroachment (Adesina 2005: 30–1). This kind of ahistorical analysis has made its way into a number of communitybased organisations that have worked with urban-based NGOs. Consequently, it was not accidental that a former director of an NGO, Jackie Dugard, in an email exchange between staff members, defended what she referred to as ‘small “p” politics’: a politics concerned with governance, and with a mobilisation focused on the allocative power of government that can alter social relations. To be fair, philosophically this defence is rooted in constitutionalism, but politically it is premised on the view that small ‘p’ politics is best suited to effect the necessary socio-economic changes. While this formulation is congruent with the Chipkin and Meny-Gibert (2013) report on South Africa’s social justice sector, it ignores other powerful social forces (read ‘vestiges of apartheid’) that not only impact on power relations but alter them as well. The debate between small ‘p’ politics and big ‘P’ Politics – the latter concerned with the question of electoral democracy, party politics and nationalism, and the former focused on the delivery of basic services – is indicative of a reflection of white power. Let me explain. The false dichotomy between the two precisely mirrors what Frank Wilderson (2010: 131) calls ‘the zone of white ethical dilemmas: the zone of civil society’, one which is parasitic and inadequate to black liberation. Accordingly, it was not surprising to find the head of a social movement argue for small ‘p’ politics. Sbu Zikode of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack-dwellers’ campaign claimed to be the biggest social movement in South Africa, made the same argument for small ‘p’ politics5 – reducing the idea of freedom to a process of government delivery of basic rights such as electricity, housing, sanitation, and so on. Alluring notions such as references

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by the Democratic Alliance (DA) to ‘government efficiency’, ‘prudent spending’ and ‘competent officials’, which the ANC fails to uphold, appear to address these very same basic rights (housing, sanitation and electricity) – rights that many communities struggles for. And post-1994, white opposition intellectual thought has erected these rights as democratic qualifiers. As a result, these have provided the seeds for the sort of thinking that led Abahlali to see the ANC’s opposition as a viable alternative. The problem with the distinction between big ‘P’ Politics and small ‘p’ politics is that while conceptually the distinction makes sense, practically it runs into trouble. This is simply because one cannot separate elected ward councillors from issues of community participation where water and electricity are discussed, or party-appointed metro officials from issues of housing. In this context, one is reminded of Biko, when he argued that the presence of whites in black people’s struggles ‘removes the focus of attention from essentials and shifts it to ill-defined philosophical concepts that are both irrelevant to Black men [and women] and are merely a red herring across the track’ (Biko 1978: 23). On this score, and in claiming the moral high ground, it is important to point out that Biko himself is in danger of being appropriated by these very same ‘do-gooders’. After a media article cited Steve Biko, Stuart Wilson, director of an urban-based NGO, thought it important for this article’s author to be aware that those were not Biko’s only views, as if to suggest this author is unable to understand the totality of Biko’s thought. Clearly, then, as the above discussion shows, these ‘do-gooders’ continue to have an uneasy relationship with black radicals. This is so because the former tend to patronise the latter and thus reinscribe the very notion of white supremacy they purport to critique. When a former director of an urban-based NGO appeared on the national TV show The Big Debate and responded to a black audience member that South Africa has now entered a class struggle, that race post-1994 plays a small role, especially given the nationwide ‘service delivery protests’, a silencing of race was again at play. This is the sort of thing that Magubane (1977) polemically referred to as the ‘poverty of liberal analysis’. Nevertheless, this strand of liberalism shuns holistic or ‘totalising’ critiques of society, and thus fails to analyse or comprehend issues and how they are interrelated. ‘Instead, reality from the start is fragmented into the domains of the various disciplinary specialists, and the developing whole never comes into view . . . The underlying dialectic is obliterated . . . ’ (Magubane 1977: 148).

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A classic example of such selective reading of societal issues that does not at all accord with reality is an analysis of the period leading up to South Africa’s democracy. Typically, we are told that ours was a ‘peaceful transition’ or ‘miracle’ personified by the magical world-icon Nelson Mandela. Yet, as Hendricks (2006: 87) points out, ‘twenty thousand people died in politically related violence in the decade prior to the first elections based on universal franchise in 1994. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the lives lost were black has something to do with the perception of a peaceful transition.’ In other words, given that so few white people died during this period, it has been accepted as working truth in South African mainstream liberal discourse that, in spite of the fact that whites were perpetrators of gross human rights violations, the number of black people who died was insignificant. The third point I want to make is that we must begin to see ‘oppositional intellectualism’ as a reflection, not rejection, of (white) power (Ally 2005). Many of the social justice organisations identified in the Chipkin and Meny-Gibert (2013) report are managed by urban-based white middle-class ‘activists’. Social justice activist Sisonke Msimang describes this situation well: Many of the influential and well-resourced organisations in the urbanbased NGO sector have white directors and senior staff and their boards have a disproportionate number of white folks on them. In short, those who hold power in the NGO sector continue to be those who benefited from privileges of the apartheid era (Msimang 2014). The ‘location of the subject of enunciation’ (Grosfoguel 2011: 7) or the ‘body politics of knowledge’ (Fanon in Grosfoguel 2009: 14) is important in enabling one to determine the limits of the speaker and of that speaker’s representation. The lack of a totalising critique within the NGO sector, specifically among the urban NGOs, stems from the location of enunciation. As such, the intellectual orientation of the sector can be found wanting. The metropolitan left have positioned themselves as the official – no, final – defenders of the country’s constitutional order. ‘Final’ because it would seem that the actions of government are always pushing the country to an edge; the final step being turning into Zimbabwe, apparently. Stephen Grootes, a former DA opposition spin-doctor-turned-columnist, effectively conjures up regime change in his discussion of a post-Marikana miners’ strike: the ‘end of ANC domination’,

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he avers (Grootes 2014). But does the end of the ANC spell the end of the racial struggle for equality and freedom? The metropolitan left primarily see change/ progress through either a ‘reformed’ ANC or a South Africa without the ANC: they are blind to the structural inequality that favours them. If we take social justice to mean the right to participate in the exercise of power, then the sector needs to concede that government does not represent the totality of all power in society. For Mngxitama, the ‘very presence of whites in the zone of black resistance crowds out other possibilities. In fact, certain acts become outlawed. Certain demands unimaginable’ (2010: 6). There can be no doubt that the long-standing critiques of white neo-Marxists and liberals, dating back to the days of the SACP, Archie Mafeje, Magubane and Biko, continue to have relevance in the present. Nor is this case unique to South Africa. For similar reasons, Shireen Ally (2005) sees white ‘oppositional intellectualism’ as a reflection, not rejection, of power. Although Ally traces this opposition from the 1970s, developed, not surprisingly, at the same time as Black Consciousness sprang up as a rallying call for black South Africans, it is an opposition that dates back to the days of the earlier SACP. Finally, because white liberals and neo-Marxists dominate the conceptual and theoretical landscape of the NGO world, their approaches tend to set the political agenda. And this is where the rubber hits the road: where values and norms are the bedrock of public power. Therefore, the metropolitan left cannot be regarded as just a fringe group in South Africa, as some would have us believe. Within this group an implicit normative discussion is taking place, one disconnected from the history and context of South Africa, whereby a theory is projected into local struggles. Such normative discussion stands in contradiction to the black radical tradition in understanding local struggles, and it is evident that these assumptions affect the research focus, the idea of the role of the state and civil society, and the research reports in a number of NGOs. When race is even mentioned, it is most often in terms so diluted and inaccurate as to silence it. Charles W. Mills (2008: 1382) accurately spelled this out: We would need to acknowledge that race had underpinned the liberal framework from the outset, refracting the sense of crucial terms, embedding a particular model of rights bearers, dictating a certain historical narrative, and providing an overall theoretical orientation for normative discussion.

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Concluding remarks The social justice project in South Africa exposes the existential weaknesses of whiteness in understanding the black ‘grammar of suffering’. Because of the historical prejudices that infuse the NGO sector, leading to a lack of a totalising critique of society, and the limited politics it generates, there is a need to retrieve the ideas of thinkers such as Biko and Sobukwe in order to grapple with the national and class question, both programmatically and conceptually. It is important not only to resist but to shift the norms and values being institutionalised within public discourse. This is partly because the problem is that white power is often reflected in this space. Because of the public space in which these norms and values are registered, they problematically constitute themselves as ‘public ethics’. This is not an issue of the sector being, as Msimang (2014) puts it, ‘not yet racially secure’. The NGO sector recognises race at face value but discards it when it comes to what I refer to as ‘public power’ – the sphere in which laws, rules and institutions interact. Racism, however, occurs at the structural and epistemic level – where values and norms are the bedrock of public power.

Notes 1. I am indebted to Bongani Nyoka, who contributed immensely to this chapter. 2. Following Chipkin and Meny-Gibert (2013), I focus on urban-based NGOs that are funded by major international foundations and charities. 3. It must be mentioned that I use ‘black’ to refer to Africans, coloureds and Indians. 4. Some theorists, mainly those associated with the Unity Movement, have come to dismiss this formulation as unsatisfactory (see, for example, Mafeje 1986). 5. This comment was made during a personal conversation at a workshop in Durban in 2013.

References Adesina, J. 2005. ‘Realising the Vision: The Discursive and Institutional Challenges of Becoming an African University’. African Sociological Review 9(1): 23–39. Alexander, N. 1979. One Azania, One Nation: The National Question in South Africa. London: Zed Books. Ally, S. 2005. ‘Oppositional Intellectualism as Reflection, Not Rejection, of Power: Wits Sociology, 1975–1989’. Transformation 59: 66–97. Biko, S. 1978. I Write What I Like. Oxford: Heinemann. Bond, P. 2006. Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press; London: Zed Books.

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Bunting, B. 1975. Moses Kotane: South African Revolutionary. London: Inkululeko Publications. Carroll, R. 2014. ‘I’m a Black Journalist. I’m Quitting Because I’m Tired of Newsroom Racism’. https://newrepublic.com/article/119912/black-female-journalist-quits-media-decriesnewsroom-racism (accessed 18 November 2014). Chipkin, I., and Meny-Gibert, S. 2013. ‘Understanding the Social Justice Sector in South Africa’. A report to the RAITH Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies. http://www.raith.org.za/ docs/Report-Social-justice-Sector-7Feb2013-FINAL-10022013.pdf (accessed 10 October 2014). Davis, D., and Von Broembsen, M. 2008. ‘South Africa Must Address Social Justice’. South African Civil Society Information Service, 28 October. http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/186.1 (accessed 30 August 2016). Fanon, F. 2001. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books. Hendricks, F. 2006. ‘The Rise and Fall of South African Sociology’. African Sociological Review 10(1): 88–97. Friedman, S. 2014. ‘From Classroom to Class Struggle: Radical Academics and the Rebirth of Trade Unionism in the 1970s’. Journal of Asian and African Studies 49(5): 526–43. Gerhart, G.M. 2008. ‘Interview with Steve Biko’. In A. Mngxitama, A. Alexander and N.C. Gibson (eds), Biko Lives! Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 21–42. Grootes, S. 2014. ‘End of South Africa’s Platinum Mine Strike Signals End of ANC Domination’. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/south-africa-platinum-miners-strike-anc (accessed 25 June 2014). Grosfoguel, R. 2009. ‘A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Border Thinking and Global Coloniality’. Kult 6 – Special issue (Fall): 10–38. ———. 2011. ‘Decolonizing Post-colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality’. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1(1): 1–37. Mafeje, A. 1986. ‘South Africa: The Dynamics of a Beleaguered State.’ African Journal of Political Economy 1(1): 95–119. Magubane, B. 1977. ‘The Poverty of Liberal Analysis: A Polemic on Southern Africa’. Review 1(2): 147–66. ———. 1979. The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa. New York: Monthly Review Press. ———. 1987. ‘Race and Class Revisited: The Case of North America and South Africa’. Africa Development 12(1): 5–40. ———. 2007. Race and the Construction of the Dispensable Other. Pretoria: Unisa Press. Mamdani, M. 1997. ‘Makgoba: Victim of the “Racialised Power” Entrenched at Wits’. Social Dynamics 23(2): 1–5. Marais, H. 2001. South Africa: Limits to Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mills, Charles W. 2008. ‘Racial Liberalism’. Modern Language Association of America 123(5): 1380–97. Mngxitama, A. 2010. ‘Introduction’. New Frank Talk 5: 1–8.

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Msimang, S. 2014. ‘A Few Good Whites: Will Civil Society Take Dr Ramphele Back?’. http:// www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2014-07-10-a-few-good-whites-will-civil-societytake-dr-ramphele-back/#.U744N8j8LVJ (accessed 11 July 2014). Msumza, L.K., and Edgar, R. 1995. ‘Anton Muziwakhe Lembede and African Nationalism’. Seminar paper, Institute for Advanced Social Research, University of the Witwatersrand, 24 July. Nkosi, L. 1962. ‘Robert Sobukwe: An Assessment’. Africa Report, April. Rawls, J. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Sobukwe, R. 1949. ‘The PAC Case’. In ‘Selected Speeches of Robert Sobukwe and a Minibiography’, compiled by S.S. Mandyoli. https://ilizwe.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/ speeches-of-r-m-sobukhwe.pdf (accessed 15 September 2016). Vázquez, R. 2012. ‘Towards a Decolonial Critique of Modernity: Buen Vivir, Relationality and the Task of Listening’. http://ceapedi.com.ar/imagenes/biblioteca/libros/241.pdf. (accessed 15 September 2016). Wilderson, F.B. 2010. Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Part II NGOs in Practice

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CHAPTER 4

‘We Give Off a Lot of Heat But Not a Lot of Light’ NGOs and Land Advocacy in Zimbabwe, 1995–2005 Kirk Helliker

T

his chapter provides an understanding of the role of NGOs in advocating for land reform in Zimbabwe from 1995 to 2005.1 The significance of providing a historical narrative around NGOs and land advocacy during these years is that the year 2000, the midpoint of the period, effectively marks a radical disjuncture in NGO advocacy work between the preceding and ensuing years. As is well known, the nationwide land occupation movement and the subsequent state-led fast-track land reform programme began in the year 2000. While there was considerable advocacy work taking place in the latter half of the 1990s, this went into a dramatic tailspin from the year 2000. As indicated, this chapter is in large part a historical narrative. Although I raise a number of themes that resonate throughout the land advocacy work of NGOs, I do not offer a broad theoretical framing for the examination – I have done this elsewhere (for instance, Helliker 2007). In using the term ‘NGO’, I am speaking specifically about non-membership intermediary NGOs and not the broader notion of civil society, which would include, for example, grassroots organisations. These intermediary NGOs normally forge links ‘between the beneficiaries [of their work – namely, communities and community organisations] and the often remote levels of government, donor, and financial institutions’ (Carroll 1992: 11). This leads to various pressures placed on NGOs relating to both downward and upward forms of accountability, with NGOs constantly negotiating their way through the complexities of their tension-riddled condition. Although NGOs vary considerably, and at times act progressively, I would argue that, in the end, they are ‘built’ more to stabilise existing situations than to change them fundamentally. It is important to stress that the practices of NGOs in land advocacy in Zimbabwe between 1995 and 2005, as identified and examined in this chapter, are not necessarily representative of NGO land advocacy per se.

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I structure my presentation in the following way. In the first section, I discuss, very schematically, some of the prevailing literature on NGOs and land advocacy globally to provide a sense of the broader land advocacy context existing in the region during the period of study. In the second section, I focus specifically on Zimbabwean NGOs, providing a historical narrative on advocacy that almost stops in the year 2000. Significantly, however, I also consider the responses of advocacy (and development) NGOs to the restructuring of the Zimbabwean agrarian landscape through fast-track land reform, as this is part of the overall story. NGOs and land advocacy Literature does exist on NGOs and land advocacy globally and with specific reference to Africa (Ghimire 2001; Kanji et al. 2002; Pollard and Court 2005; Helliker and Murisa 2013).2 In this section, I raise points pertinent to the subsequent discussion of Zimbabwean-based NGOs. Although the Ghimire and Kanji et al. collections are earlier works, they capture the thoughts around NGO land advocacy for the historical period under study; hence I focus specifically on their findings. Ghimire argues that ‘how civil society organisations operate in concrete contexts and what makes them effective [or ineffective] in their actions are difficult questions’ to unpack (Ghimire 2001: 26). Seeking to measure land policy impact by NGOs is notoriously difficult. Although this chapter is primarily concerned with the role of NGOs in pursuing land advocacy and is not an impact study, the effects of NGO advocacy are of importance. The general conclusion arising from the Ghimire volume (an analysis of land reform practices in Latin America, Asia and Africa) is that the ‘buoyant perspectives’ of NGOs prior to engaging in land policy reform processes soon ‘prove utopian’ (Ghimire 2001: 26) and that, concomitantly, NGOs play only minor roles in reform processes globally. Unconditional successes in influencing land reform agendas have been rare, yet engaging in advocacy processes is ‘relatively easier’ (Mannan 2001: 89) compared to involvement in the implementation of land policies. At the same time, there are significant regional variations, with the involvement of NGOs in land reform (including supporting the struggles of ‘peasant’ organisations) being ‘considerable’ in Latin America (Mozder and Ghimire 2001: 206), being less so in Asia, where there is ‘no independent vibrant NGO sector . . . calling for sweeping land reform measures’ (Mannan 2001: 95), and being much less so throughout the African continent.

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There are many reasons for the failure by NGOs to make important and sustained contributions to land reform. Of particular importance are choices on their part not to participate in reform efforts but rather to pursue mainstream (but not necessarily less complex and demanding) rural development work. For example, ‘the position of NGOs concerning land reform is complicated’ because it regularly involves challenging rural and national power configurations (Mannan 2001: 89), and confronting entrenched power structures may lead to avoidance of land advocacy work by NGOs. In addition, authoritarian states sometimes deliberately close the space available for NGO involvement in land reform. In Thailand, NGOs ‘opted to work for environmental protection, appropriate technology, alternative agriculture and so forth, thereby avoiding the thorny issue of agrarian reforms and peasant mobilisations’ (Ghimire 2001: 36). Another drawback for NGOs is their perpetual dependence on the agendas and priorities of donors. In South Asia, the majority of NGOs at one time shifted from land reform to ‘non-land issues, as they . . . [became] concerned with their . . . financial sustainability’ given that donors ‘are reluctant to support NGOs which call for widespread changes in property relations’ (Mannan 2001: 97). Simultaneously, donors may be reluctant to fund the land reform activities of NGOs. For instance, in the case of southern Africa: Donors in Southern Africa increasingly see assistance in land reform as politically sensitive and complex, likely to result in negative consequences whatever the moral foundation, and therefore best avoided . . . Unlike other sectors (e.g. education, health, water supply), official development assistance to land reform presents particular problems arising from its volatile, cyclical and politically sensitive nature (Think Tank 2003: 12). Beyond this, when NGOs engage in advocacy around land, they are often not properly rooted in rural communities, nor are they accountable in their advocacy work to these communities, despite claims or assertions that they represent such communities. Drawing from the findings of a study specifically on Mozambique and Kenya, Kanji et al. suggest that in fact NGOs ‘have had significant impacts on land policy processes’ (Kanji et al. 2002: vi). In so arguing, they employ a number of criteria for measuring or assessing the impact of NGO advocacy work. These criteria include NGOs undertaking the following: strengthening civil society groupings, bringing

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about pro-poor changes in land policy and deepening government accountability to civil society interests. In this sense, both the process of policy formation (for example, mechanisms of transparency and accountability) and the final product (for example, the content of land legislation) become important matters for NGO lobbying. Kanji et al. make the critical point that ‘there may be trade-offs between NGOs trying to influence [a particular] policy change and trying to strengthen community groups’ as part of a longer-term community-based capacity-building process (Kanji et al. 2002: 23). This notion of a trade-off is often noted in the literature, such that ‘the emergence of new policy lobbying organisations (agrarian lobbies)’, including NGOs, has sometimes involved ‘the weakening of the growth of peasant organisation’ (Hivos 1989: 3). As Kanji et al. (2002: 31) note, NGOs can most likely maximise their ‘legitimacy and policy clout’ by aligning themselves with grassroots organisations that ‘can cause social disruption’. In general, lobbying work in Africa has been highly uneven in its impact, and Odhiambo (2002: 5) argues that ‘the governance structure in each country determines the level of NGO involvement’ with land issues and ‘the impact of such involvement’. In the case of Kenya, the Kenyan African Nation Union government ‘never got to accept that NGOs had a legitimate role in policy processes’ on land, and land advocacy by individual NGOs during the late 1990s was ‘sporadic’, ‘did not last long’ and ‘had little impact on actual policy formulation’ (Odhiambo 2004: 33). But the Uganda Land Alliance, as an umbrella body for NGOs, had a cordial relationship with the government of the National Resistance Movement, and it became ‘a major player on land issues’ and ‘sits in major policy formulation and implementation committees’ (Odhiambo 2002: 11, 12). Besides unevenness in NGO engagement and effectiveness, the land advocacy practices of NGOs are also often fragmented. After attending an NGO land conference in Dar es Salaam in 1997, Robin Palmer from Oxfam reflected that ‘Tanzanian NGOs were far weaker, less well organised and less coordinated than I had expected’ (cited in Hakiardhi 1997: 5). Thus, the National Land Forum in Tanzania, consisting of gender, pastoral and media NGOs, was ‘divided in terms of agenda and priority’ (Kibamba and Johnson 2003: 27) and was unable to have its views integrated into land legislation. At a National Land Committee workshop on gender and land policy in South Africa in April 2000, a ‘major obstacle’ identified was ‘the disarray in the NGO sector, which is not engaging in coordinated way’ (SANL 2000: 7).

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Likewise, Greenberg speaks of the ‘weakness of independent progressive civil society’ in southern Africa as a major reason for the persistent failings of land reform in the region, and he refers specifically to the NGO sector in South Africa during the 1990s as ‘toothless’ (Greenberg 2004: 113, 118) in lobbying government for changes in land policy. He argues that the relationship between NGOs and rural land activists in South Africa was at that time ‘driven by the assumptions and interests of the NGOs’. And NGOs themselves were, according to Greenberg, driven in large part by the neoliberal development paradigm and were ‘most interested in short-term funding than in establishing a durable and independent movement of rural people’ (Greenberg 2004: 118, 119). Donor funding of NGOs involved in land advocacy seems to raise the standard pitfalls, including (unpredictable) short-term funding contracts. Related to this, NGOs are concerned about how some donors view advocacy work, as it is sometimes ‘treated in the same way as service delivery programmes which can show quantifiable results’ (Kanji et al. 2002: 19). This dependence on donors also inhibits NGOs from gaining credibility ‘as implementers of home-grown agendas on land’ (MWENGO 2000: 27). National land networks in southern Africa were by the year 2000 in ‘different stages of development’, ranging from ‘well developed’ to ‘non-existent’ (LRNSA 2000: 34). These networks were sometimes dominated by urban-based NGOs and they did not have strong (or organic) links with rural communities. Often, national land networks of NGOs, such as the Working Committee on Land Reform in Namibia, did not have any national NGOs working exclusively on land issues, as ‘land reform is not the primary focus of most members . . . and in some cases it is at the bottom of the list when priorities in terms of allocation of resources are made’ (MWENGO 1999: 16). In other cases, NGOs join such networks not because of any specific interest in (or commitment to) land reform but rather to ‘access donor funds’ (Bazaara 2003: 4). To bolster these national networks, more extensive networks at regional and continental levels have been formed in Africa at times. These include LandNet Africa, with its subregional chapters such as the Land Rights Network of Southern Africa (LRNSA). Included on its interim steering committee was the Zimbabwe Regional Environment Organisation (ZERO), which, during the late 1990s, played a significant land advocacy role in Zimbabwe. At the southern Africa network’s meeting in Harare in October 2000, the importance of moving beyond the ‘prevailing parallelism’ in the programmes of the NGOs making up the network and developing a more ‘coordinated process’ was stressed (LRNSA 2000: 7).3

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Funding for these networks is a perennial problem, although the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID) and Oxfam-GB have been heavily involved.4 Yet, ‘as no organisation exists solely for purposes of networking’ (Odhiambo 2002: 14), NGOs consider their involvement in networks as creating additional responsibilities that invariably take second place to their own programmatic processes, if only due to ‘work pressure’ (LRNSA 2000: 28). Donors too are wary of networks. Few donors will fund networking as a distinct activity, as ‘it is not considered an end in itself’ (Odhiambo 2002: 14). Questions arise among NGOs about the real intention of bilateral donors such as the DFID, and whether they have hidden (neoliberal) agendas that ‘may not necessarily be consistent with the local interest’ (Odhiambo 2002: 16). Nevertheless, the formation of land networks and coalitions is meant to overcome a serious weakness in land lobbying – namely, that it is largely ‘reactive’ (Makombe 2001: 35). In the case of Malawi, a civil society conference revealed that in the ‘area of gender and land’ there are ‘no groups that were proactive in offering possible solutions’ (MNCS 2002: 3). In this context, it is argued that ‘NGOs generally tend to start working together on land issues when it is already too late’ (Hakiardhi 1997: 5) – for example, after a land commission has submitted its report, after a national land policy has been established, or even after a land bill has been enacted and awaits implementation. Yet, even proactive lobbying alone is considered problematic, and the National Land Alliance of Zambia speaks about NGO ‘action beyond advocacy’. Further, despite the emphasis on advocacy by Zambian NGOs, the Alliance notes that ‘the [flawed] Land Act 1995 is still in place, women’s right to land is still far from reality and the traditional land tenure system is still under threat’ (MWENGO 2000: 13). Hence, regarding NGOs and land in southern and eastern Africa, ‘it is not uncommon for years of advocacy to result in little or no desired change’ (LRNSA 2000: Annex 4). A common argument against the work of NGOs is that they undermine rural movements and thus forestall genuine land reform. At an NGO workshop on land held in Windhoek in November 1999 organised by the regional body Mwelekeo Wa NGO (MWENGO), the keynote speaker (from Zimbabwe) argued that NGOs in Southern Africa are a reactionary force regarding land reform. I do not mean every one of them but most of them . . . I mean reactionary in the sense of being not pro-change although they are so-called change

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agents. They are also reactionary in the sense that they are not playing a leadership role in bringing change. This is a very serious problem, I am convinced that NGOs are behind [or less proactive than] the state in the issue of land reform (Moyo 1999b: 2). Meanwhile, the few progressive NGOs supporting land reform are ‘timid’ and ‘peripheral’, such that they ‘sit back when communities organise themselves to try and get land rather than considering how they can build on this momentum to come up with something constructive’ (Moyo 1999b: 3). At another MWENGO land workshop, a year later, the NGO delegation from Malawi stated that ‘NGOs have not come out in defence of land-hungry people who encroach on private land and are moved off by law enforcers’ (MWENGO 2000: 19). The relationship between NGOs and social movements remains a contentious issue (Borras 2008). This and the other themes raised in this section are relevant to the historical narrative on Zimbabwe, to which I now turn. NGOs in Zimbabwe During the 1990s, NGOs in Zimbabwe adopted a pronounced advocacy stance around a range of issues emerging from the structural adjustment programme implemented from the early years of the decade and the authoritarian restructuring of the Zimbabwean state. Reflecting on this period, Raftopoulos (2000: 6) observes: The economic marginalisation of the majority of Zimbabweans that has accompanied the adjustment programme created an environment for [NGO] advocacy on poverty issues. In addition the growing authoritarianism of the Zimbabwean state provided a platform for groups to mobilise around the question of governance. The significance of NGO advocacy also became manifest within the realm of land reform. As one NGO network indicated, NGOs ‘began to recognise the primacy of land in the mid 1990s and began formulating strategies for intervention as well as contributing to policy formulation’ (CREATE 2002: 9). It is claimed, however, that this advocacy work was exceedingly limited (Moyo 1999a: 5). Advocacy by NGOs focused primarily on governance and democratic reform, as part of a broader civic-nationalist movement against the state under the control of the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and this tended to crowd out and displace land reform advocacy.

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The Zimbabwean NGO ZERO admitted that ‘civil society’ (used interchangeably with ‘NGOs’) was ‘largely ineffective and too weak’ to pressurise the government to meet its land reform obligations, and it has not been able ‘to demand its right . . . to participate in land policy formulation’ (Matowanyika and Marongwe 1998: 20, 21). The fact that NGOs ‘generally remained marginalised’ with respect to national policy formation (Marongwe 2003: 14) has often been explained by NGOs as arising from the centralised top-down thrust of the nation state in postcolonial Zimbabwe. In 1997, an NGO consultative conference on land (discussed further below) spoke about ‘a complete lack of transparency, corruption and self-interest on the part of the elite at both national and local levels’ (Mutepfa et al. 1998: 16). Sam Moyo, who for many years straddled the academic and NGO worlds, argues that the overall exclusion of NGOs by the state in land policy processes represents a ‘lost opportunity’, because the hands-on experience particularly of development NGOs that have been ‘working with the people’ over extended periods has not been tapped and incorporated into land policy (Moyo 2000a). Despite this, during the early years of the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme Phase II (LRRP II), from 1997 to 1999, a number of NGOs became involved in a flurry of research and lobbying activities around land reform. This advocacy work can be traced back to the appointment in November 1993 of the Rukuni Land Commission on land tenure, before which many NGOs gave evidence. The three-volume Rukuni Report, officially titled Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Appropriate Agricultural Land Tenure Systems, was submitted to the government in October 1994. The public release of the report in late 1995, the government’s dismissal of some its recommendations, and the likelihood of new land legislation nevertheless arising from it set off a round of concerted advocacy efforts by NGOs. Thus the Women and Land Lobby Group (WLLG), a network of local gender NGOs, argued that the appointment of the Rukuni Commission ‘heralded the development of more coordinated efforts toward NGO consensus building and response to the concerns of women on the land question’ (Makombe 2001: 18). Numerous seminars, workshops and conferences were held in which NGOs (supported by various donors) played a significant part. For instance, a group of NGOs, including prominent gender organisations such as the Women’s Action Group and the Zimbabwe Women’s Bureau (but also the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association [ZimRights]), arranged the Women Farmers Conference in November 1995 that was funded by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), a German donor agency.

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This conference was designed to make heard the views of smallholder women farmers (74 attended) on the glaring gender weaknesses (or biases) contained in the Rukuni Report (Chenaux-Repond 1996).5 Women’s NGOs also formed a task force to lobby government officials to ensure a gender-sensitive land bill, but little significant progress was made due to the lack of a structure to coordinate the diversity of interests, a lack of capacity by individual NGOs and general fatigue arising from the lengthy nature of the process . . . The increasingly proactive role of NGOs on land, however, had the effect of increasing the government’s willingness to involve them in the process (Makombe 2001: 18). It is important to note that the problems identified in this appraisal were organisational weaknesses of NGOs rather than government intransigence. In this context, a wide range of NGOs, including human rights, women’s and environmental organisations, held the NGO Consultative Land Conference in May 1997 to chart the way forward. This milestone conference was designed to set the basis for ongoing advocacy activities and for a ‘genuine partnership between civil society and Government’ (Mutepfa et al. 1998: 22) on land reform. It was also highlighted at the conference that the nation’s vision on land was not clearly articulated or shared, and that this significant lacuna hindered the more active engagement of NGOs in land reform. Before, during and after the 1997 conference, various networks of NGOs interested in land reform were being formed, such as the Environmental Liaison Forum-Non-governmental Organisation (ELF-NGO) Land Working Group, the WLLG and, later, Community-Based Resettlement Approaches and Technologies (CREATE), the latter being funded by international donors through the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).6 In a sense, then, the possibilities for inclusive land engagement as contained within the state’s LRRP II ‘had the effect of reenergising NGO efforts toward coalition building’ (Makombe 2001: 19). For example, in early 1998, the ELF-NGO Group emerged in order to provide a formal basis for unified input by NGOs into Phase II (then under intensive discussion), and the NGOs involved developed a series of position papers in order to lobby government (Mutepfa and Cohen 2000). Preparations for the 1997 conference give some insight into NGO thinking and strategising on land reform. Various workshops on activism were held by

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NGOs during 1996, including one financed by Norwegian People’s Aid in June and another by MWENGO in September. ZimRights seemed to be particularly prominent in organising these workshops, and later expressed concern that it was being sidelined during the months immediately prior to the conference. Four main areas of activism were identified at the 1996 meetings: the Private Voluntary Organisations Act; the Constitution; macroeconomic policies; and land reform. Land seemed to be a particularly urgent issue, given impending land legislation arising from the Rukuni Report. Thus, out of the workshops arose recommendations for NGO activism on land reform, as ‘the land question represents a major challenge to civil society in Zimbabwe’.7 This activism would entail ‘getting those NGOs involved in environmental, civic education and gender-land related programmes as representatives of grassroots communities to provide input into Land Reform policies’.8 The representative function of these NGOs and their accountability to ‘grassroots communities’ was, however, highly questionable. Yet, several NGOs soon formed a steering committee, which included key groups such as ZERO, the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN), ZimRights and the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association. The committee sought ‘to promote a framework and opportunity for the widest possible dialogue’9 on land, particularly given that there had been only limited public debate by NGOs on the Rukuni Report. At some length, the committee debated the need ‘to petition government to postpone the tabling of any new [land] legislation to allow for consultation with stakeholders’, but this action was eventually considered to be ‘counterproductive’10 and was not pursued. Rather, the 1997 conference was agreed upon to facilitate dialogue, and this would be a ‘unique’11 opportunity for NGOs to engage with government and to make concrete and constructive policy recommendations on land reform. Indeed, the minister of lands, Kumbirai Kangai, in his opening speech to the conference, referred to it as a ‘historic workshop’ that would mark ‘the beginning of a meaningful engagement between our ministry and civil society’.12 The conference was also expected to help build the capacity of NGOs to vigorously analyse land-related issues. Intriguingly, there was extensive communication between the organisers of the conference as to whether donors should be invited, as many ‘felt having donors there might influence discussion. Also [the presence of donors] contradicted the image of a self-funded workshop which was not being donor-driven.’13 Further, if donors were present, ‘the government might perceive the conference to be influenced by donors’.14 As it turned out, NGOs had the opportunity to engage with donors over a year later and in a different setting.

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The September 1998 donors’ conference on land has been described as ‘the high point for NGO involvement in the land reform programme’, although even at that time NGOs ‘lacked a clear strategy’ for any coordinated involvement in agrarian change (CREATE 2002: 9). The compromise agreement reached at the conference formed the basis of the two-year ‘Inception Phase’ of LRRP II. From November 1998 to March 1999, the Technical Committee of the Inter-ministerial Committee on Resettlement and Rural Development worked out the finer details of the Inception Phase. Sam Moyo, who was at the time chairperson of ZERO, headed this government committee (GoZ 1998b). In April 1999, the Zimbabwean cabinet formally approved this plan of action. Various NGOs – including the WLLG, ZERO, the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) and Care International – are acknowledged by the Technical Committee as having provided significant input into the drafting of the Inception Phase framework. Generally speaking, then, a range of NGOs were involved in state–civil society policy dialogues in the late 1990s, including before, during and after the historic donors’ conference. Hence, the land policy formation process during these periods was ‘fairly participatory’ compared to previous years, but any significant input was ‘only made by the “organised civil society”, mainly NGOs’ (Marongwe 2003: 16). The 1998 Phase II Policy Framework and Project Document, as presented to the donors’ conference, emphasised that government would ‘mobilise the existing capacities of various NGOs’15 to contribute to the land programme, and that this would include encouraging development NGOs to become involved in support activities at resettlement-scheme level. These activities would entail extension and training services as well as credit and marketing facilities for resettled farmers. NGOs would also be ‘encouraged to facilitate locally based initiatives and capacity building in the beneficiary communities’ and to ‘select components of the land reform programme they wish to sponsor’. In the Phase II documentation, NGOs were explicitly conceptualised as partners (with government) in land reform, and their ‘accumulated experience’ in working in (and with) rural communities would be put to maximum use. In other words, NGOs were seen as ‘vital . . . stakeholders in the land reform programme because of their vested interests in economic and development activities’. The document categorised types of NGOs in terms of their main focus of activity. Notably, it spoke glowingly about ‘democracy NGOs’, and about how these NGOs ‘may be attracted by the transparency in the implementation of the land reform programme’.

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The LRRP II (at least on paper) appeared to give NGOs considerable space for direct involvement in land reform through what came to be known as non-state complementary approaches (CAs). ‘Land’ NGOs (including development NGOs), according to CREATE, ‘were expected to try out new approaches in resettlement’ and to ‘facilitate a demand-driven process as opposed to the supply-driven one that was being championed by the government’ (CREATE 2001: 9). These approaches, involving research, experimentation and innovation on matters such as agricultural productivity, poverty alleviation and environmental stability, were intended (from the viewpoint of the Zimbabwean government) to create ‘an enabling environment’ (GoZ 1999) for NGOs to act as facilitators in the land reform and resettlement process. This appeared to be an open and unrestricted invitation to NGOs to have at least an indirect impact on land policy formation and implementation. In fact, according to the Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (FCTZ), an NGO involved with commercial farms, the state’s policy represented a major shift away from a largely exclusionary approach marked by state centrism and ‘a culture of secrecy’ that had included a ‘few’, ‘privileged’ local NGOs aligned to the state (Mutepfa and Cohen 2000: 17). Potentially, Phase II thus entailed ‘a change in operational parameters of the government to include issues of transparency, accountability and democratic participation’ in land reform (Moyo 2000b: 9). Yet, as A. Dengu of the ITDG noted, this more inclusive mode of operation simultaneously increased the complexity of the process, because ‘the levels of uncertainty’ deepen ‘as the number of players in the land reform process increase’ (Mutepfa and Cohen 2000: 7). This idea about complexity, and how it complicates the activities of NGOs, is a constant refrain when it comes to NGO involvement in land reform. Despite this, NGOs were seen (admittedly, often by themselves) as being in a particularly privileged position – based on their ‘comparative advantages’ – to ensure that agrarian communities that had historically been excluded from the land policy process would finally have their voices heard and acted upon. Project proposals by NGOs under the initial Inception Phase of LRRP II were expected to focus on, among other groupings, the landless poor, displaced farm workers and residents of congested communal areas, and these rural people were ‘expected to gain control or be empowered through management of resettlement schemes’ (GoZ 1999). Intense lobbying by NGOs (and by the national General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe [GAPWUZ]) in the late 1990s, including numerous workshops and seminars, was apparently significant in

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the belated incorporation by the Zimbabwean government of farm workers into Phase II as a distinct category of settler (Moyo et al. 2000). NGO performance during the Inception Phase would be monitored and evaluated with regard to effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability, or in tangible terms of ‘converting inputs into outputs, outcomes into impacts (i.e. results)’ (GoZ 1999). At this juncture, among NGOs there seemed to be an optimistic mood, albeit intermittently marked by sobriety and realism, about their role as land advocates and, more specifically, their potential incorporation into the Phase II land programme in relation to both policy and practice. Thus, the director of Farm Orphans Support Trust (FOST) spoke positively about the policy environment in the years before 2000, noting, for instance, how FOST and other NGOs played an important part in ensuring that farm workers were given the right to vote in local government elections.16 This optimism is also exemplified in the case of the WLLG. In a moment of exuberant reflection, this NGO argued that its efforts have seen the redrafting of the LRRP Resettlement Policy framework and Programme Documents to accept women’s individual rights to land and the inclusion of the principle of affirmative action to promote women’s participation. Gender issues have also been included in the draft Land Policy Framework while the issues of women’s land rights formed a part of the discussions and inputs into the draft Constitution development process. There is a greater visibility of women and women’s issues in the current land reform programme and an acceptance of the role of the WLLG as a key stakeholder (Makombe 2001: 19). Any substantive attempt to evaluate such an assertion is invariably marked with difficulties because policy formation is a highly complex and convoluted process. No doubt, however, there is a ring of empirical truth to this claim. Certainly, subsequent to its formation in March 1998, the WLLG is widely acknowledged as having been a critical land NGO network in Zimbabwe, notably at the September 1998 donors’ conference. Like other NGOs, the WLLG sought to move beyond advocacy to venture into operational activities, including training, extension services and revolving loan funds for women farmers. However, as its operations grew, it soon had to establish a secretariat, and this led to its programme becoming ‘more institutionalised’ with ‘less participation from [NGO] members’ (Makombe 2001: 19). Clearly, despite the Inception Phase-related exuberance, difficult

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challenges lay ahead for NGOs working on land reform in Zimbabwe and seeking the way forward. For instance, the ITDG reiterated that ‘to effectively take up the space and challenges’ of land reform implementation during the Inception Phase, ‘the wide array of civil society groups need to coordinate their efforts’ (Mutepfa and Cohen 2000: 13). Moreover, NGOs raised very serious questions about institutional and procedural matters underlying the Phase II land programme. In particular, as evidenced in the position papers of the ELF-NGO Working Group, a major concern was the (seemingly still centralised) state institutional set-up designed to translate Phase II policy into practice. Hence, in line with the NGO mantra on participatory development, the ELF-NGO Group emphasised the need to further decentralise the implementation authority of the land programme in order to maximise the involvement of marginalised rural communities. This ongoing fixation with institutions and systems on the part of NGOs brings to the fore a ‘proceduralist thrust’ of NGO land advocacy (Moyo 2004: 122) during this period. The emphasis on procedural and governance issues was often at the expense of (or regularly took priority over) a possibly broader concern with redistributive and equity issues. As a result, NGOs offered criticisms of the state’s compulsory land acquisition approach (also announced and pursued in 1997) without raising any fervent doubts about the prevailing market-led reform of the first fifteen years of independence. In this light, Moyo argues that NGOs in Zimbabwe ‘never prioritised the land reform agenda’ except as advocates of market-based reforms, and international donor linkages likely ‘militated against’ the propagation of ‘radical land reform’ by NGOs (including supporting compulsory acquisition) (Moyo 2001: 313). There is some justification for this view, although Moyo does not spell out the NGO–donor linkages in any detail. In fact, the private inter-organisational NGO correspondence leading up to the 1997 conference supports the contrary argument: namely, that NGOs sought a degree of autonomy from donor agendas, if only for tactical reasons (while, of course, continuing to rely on donor funding for their very existence). By the beginning of 2000, over twenty NGOs had been accredited by the Zimbabwean state for various forms and levels of involvement in resettlement projects in terms of the Inception Phase of LRRP II. For instance, ZERO was accredited to undertake research on land-based resources. However, external funding and agricultural land for the non-state CAs were not forthcoming, and the Inception Phase never got off the ground. Moyo offers a broad explanation for

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the eventual collapse of the entire Inception Phase in the year 2000, focusing on a range of misguided actions by key groups. Notably, he argues that NGOs and donors misread the prevailing political dynamics, and ‘believed wrongly’ that the land occupation movement (which began in February 2000) ‘was merely a political and partisan ploy’ by the government to maintain its grip on power ‘rather than a socially grounded demand’ that ZANU-PF ‘was responding to (albeit also for its political benefit)’. The ‘expectation’ of NGOs was that the individual political survival of Mugabe and of Zanu-PF at the elections would obviate pressures for land reform. This detracted attention [of NGOs] from land reform to the electoral contests of [June] 2000 . . . The few NGOs that had been interested in land reform [before 2000] . . . became directly entangled in the broader political struggles for constitutional reform and elections, as a means of eventually addressing land reform, rather than engage on actual land redistribution project development and financing (Moyo 2000c: 4, 5). Particularly in the face of only minimal funding forthcoming from donors in the late 1990s (despite donors’ conference commitments to the contrary), NGOs did not involve themselves in any meaningful land projects under the Phase II programme. Events, particularly in the way these were discursively constructed and represented by NGOs, moved too quickly for this to occur. As part of the broader civic movement then emerging in the late 1990s, most urban advocacy NGOs (coalescing in the National Constitutional Assembly [NCA]) pursued an anti-authoritarian civic nationalism and focused more on human rights and governance than on redistributive land reform (or, more generally, on political and civil rights rather than socio-economic rights). In so doing, and in alliance with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, they consciously aligned themselves with the processes leading to the formation of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). This included a number of NGOs, such as ZimRights and the ZWRCN, which had been particularly active in the previous rounds of advocacy work on land reform, and which had thereby sought to engage critically with the state rather than to directly confront it. For instance, even a cursory analysis of the ZWRCN’s magazine Woman Plus during the years 1999 and 2000 leads to the conclusion that it became another mouthpiece for civic nationalism and the MDC (ZWRCN 1999, 2000). This

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civic activism was viewed by the central state as unpatriotic, and it led to angry suspicion and mistrust of the broader NGO sector. Save the Children Fund-UK was a catalyst for intensified NGO involvement on commercial farms in the late 1990s, and in 2000 it published From Bus Stop to Farm Village (Auret 2000), which details the history of its farm programme. The wife of an MDC member of Parliament authored this public document and, as a result, further production has ceased.17 A few years later, at the ‘Civil Society Reflection’ meeting held in December 2004, some participants suggested that during the late 1990s NGOs were being ‘confrontational’ and that perhaps the state was justifiably ‘paranoid’ about NGOs, given their role in the formation of the NCA and MDC.18 The land occupation movement (known as the Third Chimurenga) arising in early 2000 dramatically altered the political and agrarian terrain in Zimbabwe, leading to a pronounced disabling environment for those NGOs seeking to advocate for land reform. Simultaneously, the land movement caught NGOs totally unaware and off guard, and they were grossly ill-prepared for its devastating implications and impact. They literally found themselves in ‘disarray’ (ZERO 2000: 22). Even those NGOs that just a year before (in early 1999) had shown an exuberance and robustness were now less sanguine. Thus the WLLG argued that the occupations (and the subsequent fast-track land reform programme) had made the issue of women’s land rights a ‘marginal issue’ (Makombe 2001: 19) and in large part marginalised the NGO itself. Initially, a group of concerned NGOs made a desperate appeal, urging the government to resettle people in a planned and orderly procedure, and without losing sight of the broader considerations as stated in the Inception Phase and its CAs. In August 2000, NGOs and civic groups presented a proposal entitled ‘Practical Action to End the Impasse’, which would create twelve highly visible pilot resettlement projects in three provinces to be funded by government, the Commercial Farmers Union, bilateral donors and NGOs. These projects were to include farm workers and communal area villagers; have sufficient pre-settlement infrastructural development; and ensure a structured coordinating role for established local state administrations rather than for ad hoc militarised bodies emerging on the occupied farms. However, the projects never materialised, and the policy space for NGO involvement in land reform had effectively collapsed. As CREATE noted: ‘The NGO community in the country . . . [was] caught in between as donors withheld funding for the land reform exercise while government narrowed the space for NGO involvement in land reform’ (CREATE 2002: 2–3).

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Indeed, the land movement had undermined the Phase II programme as then formulated and constituted, and it was later revised in 2000 as the state-driven fast-track programme. Subsequent diplomatic efforts, and particularly the signing of the Abuja Agreement in September 2001 by the British and Zimbabwean governments, seemed to have the potential to break the impasse and to once again allow for the possibilities of CAs. The Abuja Agreement stressed that the land reform programme should be implemented within the laws and constitution of Zimbabwe, and it made provision for 300 000 hectares specifically for NGO involvement in land redistribution. Various NGOs along with the National Association of Nongovernmental Organisations (NANGO) held a consensus-building workshop in November 2001 to see how they could ‘exploit opportunities’ opened up by the Abuja Agreement, to ‘once again re-engage the government in the whole land reform process’, and thereby to contribute to the implementation of the agreement (CREATE 2001: 6, 10). At the time, CREATE suggested various forms of NGO involvement in land reform, including encouraging donor funding, providing emergency and relief infrastructure on resettlement farms, strengthening the organisational capacities of rural district councils and resettled communities, and engaging in proactive land and tenure research. CREATE reiterated that NGOs ‘possess’ capacities and resources that are ‘value adding’ to processes of rural change (CREATE 2002: 3). This involvement, however, would be conditional on the provision of an enabling environment by government and once again recognising NGOs as partners in the agrarian reform process. The NGO workshop also sought to rectify a serious weakness within the NGO community by developing a position paper on the land question so that a common stance, always lacking in the past, could be presented in NGO advocacy efforts internationally and locally. However, the Abuja Agreement was never implemented. At the 2001 workshop, CREATE had indicated that if the Zimbabwean government did not adhere to the agreement, then CREATE ‘will be unable to make any significant further contributions to land reform in Zimbabwe’ (CREATE 2001: 12). The ITDG noted that because of the failure to implement the agreement, ‘at the moment there is no alignment’ between state and civil society on the matter of land reform, and NGOs needed to find ways and means of collaborating more fruitfully with the state (CREATE 2001: 15). In the end, however, NGOs continued to be ‘on the fringes’ of land reform in Zimbabwe because (in part) they did not have ‘a clear strategy on

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how they could effectively participate’ in the reform process (CREATE 2002: 1). By then, NGOs had been left with little choice but to accept what ZERO describes as the ‘irreversibility’ of the fast-track programme despite its initial illegalities and glaring procedural weaknesses. Thus, according to ZERO, any meaningful engagement by NGOs on land reform would have to be done largely on the state’s terms and must recognise that the failure of the current land programme ‘will not benefit anyone’ (Marongwe 2002: 9). However, a few NGOs continued to adopt a more intransigent stance. Although this chapter is specifically about NGOs advocating around land, it is important to consider briefly the position of rural development NGOs vis-àvis the fast-track programme. Historically, these NGOs had worked within the communal areas, and less so on white commercial farms. Their portrait of the fast-track programme (which was largely negative) bore significant resemblances to the picture drawn by the urban advocacy NGOs. The land movement (starting in the year 2000) significantly disrupted the world and work of these development NGOs. In this regard, Palmer argued that ‘most NGOs had been slow to respond strategically’ to the events of 2000 and beyond, and they ‘were having to spend all their time trying to catch up’ (Palmer 2002: 6). Many development projects were suspended or put on hold, particularly during the first three years of the Third Chimurenga, and the emphasis in practice became humanitarian relief rather than sustainable development. Particularly problematic was the work of those NGOs operating on whiteowned farms. The Kunzwana Women’s Association (KWA), which was formed in 1995, had to ‘remobilise’ its programme after the sheer havoc caused by the fast-track programme.19 The FCTZ noted: ‘As an organisation we are concerned that the hard won gains achieved . . . may be compromised as a result of what has gone on’ (FCTZ 2001: 6). And the director of FOST highlighted that land reform had a ‘quite dramatic’ effect on its commercial farm-based field operations.20 There were ‘incidents where the staff of the organisation has, along with other NGOs working in the field, been accused of being part of the opposition politics’ (REPSSI 2002: 30). Plan International, working in communal areas, indicated that it was ‘not possible’ to plan agricultural interventions ‘in precise terms’ because of the fasttrack programme (Plan 2002: 10). World Vision came under scrutiny by the central state for supposed involvement in rural politics during election periods. In December 2001, a World Vision manager in Hurungwe, in the far north of

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the country, sought to counter this impression by arguing that ‘World Vision is a Christian development organisation. We have no other agenda but to work with the communities’ (World Vision 2002: 10). Likewise, Lutheran Development Services indicated that it is ‘much more difficult to organise meetings among communities and to make villagers participate in developmental activities’. Hence, ‘fear of political repression keeps people from actively taking part in public discussions and activities’ (LDS 2001: 6, 10). All rural development NGOs expressed similar sentiments and concerns. In Zimbabwe, in the years following the fast-track programme, politics and ideology ruled the roost with respect to state–NGO relations. Thus, with few exceptions, there was outright suspicion if not hostility between NGOs and government. For instance, many NGOs considered their internal conversations and affairs as strictly confidential because ‘the environment is too sensitive to release information’ that might be used against it.21 In 2005, the resident representative of a German-based NGO that has extensively funded land research in Zimbabwe described land reform as a ‘presidential preserve’. For this reason, he argued that publications on land reform financed by his own organisation (for example, Masiiwa 2004) were of ‘no use’ as an advocacy tool because of state intransigence.22 One NGO that continues to lobby the state, Women and Land in Zimbabwe (emerging out of the WLLG), was less critical than other NGOs of fast-track, and its director criticised the more ‘confrontational’ approach to government that has been adopted by urban NGOs since the year 2000.23 Donors also contributed to the politics of land in Zimbabwe, as well as to the positions on fast-track adopted not only by the development NGOs but, more importantly for this chapter, by advocacy NGOs. USAID, as a key international donor, stopped lobbying government on land because ‘the situation is not conducive to this’,24 and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) referred to influencing policy formation on land subsequent to fast-track as a ‘nonstarter’.25 Additionally, the major bilateral donors operating in Zimbabwe (such as USAID, the DFID and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency [SIDA]) refused to fund any programmes or projects on fast-track farms. In pursuing this line, USAID argued that the land policies of the Zimbabwean state were ‘anti-development’.26 Donors therefore warned NGOs not to step even one foot onto a fast-track farm. The development programme specialist for USAID in Zimbabwe noted that his agency was continuing to undertake forms of humanitarian assistance only, but exclusively in communal areas and among

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former farm workers who had been internally displaced because of fast-track. He added that working on fast-track farms ‘might be frowned upon as it involves legitimating the land reform programme’.27 Some NGOs (particularly those working on white commercial farms in the 1990s) sought to get around this by receiving donor support for what they defined as welfare work (and not agricultural support) on these farms. But, broadly speaking, while advocacy NGOs have roundly condemned fast-track, the development NGOs have taken a hands-off approach to fast-track farms. Chaumba et al. (2003) therefore note that NGOs have been ‘largely absent’ from the resettled farms: These spaces [or schemes] fall outside of the realm of NGOs working in the communal areas. This is partly for political reasons: NGOs tend to be identified by war veterans and ZANU(PF) supporters as ‘opposition’ who should keep out of resettlement areas . . . ; and partly because – notwithstanding the village committees – these new areas are yet to have a formally recognised administrative structure with which NGOs can engage (Chaumba et al. 2003: 604). However, the significance of donor pressures, and the NGOs’ own civic-rightsbased critique of fast-track, are also important in explaining this absence. Conclusion The epigram in the title of this chapter – ‘We give off a lot of heat but not a lot of light’ – is a self-critical statement made by an NGO activist about NGOs in Zimbabwe at the end-of-year ‘Civil Society Reflection’ organised by MWENGO in Harare in December 2004, which I attended. Effectively, the speaker was indicating that, despite all the talk and work of NGOs, nothing particularly illuminating or effective was forthcoming. Although the comment was not made specifically about land advocacy NGOs in Zimbabwe, it nevertheless has resonance for this chapter. In this context, it should be noted there was significant and sustained advocacy work around land by NGOs in the late 1990s – lots of ‘heat’, yes, but with some ‘light’ becoming apparent. Regrettably, in the Zimbabwe literature, the study of advocacy NGOs in the period under examination entails an exclusive focus on their quest for civil and political liberties in the face of authoritarian restructuring by the Zimbabwean state. No doubt advocacy NGOs became so engrossed in challenging the ruling party that land advocacy was regularly placed on the back

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burner. But advocacy did exist, and the abrupt and near-complete end of it cannot be understood solely in terms of any intrinsic internal weaknesses of the NGOs themselves – such as ineffective coordination, the absence of a clear land policy position, or inadequate donor support and funds. These problems may help explain a gradual decline in NGO advocacy but not the drastic reduction that in fact took place in the year 2000. Broader political conflicts at a national level, within which these NGOs became involved (and not intentionally in all cases), disabled the land advocacy work. It is also clear that the advocacy NGOs were in large part disconnected from rural peoples and their everyday lives and struggles, and that any support provided did not break with the market-led land reform programme. They did not misread Zimbabwean rurality, for they did not read it at all. Hence not only their ‘light’ but even their ‘heat’ dissipated outside the workshops, dialogues and conferences attended by them as well as by donors and state officials at times. Ultimately, some form and degree of rootedness in agrarian spaces would have been a source of organisational strength and inspiration for land advocacy NGOs. But the likelihood of this taking place in the conditions of the late 1990s was minuscule as that space was becoming characterised by another form of land advocacy: namely, mass mobilisation as manifested in the Third Chimurenga, which lit the countryside for years to come.

Notes 1. Notes from end-of-year ‘Civil Society Reflection’, MWENGO, Jamieson Hotel, Harare, 16 December 2004. 2. The NGOs referred to in most of these works include not only intermediary NGOs but also grassroots organisations. Often, the available literature does not clearly distinguish between civil society broadly and NGOs specifically. 3. Simultaneously, the Southern African Network on Land (SANL) existed. ZERO was also on the SANL steering committee, as was the National Land Committee (NLC) from South Africa. The NLC, although also on the original LRNSA steering committee, subsequently expressed concern about the formation of the LRNSA and did not attend the Harare meeting. 4. In 1999 the DFID commissioned studies to consider the possibilities of subregional networking on land issues in Africa. In the year 2000, the LRNSA was solely funded by the DFID. 5. Two other workshops/conferences focusing on the Rukuni Report and funded by FES also took place around this time, in November 1995 (involving the small-scale black farmers body the Zimbabwe Farmers Union) and in April 1996 (involving state ministries under the auspices of the Ministry of Lands and Water Resources).

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6. CREATE included over thirty groups, including international NGOs such as Care International and the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG), and local NGOs such as Manicaland Development Association and Silveira House. 7. ‘A Consultative Land Conference Statement by Working Group’ (draft), sent by fax from the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) to ZERO on 23 May 1997. ZERO land files. 8. Undated document titled ‘Project Proposal for a Workshop on the Land Tenure Commission Report’. ZERO land files. 9. Letter dated 7 May 1997 from Director of ZERO on behalf of steering committee to possible participants of NGO conference. ZERO land files. 10 . Document dated 11 March 1997 on NGO land conference, submitted by ZERO in collaboration with members of the NGO steering committee. ZERO land files. . Document dated 11 March 1997 on NGO land conference, submitted by ZERO in 11 collaboration with members of the NGO steering committee. ZERO land files. 12 . K. Kangai, Speech to be delivered to 1997 Consultative Land Conference. ZERO land files. . Document dated 11 March 1997 on NGO land conference, submitted by ZERO in 13 collaboration with members of the NGO steering committee. ZERO land files. 14 . Minutes of NGO Working Group on Land meeting held on 16 May 1997 at ZimRights offices. ZERO land files. 15 . All quotations in this paragraph are from GoZ (1998a). 16 . Interview conducted with L. Walker, Director, FOST, 3 November 2005. 17 . Discussion with T. Ncube, Information Officer, Save the Children-UK, 29 July 2005. 18 . Notes from end-of-year ‘Civil Society Reflection’, MWENGO, Jamieson Hotel, Harare, 16 December 2004. 19 . Interviews conducted with Mrs Mutara, KWA, 29 July and 10 November 2005. 20 . Interview conducted with L. Walker, Director, FOST, 3 November 2005. 21 . Interview conducted with F. McManus, Acting Programme/Country Director, GOAL Zimbabwe, 29 July 2005. 22 . Interview conducted with S. Schwerensky, Resident Representative, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 1 March 2005, Harare. 23 . Interview conducted with A. Mgugu, Women and Land in Zimbabwe, 16 March 2004. 24 . Interview conducted with M. Manda, Development Programme Specialist, USAID, 1 March 2005. 25 . Interview conducted with S. Landon, Head of Aid, CIDA, 22 February 2005. 26 . Interview conducted with M. Manda, Development Programme Specialist, USAID, 1 March 2005. 27 . Interview conducted with M. Manda, Development Programme Specialist, USAID, 1 March 2005.

References Auret, D. 2000. From Bus Stop to Farm Village: The Farm Worker Programme in Zimbabwe. Harare: Save the Children (UK).

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Bazaara, N. 2003. ‘Land Reforms in Tanzania and Zimbabwe: The Emerging Issues’. Land Research Paper Series. MWENGO, Harare. Borras, S.M., Jr. 2008. ‘Re-examining the “Agrarian Movement–NGO” Solidarity Relations Discourse’. Dialectical Anthropology 32(3): 203–9. Carroll, T. 1992. Intermediary NGOs: The Supporting Link in Grassroots Development. West Hartford: Kumarian Press. Chaumba, J., Scoones, I., and W. Wolmer. 2003. ‘New Politics, New Livelihoods: Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe’. Review of African Political Economy 30(98): 585–608. Chenaux-Repond, M. (ed.) 1996. Women Farmers’ Position: Our Response to the Report of the Land Tenure Commission. Harare: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Rudecon Zimbabwe. CREATE (Community-Based Resettlement Approaches and Technologies). 2001. ‘Report of a Workshop on NGO Consensus Building on Land Reform Following the Abuja Agreement’. Harare, 19 November. ———. 2002. ‘NGOs in the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme – Phase II: Defining the Space for NGO Participation’. August. FCTZ (Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe). 2001. ‘Annual Report 2000–2001’. Ghimire, K. 2001. ‘Regional Perspectives on Land Reform: Considering the Role of Civil Society Organizations’. In K. Ghimire (ed.), Whose Land? Civil Society Perspectives on Land Reform and Rural Poverty Reduction. Rome: Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty/UNRISD. GoZ (Government of Zimbabwe). 1998a. ‘Land Reform and Resettlement Programme Phase II: A Policy Framework and Project Document’. September. ———. 1998b. ‘Inception Phase Framework Plan, 1999 to 2000: An Implementation Plan of the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme – Phase 2’. Prepared by the Technical Committee of the Inter-ministerial Committee on Resettlement and Rural Development and the National Economic Consultative Forum Land Reform Task Force. ———. 1999. ‘Implementation Framework and Procedural Guidelines for NGO and Private Stakeholder Participation in the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme II: Inception Phase’. Draft, 31 August. Greenberg, S. 2004. ‘National Liberation, Land Reform and Civil Society in Southern Africa’. In M. Saruchera (ed.), Securing Land and Resource Rights in Africa: Pan-African Perspectives. Cape Town: PLAAS, University of the Western Cape. Hakiardhi. 1997. ‘Report on Hakiardhi/Larri Consultative Conference of NGOs and Interested Persons on Land Tenure Reform’ (written by Robin Palmer). Dar es Salaam, 15–16 May. Helliker, K. 1997. ‘Marx, Weber and NGOs’. South African Review of Sociology 38(2): 120–33. Helliker, K., and Murisa, T. (eds). 2013. Land Struggles and Civil Society in Southern Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Hivos. 1989. ‘Rural Transformation, Social Movements and Non-governmental Organisations: Limitations and Possibilities of NGOs in Southern Africa’. Report of the Workshop on NGOs in Transition in Southern Africa, Kadoma, Zimbabwe, 8–10 November. Kanji, N., Braga, C., and Mitullah, W. 2002. Promoting Land Rights in Africa: How Do NGOs Make a Difference? London: IIED. Kibamba, D., and Johnson, M. 2003. ‘Governance and Civil Society Interventions in Land Reform Processes in Tanzania’. Land Research Paper Series. MWENGO, Harare.

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LDS (Lutheran Development Services). 2001. ‘Zimbabwe Country Strategy Outline, 2002– 2006’. Zimbabwe Lutheran Development Services. December. LRNSA (Land Rights Network of Southern Africa). 2000. ‘Networking on Land Issues in Southern Africa: Operationalising the Land Rights Network of Southern Africa’. Summary report of the Interim Steering Committee Meeting, Harare, 16–17 October. http://mokoro. co.uk/land-rights-article/networking-on-land-issues-in-southern-africa-operationalisingthe-land-rights-network-of-southern-africa/ (accessed 2 September 2016). Makombe, K. (ed.). 2001. NGO Action on Land: Reflections from East and Southern Africa. Harare: MWENGO. Mannan, M. 2001. ‘South Asia’s Experience in Land Reform: NGOs, the State and Donors’. In K. Ghimire (ed.), Whose Land? Civil Society Perspectives on Land Reform and Rural Poverty Reduction. Rome: Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty/UNRISD. Marongwe, N. 2002. Conflicts over Land and Other Natural Resources in Zimbabwe. Harare: ZERO. ———. 2003. ‘Policy Making and Governance in Zimbabwe: Implications for Civil Society Interventions in the Area of Land’. Land Research Paper Series. MWENGO, Harare. Masiiwa, M. (ed.). 2004. Post-independence Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Controversies and Impact on the Economy. Harare: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Institute of Development Studies, University of Zimbabwe. Matowanyika, J., and Marongwe, N. 1998. ‘Land and Sustainable Development in Southern Africa: An Exploration of Some Emerging Issues’. Sustainable Land Management Working/ Discussion Paper Series No. 1. ZERO, Harare. MNCS (Malawi National Civil Society). 2002. ‘Report on the Malawi National Civil Society Conference on Land Reform Policy and Land Law Formulation Process’. Blantyre, Malawi, 20–22 March. Moyo, S. 1999a. Land and Democracy in Zimbabwe. Monograph Series No. 7. Harare: SAPES Trust. ———. 1999b. ‘A Critical Review of NGO Action on Land in Southern Africa’. Paper presented to Subregional Reflection Forum: NGO Action on Land in Southern Africa, Windhoek, 15–18 November. ———. 2000a. ‘The Political Economy of Land Acquisition and Redistribution in Zimbabwe, 1990–1999’. Journal of Southern African Studies 26(1): 5–28. ———. 2000b. ‘A Research Proposal for Monitoring the Inception Phase of the Second Phase of the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme in Zimbabwe’. Draft, Zimbabwe Land Reform Research Network. January. ———. 2000c. ‘Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Key Processes and Issues’. Unpublished paper, August. ———. 2001. ‘The Land Occupation Movement and Democratisation in Zimbabwe: Contradictions of Neoliberalism’. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 30(2): 311– 30. ———. 2004. ‘African Land Questions, the State and Agrarian Transition: Contradictions of Neoliberal Land Reforms’. Paper presented at CODESRIA Conferences on Land Reform, the Agrarian Question and Nationalism in Gaborone (18–19 October) and Dakar (8–11 December). www.sarpn.otg.za/documents/d0000692/index.php (accessed 2 September 2016).

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Moyo, S., Rutherford, B., and Amanor-Wilks, D. 2000. ‘Land Reform and Changing Social Relations for Farm Workers in Zimbabwe’. Review of African Political Economy 27(84): 181–202. Mozder, M., and Ghimire, K. 2001. ‘An Overview of Agrarian Reforms and Peasant Organizations in Central America’. In K. Ghimire (ed.), Whose Land? Civil Society Perspectives on Land Reform and Rural Poverty Reduction. Rome: Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty/UNRISD. Mutepfa, F., et al. (eds). 1998. ‘Setting the Basis for Dialogue on Land in Zimbabwe: Report of the NGO Consultative Land Conference, Harare, Zimbabwe, 27–28 May 1997’. Harare: ZWRCN and ZERO. Mutepfa, F., and Cohen, T. (eds). 2000. ‘Reflections on the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme – Phase 2: Suggestions by the ELF-NGO Land Working Group’. Environmental Liaison Forum and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Harare. MWENGO (Mwelekeo Wa NGO). 1999. ‘Sub-regional Reflection Forum: NGO Action on Land in Southern Africa’. Workshop report, Windhoek, 15–18 November. ———. 2000. Consolidating Impact. Harare: MWENGO. Odhiambo, M. 2002. ‘Advocating for Land Policy Reforms in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania: NGO Lessons and Prospects’. Paper presented at the Second Workshop of the Pan-African Programme on Land and Resource Rights, Lagos, July. ———. 2004. ‘NGO Advocacy for Land Policy Reforms in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania: Lessons and Prospects’. In Pan-African Programme on Land and Resource Rights (ed.), Securing Land and Resource Rights in Africa: Pan-African Perspectives. Cape Town: PLAAS, University of the Western Cape. Palmer, R. 2002. ‘Zimbabwe in 2001: The Land Question, Farm Workers, and the September Conference Season’. http://mokoro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/zimbabwe_2001_land_qn. pdf/ (accessed 2 September 2016). Plan International. 2002. ‘Annual Report 2002’. Pollard, A., and Court, J. 2005. ‘How Civil Society Organisations Use Evidence to Influence Policy Processes: A Literature Review’. Working Paper 249. Overseas Development Institute, London. Raftopoulos, B. 2000. ‘Civil Society, Governance and Human Development in Zimbabwe’. Paper presented for the Zimbabwe Human Development Report. Harare. REPSSI (Regional Psycho-Social Support Initiative). 2002. ‘A Situational Analysis of the Activities of Farm Orphan Support Trust of Zimbabwe’. Harare: REPSSI. SANL (Southern African Network on Land). 2000. ‘Southern African Network on Land (SANL): Report II’. Think Tank. 2003. ‘Seeking Ways Out of the Impasse on Land Reform in Southern Africa: Notes from an Informal “Think Tank” Meeting’. Pretoria, 1–2 March. http://mokoro. co.uk/wp-content/uploads/seeking_ways_our_of_impasse_on_land_reform.pdf (accessed 2 September 2016). World Vision. 2002. ‘World Vision Zimbabwe News’. March. ZERO (Zimbamwe Regional Environment Organisation). 2000. ‘Annual Report 2000’. ZWRCN (Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network). 1999. Woman Plus 4(3) September–December. ———. 2000. Woman Plus 5(2) May–August.

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CHAPTER 5

Exploring the Relationship Between Service Delivery and Advocacy The Case of GADRA Education Ashley Westaway

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rofessionals and activists within the NGO sector frequently debate the relationship between service delivery (providing welfare) and advocacy (pressing for structural social change). Most often, they understand this as to be an ‘either-or’ debate and decision. That is, either an NGO chooses to deliver services (in which case it is referred to as ‘welfarist’) or it opts to advocate for structural change. Meanwhile, those outside the sector, especially in academia, cast aspersions on the sector’s capacity to play any meaningful role in bringing about structural societal change, arguing that it is fundamentally implicated in prevailing power configurations, both as a participant and as a beneficiary. This chapter speaks to these debates by presenting a case study of GADRA Education in general and its Matric School in particular. It should be clarified at the outset that the chapter does not seek to pronounce definitively on the NGO sector. It merely presents a narrative that raises interesting questions and suggests certain possibilities. Two contextual snapshots of the South African education landscape are provided, one from the early 1990s and the other from twenty years later. Linked to these contextual descriptions are commentaries on the ways in which the organisation responded on the two occasions. The chapter closes with a critical reflection on recent advocacy interventions made by GADRA Education. Snapshot 1: The early 1990s The education context – South Africa and Grahamstown The Grahamstown Area Distress Relief Association (GADRA) was founded during the 1950s. This was a tumultuous decade for South Africa because it saw the foundations of apartheid being put into place. One of these foundation stones was Bantu Education. The Bantu Education Act, promulgated in 1953, created

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dedicated capacity for establishing institutionalised education for black people, in the interests of apartheid ideology and practice. Specifically, the Department of Bantu Affairs sought to design a curriculum, set up the infrastructure and deliver the resources necessary to form and mould black Africans such that they were prepared to perform the economic role required of them in terms of apartheid ideology. In essence, cheap but effective black African labour was required by white capital, and Bantu Education was a key delivery mechanism in this regard. Thus the saying most associated with Bantu Education is that it aimed to reduce black people to ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’. This relates directly to a key point about Bantu Education: it was fundamental to apartheid and was therefore delivered (imposed) on a significant scale. In the nostalgia often associated with the precursor of Bantu Education – namely, missionary education – commentators sometimes forget that the latter was a relatively modest undertaking and therefore correctly described as elitist. Bantu Education was the opposite: ambitious and broad-based. By 1980, as many as onethird of all black South African teenagers attended secondary school. The number of learners who wrote the school-leaving examinations rose from under 1 000 in 1960 to 774 000 in 1980 (Gibbs 2014: 70). However, the roll-out of Bantu Education was underfunded and ill-planned; Gibbs thus refers to the ‘disastrous expansion of secondary schooling’ in the Eastern Cape (2014: 73). The 1980s saw greater investment in black education, with the spending gap between white and black narrowing from 1:10 in 1980 to nearly 1:5 in 1990 (R2 800 per white child compared to R600 per black child) (GADRA Education 1991: 3). Broadly speaking, Bantu Education effectively reached the black working class. By 1991, 70 per cent of black workers had received some form of education, with 31 per cent having progressed to secondary school (GADRA Education 1993: 7). Secondary schooling in Grahamstown massified from the late 1970s. Up until then, the only high school in Grahamstown for black Africans was Nathaniel Nyaluza Secondary School, which had been established in 1938 as the first black public high school in the then Cape Province. Shortly thereafter, the education faculty of the then Rhodes University College (RUC) established the RUC Coloured Practising School (now Mary Waters High School). This school was formed both as a site for teaching practice for Rhodes student-teachers, and to offer Junior Certificate courses to coloured learners. Control over and responsibility for the school transferred from Rhodes to the apartheid state in 1955. (The school’s present buildings opened in 1963.) Two additional high schools, Ntsika and

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Nombulelo secondary schools, were founded in 1978 and 1983 respectively. The Benjamin Mahlasela and Khutliso Daniels high schools were opened in the early 1990s (GADRA Education 1992: 6), both as ‘platoon schools’. This term refers to a common practice of the time in which two separate sets of teachers and learners used the same school building at different times of the day, typically the morning and the afternoon. The building of many new schools in the post-1994 period has seen the practice dying out. In the 1970s and especially the 1980s, black secondary schools throughout the country were contested and conflicted. This is hardly surprising given that Bantu Education was foundational in relation to apartheid ideology and practice. In 1975, a year before the famous Soweto uprising, schooling at Nathaniel Nyaluza ground to a halt. The key moment came in May, when students were approaching their mid-year examinations and the departmental textbooks due in January still had not arrived. The student body listed their various complaints, which included lack of textbooks and other resources, overcrowded classes and inappropriate staff behaviour. This list was delivered to the principal. By the end of that day, the entire staff had left the school. Not one teacher returned, and the school was closed down. Shortly thereafter, a military presence (including Casspirs) was set up round the school. Whereas this was necessarily an isolated incident in Grahamstown (given that Nyaluza was the only black high school), by the mid-1980s, after the opening of Ntsika and Nombulelo, protest action in schooling took on a more organised and systemic complexion. By this time, slogans such as ‘Liberation first, education later’ and ‘People’s education for people’s power’ had found their way into the consciousness of a generation of school learners. Grahamstown secondary schools were frequently disrupted during the 1980s, sometimes for protracted periods. For example, in 1989 the local secondary schools closed for five months from June. Not surprisingly, the matric results of that year were poor, with Nombulelo obtaining a 50 per cent pass rate and Nyaluza managing only 22 per cent. (Ntsika offered matric for the first time only in 1991.) Of the approximately 300 students who sat their final examinations, 98 passed, with only 14 of these obtaining matric exemptions (i.e., the level of pass required for university entrance). GADRA Education’s analysis and response GADRA Education was chaired from 1976 until 2007 by Thelma Henderson, wife of the then Rhodes University vice chancellor Derek Henderson and formidable social activist in her own right. During her tenure she presided over

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the organisation much like a doyenne or matriarch. One need look no further for the ‘organisational line’ than in the annual reports of the time, since these were drafted by Henderson. She consistently maintained that black schooling was in crisis, and that the two underlying reasons for this were a lack of money and political ideology. She reported on racially determined funding inequalities and railed against apartheid prerogatives – ‘a preoccupation with separateness taken to the extreme of duplicating, triplicating and quadrupling each and every education structure’ (GADRA Education 1992: 4). She therefore welcomed the tendency towards less inequality but emphasised the massive apartheid backlogs (especially underqualified teachers and poorly equipped schools), and she looked forward to the demise of apartheid and the pending move towards an integrated education system (GADRA Education 1991: 15). In terms of positioning GADRA Education, Henderson’s approach was multidimensional. She sought to balance service provision and advocacy. She wrote as follows in the 1990–1991 annual report: ‘I have no doubt that the [education] committee will continue to seek out ways and means of plugging the gaps to provide services not given by the DET [Department of Education and Training], to find ways to help the poor and distressed to educate their children and to press for institutional and political change as a result of which education will fall under one ministry and be available to all, irrespective of race, colour and creed’ (GADRA Education 1991: 15). In contemporary terms, the three strategies outlined by Henderson fall under the two clusters of service provision and advocacy. It is interesting to note that Henderson recognised that the former is inherently welfarist: she described it as an exercise in ‘plugging the gaps’ left by the apartheid state. Henderson would certainly have been aware that GADRA Education had limited capacity in this regard; that for every young person in Grahamstown who was recovered, there would be 50 that would fall through the cracks. The early 1990s was a dynamic period for GADRA Education as far as service provision was concerned. The organisation was both innovative and pragmatic. It was innovative in that it looked for ways to supplement the teaching and learning programmes provided in schools. For example, it offered both winter and Saturday schools. These were precursors to the GADRA Matric School. In this regard, specific reference should be made to the Grahamstown Tertiary Education Bridging Programme (GRATEBP). GRATEBP was established by the NGO Masifunde in 1991, with the aim of supporting post-matric students in their endeavour to proceed to university through supplementary teaching and learning

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programmes, among other things. Despite networking broadly and even enlisting the support of the Rhodes University Outreach Programme, GRATEBP failed to get off the ground. One of the organisations that was drawn into these discussions and processes was GADRA Education. By 1993, it had developed the concept of the Matric School and had even secured premises for the undertaking. The school opened its doors in 1994. Pragmatism has been one of the strengths of GADRA Education over the decades. The organisation has been sufficiently informed to offer practical solutions to problems experienced locally. For example, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, aspirant matriculants were required to pay examination fees. The organisation was sufficiently in touch with township socio-economic realities to know that this requirement effectively excluded many poor learners from registering for the examinations. It therefore stepped in to cover these costs. (Details in this regard are provided in GADRA’s annual reports of the early 1990s.) Similarly, GADRA recognised that the schools did not have operational budgets and therefore could not undertake maintenance let alone incur discretionary expenditure. Thus GADRA Education offered a desk-repair service and provided resources for schools to undertake educational visits and excursions (GADRA Education 1992: 12, 13). Given the analytic focus of GADRA Education on critiquing resource inequalities and apartheid segregation, it is not surprising that the organisation advocated for equality and integration. The overall advocacy strategy invoked at that time was lobbying rather than mass mobilisation or litigation. With regard to resource equality, specifically in the allocation of public resources to black and white schools, GADRA Education (in the person of Henderson) directly urged officials in the Department of Education and Training to address particular and immediate problems at specific township schools. This effort had considerable impact. For example, in 1990 Henderson leveraged R95 000 for Archie Mbolekwa Senior Primary School for repairs and maintenance (GADRA Education 1991: 2). (In today’s terms, this amount would be more than R2 million. Considering that township schools today are expected to operate on annual budgets of R250 000, one can appreciate the significance of this accomplishment.) Indeed, when President Thabo Mbeki bestowed the ‘Order of the Baobab in Bronze’ on Henderson in 2002, one of the accomplishments mentioned in her citation was that she had raised over R6 million for township education.1 The record indicates that most of this money was leveraged from the apartheid state in the period circa 1980 to 1994, through a commitment to lobbying for the equalisation of public resource allocations in the education sector.

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In order for Henderson to have attained this level of success, there were at least two necessary conditions: access to government, and the trust of the management and leadership of township schools. The former related directly to Henderson’s personal politics (which was, by extension, the politics of GADRA Education at the time.) She was a member of the federal executive of the Progressive Federal Party (PFP), a forerunner to the current Democratic Alliance. She was an active political campaigner, standing twice for public office in Johannesburg and managing two parliamentary campaigns in Grahamstown, the second of which saw the PFP candidate taking the constituency from the National Party.2 As such, Thelma Henderson can be described as an old-school liberal. She believed in the market economy, equal opportunity and human rights. Beyond her politics, she was imbued with a feisty, tenacious and dogged spirit. I have frequently heard people who knew her refer to her as a ‘formidable’ woman. Her politics and character combined to produce an activist who was in her element confronting and taking on white bureaucrats and politicians from the moral high ground. She felt a sense of responsibility as well as agency in relation to the white state. However, what really set Henderson apart from most white liberals of the time was that she was seemingly equally at home in Joza (the name of the largest portion of Grahamstown’s township) as she was in Oatlands (a plush suburb on the western, historically white side of town). This seems to have been the key reason for Henderson having been uniformly trusted in the Joza education community. To relate an anecdote in this regard: When I studied at Rhodes University in the late 1980s and early 1990s (precisely the period under review here), I was not alone in stereotyping and dismissing the Hendersons as ‘conservative liberals’. Shortly after completing GADRA Education’s strategic plan for 2012–2015, in February/March 2012, I visited Grahamstown’s high school principals to present the organisation’s ‘new thinking’, which involved intervention in public sector education. I was completely taken aback when one of the Joza principals responded by asserting that I was taking GADRA Education back to the ‘Henderson way’. Since then, every comment and reflection on Henderson that I have heard from local black citizens has been positive. Mention has been made of Henderson’s public critiques of segregated education. As the country edged closer to 1994, the system shifted away from racialised segregation towards deracialisation. (In my view, to label the latter ‘integration’ would be incorrect.) Among other things, former whites-only schools were given the option to reconstitute themselves as ‘Model C’ schools. The two key features of

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these schools are that their learner bodies are deracialised and that elected school governing bodies (SGBs) play a significant role in determining school policy and overseeing its implementation. One of the policy areas within the ambit of SGBs is the determination of school fees. Henderson was a highly respected educationist at the time, receiving accolades from bodies such as the Teachers’ Association of South Africa. Consequently, she was highly sought after as a guest speaker, adviser and commentator. Her advice to the whites-only schools was unambiguous: adopt Model C! Henderson saw the relationship between the Model C structure, fees and privatisation from the beginning. The privatisation of education entailed in Model C was ‘a good thing’ (GADRA Education 1994: 41). Furthermore, she was an early influence on all three of the city’s independent secondary schools (St Andrew’s College, the Diocesan School for Girls and Kingswood College) to open their doors to all races, and she advocated that this be achieved with bursary funding where necessary. Commentary The advent of democracy in 1994 and its aftermath delivered the changes that GADRA Education had advocated over the previous decade. More specifically, resource allocations to learners were equalised and the education system and its structures were deracialised. Instead of duplicated structures, there was now a unified Department of Education. But, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this chapter to detail, these changes did little to improve the quality of education offered to poor black children. That is, the unleashing of market forces into the education sector and the deracialisation of the system did not bring about the consequences that Henderson thought were likely, if not inevitable. Moreover, for a variety of reasons – Henderson’s political views and the extent to which these dominated the organisation, her inability to exchange as effectively with the majority government as she had with the apartheid regime, the lack of instruments within the organisation to analyse the context and plan strategically, and so on – GADRA Education was unable to reposition itself effectively in the 1990s and 2000s. The inevitable upshot of this was that the organisation incrementally and quietly abandoned advocacy, and focused more and more exclusively on service delivery. There are a couple of qualifying remarks that should be made here. First, I am not suggesting that Henderson was an apartheid apologist; nor am I denying that she had personal relationships with numerous prominent ANC leaders of the time, including Govan Mbeki and Nosimo Balindlela. Second, GADRA Education

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was not alone in the NGO sector in struggling to adapt to the changed political context of the mid-1990s. In fact, many NGOs failed in this regard to the extent that they were forced to close their doors during the course of that decade. As Henderson’s health waned in the mid-2000s, and particularly after she retired as chairperson in 2007, there was something of an ideological void in GADRA Education. Cynicism and public indifference thrived in this void. A dominant discourse in the organisation that I joined in 2011 was that the only solution for the poor was to save the lucky few from township schools and insert them into semi- or fully privatised schools. Snapshot 2: 2010 The education context – South Africa and Grahamstown The education context in South Africa around 2010 was at once very different from that of twenty years earlier and also very similar to it. The massification of black education that had started during Bantu Education gathered unprecedented pace after 1994, fuelled by South Africa’s new Constitution, which declared that ‘Everyone has the right to a basic education’ (section 29). The determination to extend the right to education to all children required significant increases in the allocation of state resources to the sector. Many new schools were built, enabling average class sizes to drop significantly (from over 40 learners per class down to just over 30). By 2010, this had resulted in a situation where there was almost universal access to schooling in the country. In fact, the 2007 General Household Survey indicated that that 96.5 per cent of the seven- to seventeen-year-old age group attended school at that time; the percentage of those aged seven to fourteen attending school was as high as 98 (Pendlebury 2008: 25). Whereas almost all children attended school by 2010, the vast majority were learning or understanding very little. This reality – referred to by Wally Morrow (2007) as the absence of ‘epistemological access’ to education – is reflected in all significant available data sets. For example, South Africa performs very poorly in international studies assessing numeracy and literacy competence,3 and data generated through domestic examination processes (principally the Grade 12 matric examinations and the annual national assessments [ANAs]) indicate generally weak and highly differentiated educational performance across the system. More specifically, only about 20 per cent of South African public schools produce acceptable educational outcomes. This 20 per cent is made up of former Model C schools (10 per cent) and exceptional township schools (the other 10 per

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cent). That is, only about one in nine township schools actually delivers its stated educational purpose. Grahamstown provides a stark illustration of the fissures and inequalities that characterise the South African education system. For the purposes of this chapter, the focus is solely on the high school level. There are three former Model C secondary schools in Grahamstown and six former township secondary schools. The former have morphed into fee-paying schools, while the latter have all been declared no-fee-paying schools. Not surprisingly, all the fee-paying schools produce good educational outcomes and all the no-fee schools produce poor educational outcomes. Grahamstown’s three fee-paying secondary schools (Victoria Girls’ High School, Graeme College and P.J. Olivier High School) together produced a matric pass rate of 97 per cent in 2013; even more impressively, 78 per cent of their 162 candidates achieved bachelor’s-level passes (meaning that the candidates qualify to register to study towards a university degree). By contrast, the city’s six no-fee high schools (Mary Waters, Nathaniel Nyaluza, T.E.M. Mrwetyana, Nombulelo, Khutliso Daniels and Ntsika) together managed a matric pass rate of only 49 per cent in 2013; moreover, a mere 11 per cent of the 526 candidates who wrote the matric exams obtained bachelor’s-level passes. That is, a total of only 60 matric students from all these no-fee schools qualified to go to university in 2014 (Westaway 2014). Ken Ngcoza, GADRA Education’s current chairperson, often remarks that in the post-1994 era racial apartheid has been replaced by class apartheid. The reality is that over 90 per cent of the operational budgets of fee-paying schools are earned through fee collections. Without this source of income (obviously drawn from families with financial means), these schools would not be able to deliver the quality of education that they do. By contrast, the no-fee schools do not have the financial resources required to mitigate the weaknesses of the public education system. Thus the realities that prevail at these two types of school bear very little resemblance to one another. Consequently, the only way to get a good public schooling in Grahamstown is to pay for it. If one pays nothing, one gets nothing. Ngcoza’s insight is a crucially important perspective, and rather ironic given his predecessor Henderson’s faith that the process of privatisation in education would bring about positive change. Jonny Steinberg (2014) argues that the introduction of the Model C/fee-paying school option undermined the possibility of the advancement of township schools because it entailed the removal of ‘voice’ (those with means).

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GADRA Education’s analysis and response When I was interviewed for the position of manager at GADRA Education in August 2011, I made it clear that if appointed, I would not sustain the ‘welfarist turn’ of the organisation, but instead would seek to reinvigorate its interest in public advocacy. I thus regarded my subsequent appointment as authorisation to transform the organisation accordingly. (It should also be noted that I have been strongly supported by GADRA governance structures in giving effect to this mandate.) My attempt to give substance to this transformation was channelled through a situation-analysis and strategic-planning process carried out from December 2011 to February 2012. The situation analysis was undertaken on the basis of a literature review. GADRA Education accepted the consensus academic analysis of South African schooling – namely, that it is in a state of crisis and characterised by a bimodal structure in which the vast majority of the schools are educationally dysfunctional. As far as high school education is concerned, the analysis asserts that the main reasons for the unacceptable educational outcomes are poor classroom teaching and a lack of school management. These problems persist because of a general lack of accountability, rooted in the disorganisation of parents and the hegemonic power wielded by government employees (teachers and bureaucrats). In the light of this analysis, the strategic planning document concludes that an enhancement of accountability is the most obvious and important way to end the crisis. Principals and parents were identified as key constituencies in this regard (GADRA Education 2012a). As far as overall strategic positioning is concerned, the document characterises GADRA Education as a civil society organisation, and thus commits it to working ‘amongst and in the interests of the citizenry’ – that is ‘the entire population of Grahamstown’. A combination of this understanding of GADRA’s role and the general situation analysis resulted in the following statement of organisational purpose: ‘Given that education is essentially a government/public responsibility, the main raison d’être for GADRA Education is to mobilise the community of Grahamstown to demand effective educational services from government.’ In other words, the strategic plan typecasts the organisation as an advocacy organisation first and foremost. This constituted a massive shift from how GADRA was positioned around 2010. However, the strategic plan did not abandon the organisation’s service delivery role. On the contrary, it argued that ‘carefully conceptualised services . . . can add tremendous value to advocacy work’. It elaborated as follows: ‘The reason for

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this is clear: if an organisation is involved in practical [service provision] work, it has insider, experiential knowledge, which places it in a strong position to conceptualise and implement effective advocacy work. This work is particularly useful when it is innovative or involves the piloting of ideas or methods’ (GADRA Education 2012a: 17). For the purposes of this chapter, the most significant service currently delivered by GADRA Education is the GADRA Matric School (GMS). As explained above, the school was opened by Thelma Henderson in 1994. Over the next twenty years, it grew steadily in terms of both student numbers and subject offerings. In 2014, the school registered approximately 140 students and taught eleven subjects. It has built up a solid track record of educational performance, in relation to both pass rates and top-end performance. With regard to the latter, in 2013 GADRA Education asked the GMS to work to become Rhodes University’s most significant feeder school by 2017. The school responded to this challenge by enhancing its admission systems (to identify all students with demonstrable potential to obtain bachelor’s-level passes) and bolstering its enrichment programmes. These innovations have yielded immediate results. The class of 2015 produced a record 100 bachelor’s-level passes (30 more than the previous best tally of 70, achieved in 2014), and as a consequence the GMS also became the largest feeder school to Rhodes University. In the Grahamstown context, the GMS produces the majority of the local black working-class bachelor’s-level passes. That is, it produces a similar number as Mary Waters, Nathaniel Nyaluza, Nombulelo, T.E.M. Mrwetyana, Khutliso Daniels and Ntsika combined. Details for the last three years in this regard are tabulated below. Number of bachelor’s-level passes

2015 2014 2013 Total

GMS

100

Public township schools combined   57

70

52

222

51

60

168

These statistics arguably make GMS the most important educational institution in Grahamstown for black working-class youth. It is also relevant to comment briefly on a second organisational service – that of tertiary bursaries. The bursary programme is GADRA’s oldest, having originated in the 1960s. The organisation reconfigured the programme substantially in 2012/13. The most significant changes introduced were that eligibility was limited

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to local Rhodes-registered students, voluntary community engagement was institutionalised in the programme, and the amount of contact and support from the office was increased. In other words, instead of the programme continuing as a mechanism to dispense limited financial resources to local students studying around the country, it was transformed into an instrument through which to nurture and influence successful local working-class students registered to study at Rhodes. In this sense, there is a clear advocacy agenda that underpins the service redesign: use the programme to grow a vanguard of local students, earmarked to play a lead role in the envisaged social movement. For a variety of reasons, including the effectiveness of its services such as GMS, the credibility of GADRA Education has grown in the recent period, in the city of Grahamstown generally and among the local education community specifically. This can be gauged through a number of indicators, such as the frequency of press coverage enjoyed by the organisation in the local newspaper, Grocott’s Mail. Here the interest is in its credibility among the education community, specifically the principals of schools in the Grahamstown district. In this regard, it is relevant to note that many of these principals benefited directly and personally from GADRA bursaries while they were at school, training college or university. In early 2012, the organisation was invited to convene a High School Principals’ Forum. The Forum adopted a constitution in April of that year and has met regularly since then. Attendance at the meetings has varied, but there is a core of principals, from both town and township, that attend consistently. The purpose of the Forum is laid out in the constitution as follows: The Grahamstown High School Principals’ Forum aims to strengthen the public schooling system in Grahamstown by: • jointly taking up key issues with the relevant authorities and stakeholders, and • offering fellow Principals advice and support in dealing with matters of concern. (GADRA Education 2012b) The principals have, on more than one occasion, expressed their appreciation of the Forum for providing them with collegial support. This point was picked up and elaborated upon by Hennie van der Mescht in a recent external evaluation of GADRA Education. An extract from that document follows:

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The introduction of the High School Principals’ Forum seems to have been an unqualified success. As is the case with most of GADRA’s interventions, this one also needs to be seen in context. Briefly, the context is a challenging one, chiefly because of the perceived differences between ‘township’ schools and ‘ex-model C’ schools. As discussed earlier, the former achieve poor Grade 12 results, have limited resources, are under-staffed and claim to receive little support from the DoE. The latter achieve excellent examination results, are relatively stable financially, are fully staffed since they can employ additional teachers from school funds, and frankly do not need the support of the DoE. To launch an initiative in an environment fraught with such potential tensions is a bold step indeed. The fact that RU [Rhodes University] – in the person of the Vice-Chancellor – had in fact tried to start a principals’ forum some years ago, and failed, shows just how big the challenge is! By contrast, the GADRA Education High School Principals’ Forum seems to have been an unqualified success. Warren Schmidt [principal of Victoria Girls’ High School] . . . thinks it is ‘one of the best things’ he’s ever been part of. It is a place where principals meet on an equal footing and try to solve practical problems together. It is a place for sharing. I sense a playing out of a social justice agenda in this project, since the ‘differences’ outlined in the previous paragraph are not ignored or played down. Principals speak into the spaces created by these differences; for example, principals who understand how an official staff establishment can have a beneficial impact on actual staff appointments are able – and above all willing – to share this with others. This is a tacit form of recognition of widely differing access to information, experience and expertise and an active form of doing something about this without patronizing or seeming to be giving handouts (Van der Mescht 2014: 40). As far as taking up issues jointly is concerned, the Forum has been less effective to date. The particular matter that has received the most attention in Forum meetings is governmental post provisioning. (Government determines the number of teaching and other posts at each public school on an annual basis, using the so-called Morkel model.) In late 2013, the Forum resolved to engage the district office of the Department of Basic Education. An unsuccessful meeting took place in early 2014, and the Forum has been unable to make headway since then. The

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local association of principals has not had the authority or gravitas necessary to confront or overturn national policy. From GADRA Education’s perspective, an important consequence of having successfully convened the Forum is that participating principals have developed confidence in the organisation. The principals trust GADRA Education, to the extent that some of them (Radio Mcuba at Khutliso Daniels, Zak Tyala at Nathaniel Nyaluza and Wendy Mfazwe at Velile) have allowed the organisation into their schools to run Grade 12 parent engagement sessions. The focus of these sessions has been on parental responsibilities in the home (relating to education). In 2015 this work expanded further, into Ntsika and Mary Waters, while in 2016 a mentoring programme was rolled out in these two schools, covering all 230 Grade 12 learners. At this stage of the advocacy process it would be premature to assert its success. (In fact, for as long as the city’s townships schools continue to produce unacceptable educational results, such an assertion would be misleading.) The point of this section of the chapter is merely to show that the organisation’s forays into public schooling at high school level have been contingent upon GADRA’s credibility as an education service provider. Commentary The analysis presented and the strategic choices made by GADRA Education in February 2012 were clear and unambiguous, yet a perusal of organisational reports (narrative and financial) indicates that the delivery of services has commanded the lion’s share of GADRA’s energy and resources over the past three years. Advocacy reflects as something of an ‘add-on’. There are a number of reasons for this, such as fund-raising constraints and prerogatives, human resource realities and organisational inertia. Over the past three years, the organisation has only once been able to raise funding for advocacy work. Human resource realities refer to the fact that existing staff are employed for clearly specified reasons. For example, GMS teachers are employed to teach at GMS, the finance manager is employed to manage organisational finances, and so on. Because existing staff are fully occupied by their respective purposes, the only way to resource advocacy interventions properly would be by hiring additional staff. Financial constraints have precluded this option to date. Organisational inertia refers to the difficulty of shifting the course of an established organisation.

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For these reasons, it is not surprising that GADRA Education’s recent advocacy interventions have been modest and fairly blunt. Because the public schooling crisis is complicated and deep-rooted, if one seriously seeks to address it or end it, then one needs at the very least a sophisticated and substantial intervention. GADRA’s interventions with principals and parents have been limited to infrequent meetings. Also, the organisation’s assertion that building the agency of these groupings will necessarily result in better classroom accountability is naive because it denies the reality that they too (like teachers and bureaucrats) are implicated in educational power configurations. Principals are well-paid state employees, and parents benefit directly through exemption from paying fees and buying uniforms and indirectly through school feeding schemes. This curtails their respective agency and potential to bring about positive change. Thus GADRA’s interventions have not produced any significant outcomes. The tertiary bursary programme (which is both a service delivery and an advocacy intervention) is more sophisticated and substantial. The interaction with bursary recipients is more frequent, more coherent and more personal than that with principals and parents. So while it has not led to coherent student activism or the formation of a social movement, over the past four years as many as eleven participant individuals (only one of whom is male) have received awards via Rhodes University for their community engagement commitments. On the basis of this type of reflection, GADRA Education has made two tactical changes to its advocacy work moving forward. First, the organisation has decided to be narrower in its overall focus and more specific about its overarching objective. That is, instead of hoping (against hope) to solve the schooling crisis, the purpose of the intervention from 2015 has been limited to attempting to maximise the number of bachelor’s-level passes produced by township schools in the Grahamstown district. Second, GADRA has created a new staff position to bolster its advocacy work. Conclusion I arrived at GADRA Education in 2011, having managed the Border Rural Committee (BRC), a land sector/rural development NGO, from 1997 to 2010. In that context, I deliberately attempted to reposition BRC from an advocacy organisation – it was created in the 1980s to assist communities to resist forced removals – to one that balanced service delivery and advocacy. This was successfully achieved; the organisation enjoyed considerable advocacy success as a direct consequence of delivering carefully selected services (such as implementation

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of innovative rural development projects). My challenge at GADRA Education has been more or less the opposite: to restore a clear advocacy agenda to what had become an education service provider. This case study is suggestive rather than definitive. It suggests that a synergistic combination of service delivery and advocacy may be effective and impactful in the contemporary education context, but it does not provide adequate data to win the argument. The chapter is therefore an opening word on the topic rather than a final summation. However, the case study is conclusive in making the argument that an education NGO can make a significant difference in an urban locale. While GADRA Education has not been able to bring about the transformation of public schooling in Grahamstown, it certainly has changed the trajectories and prospects of the lives of thousands of local people. It has done this through a consistent commitment to undertaking work across the entire city (across race and class divides), taking an interest in the lives of all local people, and delivering services that are relevant and urgently required.

Notes 1. See http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=7542 (accessed 7 September 2016). 2. Margie Keeton, personal communication. Keeton is the elder daughter of Thelma and Derek Henderson. In the 1990s she founded Tshikululu Social Investments, a leading South African corporate social investment manager, in Johannesburg. She returned to Grahamstown in the late 2000s and has been GADRA’s treasurer for the past four years. 3. Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ).

References GADRA Education. 1991. ‘Annual Report April 1990 to March 1991’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown. ———. 1992. ‘Annual Report April 1991 to March 1992’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown. ———. 1993. ‘Annual Report April 1992 to March 1993’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown. ———. 1994. ‘Annual Report April 1993 to March 1994’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown. ———. 2012a. ‘Strategic Plan 2012–2015: Transforming the Educational Landscape in Grahamstown and Beyond’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown.

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———. 2012b. ‘Constitution of the Grahamstown High School Principals’ Forum’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown. Gibbs, T. 2014. Mandela’s Kinsmen: Nationalist Elites and Apartheid’s First Bantustan. Johannesburg: Jacana Media. Morrow, W. 2007. Learning to Teach in South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press. Pendlebury, S. 2008. ‘Meaningful Access to Basic Education’. In S. Pendlebury, L. Lake and C. Smith (eds), South African Child Gauge 2008/2009. Cape Town: Children’s Institute, pp. 24–9. Steinberg, J. (2014). ‘Competition Is Detrimental to Township Schooling.’ Business Day Live. http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2014/11/14/competition-is-detrimental-totownship-schooling (accessed 7 September 2016). Van der Mescht, H. 2014. ‘GADRA Education External Evaluation Report’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown. Westaway, A. 2014. ‘No Reason for High Matric Hopes: Look at the Facts’. Grocott’s Mail, 31 October 2014.

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CHAPTER 6

Thinking Through the Role of NGOs in South Africa Lessons from GADRA Education Patronella Nqaba

N

GOs have received much criticism in relation to the work they do. This is because in many respects they are seen as agents of social control as opposed to the agents of social change that they often profess to be (Escobar 1995; Lehman 2007). Shijvi (2004) argues that one of the biggest problems with NGOs is their tendency to act rather than thinking through the work that they undertake in the communities they serve. This results in the depoliticisation of development work in that NGO workers ignore or are not conscious of the power relations that undermine the work they do in their respective communities. This chapter builds on the previous chapter by Ashley Westaway to highlight some of the insights that can be drawn from the experiences of GADRA Education for thinking about the role of NGOs more generally. As Westaway indicates, GADRA Education is a long-standing NGO whose growth and evolution can be seen as a reflection of the broader NGO developmental sector in South Africa. Established in 1957, GADRA (Grahamstown Area Distress Relief Association) has a community-based welfarist background that came about in response to the poverty that resulted from the ‘system of racial capitalism that was enforced through the apartheid regime’ (Besharati 2013: 10). In recent years, in a similar manner to many other NGOs, GADRA has moved away from its exclusive focus on welfare to undertake more of an advocacy role. Given the organisation’s long history, this chapter discusses GADRA’s experiences in relation to criticisms of NGOs in terms of their supposed depoliticisation of development. The chapter presents and discusses individual semi-structured interviews conducted with GADRA Education division heads as a means for gaining a better understanding of the thinking that goes into running a formal education NGO in Grahamstown. These interviews allow for an exploration of the ways in which

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NGO workers understand their work and whether and how they reflect on the potentially depoliticising role they might be playing. Although simply focusing on the leadership of the organisation has its limitations, it is useful in that it provides a perspective on how the people within GADRA deal with the contradictions of being in a position of power relative to the members of the community they serve. The interviews also uncover the different challenges that are expressed by the organisation’s leaders in relation to the criticisms made against NGOs. Drawing a connection between the academy and the practice of NGO work, this chapter aims to provide a picture of the contradictions related to the debate on the depoliticisation of poverty by NGOs. The history and work of GADRA Education have been discussed at length in the previous chapter. For this reason, I will not spend much time introducing the organisation except to make some brief comments about its approach to education. GADRA argues that improved access to formal schooling is not enough to bring about the transformation that is needed in the South African education system. The organisation’s stance is that there is inadequate epistemological access to education, which is key to understanding the schooling crisis in the country. The term ‘epistemological access’ points to the need for more than just physical access to schools. Access to education is meaningful only when schools ensure that learners are able to participate fully in the educational opportunities offered in the classroom through the use of educational practices that are relatable to learners’ lived experiences and that support children’s systematic learning of basic skills, knowledge values and practice (GADRA 2011: 4). In other words, in order for all South Africans to access education meaningfully, there needs to be a genuine transformation of how teaching and learning takes place in schools. Such transformation involves taking into account the diverse cultures and different backgrounds of learners and teachers by accommodating these in the classroom (Mouton et al. 2012: 1211). This means aiming towards an education that both learners and teachers will be able to take ownership of as a means of cultivating a culture of innovation and knowledge production. As an organisation, GADRA Education recognises different sets of groups that have to be considered when dealing with the issue of how poverty affects the distribution of power among members of the Grahamstown community, especially in relation to the functioning of the schooling system. Thus the programmes designed by the organisation are aimed at addressing the different problems that concern each particular group. Due to the multifaceted levels of power that GADRA is

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confronted with depending on the programme in question, the engagement with stakeholders is largely differentiated and demonstrates an interesting approach to dealing with the issue of poverty through education. As a result of this differentiation, the responses to the questions raised during the interviews with GADRA leaders were particular to each section of the organisation and the power struggles involved in relation to each of the different constituencies. The interviews brought to light the thinking behind the shifts within the organisation, and thus the consequences of making such changes to an organisation with a long history within a community. These interviews show that there is a complex relationship between technocratic, depoliticising approaches to development and approaches which recognise and attempt to tackle the power relations that perpetuate the cycle of poverty in communities. The depoliticisation of development As several contributors to this book point out, the work of NGOs can be considered problematic because the assistance NGOs provide is often an exercise of power with little consideration for recipients of the aid. Through the provision of aid, an unequal distribution of power results among the donor party and the aid recipient. Furthermore, NGOs often treat poverty and disempowerment not as a political problem but as an economic malfunction in need of technical solutions (Lancaster 1999: 6–7). Many NGOs work within a neoliberal approach to development that can be criticised for its tendency to narrow the understanding of what constitutes poverty, which in turn leads to a simplification of the solution to poverty. Technocrats argue that with greater education and training, some redistribution and lighter market regulation, poor people’s participation in the market will improve (Johnston 2005: 135). This is because neoliberalism understands the market as the main focus of any solutions to be devised in order to deal with existing socio-economic problems. NGOs that work within a neoliberal context are criticised for carrying out a process of depoliticisation by stabilising and institutionalising power relations that function as a means of preserving the status quo. This depoliticisation comes about by normalising practices that follow a set process of achieving what is understood to be development, which would result in the reduction of poverty in a society (Gorden 2004: 2). The result of this approach has been that aid workers understand poverty as being an outcome of the actions of the poor themselves and not the result of the structures of the institutions that govern the society (Ferguson

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1994; Manji 1998). The response programmes engineered by development workers with a technocratic mindset are the kind of programmes that seek to alleviate the suffering experienced within the communities of the aid recipients, while they do very little work in terms of bringing about radical changes within the communities themselves. As such, Shivji (2004: 690) argues that the current context of neoliberal hegemony has resulted in NGOs playing a supporting role for the capitalist system. GADRA and the depoliticisation of development I now turn to the reflections of GADRA Education leadership in relation to questions about the work that the organisation does and how the leaders deal with the problems that relate to depoliticisation. In responding to this criticism of NGO work, GADRA leaders demonstrated an in-depth understanding of the Grahamstown community and the challenges it faces. Their approach to the work they do in their efforts to transform the Grahamstown education landscape is directed towards empowering aid recipients, while also engaging in political struggle through advocacy. This advocacy mobilises various sectors of the Grahamstown community in order to change power relations and bring about an awareness of the broader issues in the educational institutions. This understanding of the advocacy approach is clearly reflected in the responses of all the interviewees to the question of how they understand the role of the organisation and the work that they do within the community. The GADRA Education manager, Ashley Westaway, who joined the organisation in 2011, gave the following response when asked about the development of the programmes GADRA is currently running within Grahamstown: When I was interviewed [for the post of manager of GADRA Education] I made it very clear that my interest is transformation and if I am appointed to the position I must have, from the board, a mandate to transform the organisation; otherwise, I am not interested in the position. I am not interested in just salvaging the programmes. I want to try to use the programmes to do something bigger in Grahamstown. And they appointed me with that mandate . . . the situation analysis [was] crucial to getting a proper contextual understanding and the formulation of strategy in relation to that analysis and bearing in mind the programmes of the organisation (Westaway, interview, 5 February 2014).

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These comments by Westaway relate to an important point that is emphasised by Shivji (2004: 690) when he argues that the fundamental problem with the NGO sector is that it is focused on action while inadequate attention is given to thinking through the work done by the NGO concerned. This results in organisations lacking a grand vision for their society and thus misunderstanding the context of the society in which they work. Westaway states that the programmes at GADRA are not simply about the day-to-day running of the organisation, but about working with the community to change power configurations in the Grahamstown society. The response given by GADRA’s primary school literacy project manager, Kelly Long, also demonstrates a consciousness of the importance of paying greater attention to the work done by the organisation relative to the challenges faced by the members of the community: We can’t necessarily create employment for all the parents or change the home background, but what we can do is to introduce parents to the idea of needing to support their children’s education and how they can do that. So we developed a series of workshops that we do with parents, and it’s been amazing to see the buy-in that we have had, the turnout and the fact that the number of parents gets bigger and bigger every single time. We do simple things. We talk about how children develop from 0–9 years old. All those little milestones. We talk about it in a very accessible way, and when we talk about gross motor development, we talk about how that impacts [children] in the classroom later on, why it’s important later on and what are the little things you can do that are accessible to everyone and is going to help (Long, interview, 28 July 2014). Here Long points to the willingness of parents to get involved in their children’s education. Research has shown that parental involvement in schools has a significant influence on a child’s academic success (Comer and Haynes 1991: 273). One of the factors considered to be a contributor to the poor quality of education in South Africa is the lack of parental involvement in their children’s schools. According to research conducted by Holborn (2013), poverty and illiteracy are the main issues that hinder parents from getting involved in the education of their children. GADRA Education has found that there are other underlying factors that contribute to the lack of parental involvement in schools. One of these factors is the imbalanced power relations between the educators at the schools and the

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parents of the learners. This point has been highlighted by the Department of Basic Education (DBE 2013: 7–8): school governing bodies are meant to be one of the ways in which parents can get actively involved in their children’s education; however, the power imbalances between the professional managers of the schools and the less educated members of the parent community prevent these structures from being effective. Westaway and Long affirm the idea that transformation in education can be brought about through the empowerment of parents. For example, one of the characteristics associated with socio-economically depressed communities is high levels of illiteracy. In such cases, educators are found to be in a position of power which systematically prevents parents from being able to engage or have meaningful involvement in their children’s education. In an effort to address this issue, GADRA Education has introduced a parent engagement programme where GADRA looks for ways to work with parents that will empower them to get involved with supporting their children by any means possible. This initiative looks at addressing one of the underlying contributors to the poverty cycle within these communities, as opposed to merely applying more pressure on the schools. The model takes a broad-based approach to dealing with literacy problems at the level of the parents. The aim is to encourage the expansion of a culture of knowledge that transcends the boundaries of the school establishment. This strategy goes beyond the welfarist approach that characterises many NGOs and is in line with the shift towards development education that empowers individuals in the community (Brodhead 1987: 2). The empowerment approach to development dates as far back as the 1970s, when there was a shift from service delivery to looking at ways of enabling the people affected by poverty to have greater influence in the decisions that affect their lives. The essence of this argument was that forming activist groups that pressure governments to reassess their policies would contribute to the redistribution of power in society (Riddell and Robinson 1995: 35). This approach to NGO work is also understood as being sustainable because it transfers the ownership of the programmes run by the organisation to the recipient community, and in this way the organisations move away from being ‘benevolent patrons’ (Riddell and Robinson 1995: 36). Although the parent-teacher workshops provided by GADRA Education appear at first glance merely to provide a service that is being inadequately delivered by the state, the value of the workshops is that they disrupt the power relations between the schools and the parents by giving the parents tools

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to become more confident and more involved in their children’s schools. Through this programme, GADRA Education shifts the conversation on education to one that is about the political as opposed to merely the technical. As I will argue below, these workshops also help GADRA Education foster a relationship with the broader Grahamstown community, which assists the organisation in its goal of mobilising the entire community to press for change and have greater influence on decisions within the schooling system. A strength of GADRA Education appears to be its ability to build relationships of trust with local schools as part of its attempt to shift power relations in Grahamstown. Long’s comments below give some idea of the relationship GADRA has been developing with local schools: . . . no school has said to us we are not allowed to come into the classroom and we don’t make appointments to visit teachers, we just pop in, which is not allowed by SADTU [the South African Democratic Teachers Union] for any Department of Education employee. So if you are from the Department of Education, you have to make an appointment at least 48 hours before going into a school or a classroom. Because we are not wielding a big stick and we are there to help and we are coming from a very sympathetic perspective, we haven’t had any teachers say we are not allowed in the classroom. We have had teachers who are not doing their jobs and who are not terribly motivated, who allow us to come into the classroom and see even that, which is quite amazing, but it means that we have been able to put kind of a level of accountability that hasn’t been there before, and I think that makes a very big difference . . . We have had a success with the High School Principals’ Forum and now we have just started a primary school forum. So we have a constitution that is being signed by fourteen, I think, principals so far. That I think is going to be very powerful as far as advocacy. There’s been for a very long time a kind of divide-and-conquer philosophy in the Department of Education. So keep the schools in their own little bubble, and what I tell school A, I don’t necessarily have to tell school B, or if I tell school A and school B, principal A feels like one little person stuck in something that they have no control over and so they don’t fight against it. And principal B feels the same. But if we can get principal A and B together, it might be a little bit easier for them to fight certain things (Long, interview, 28 July 2014).

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GADRA Education has made efforts to build a relationship with teachers at the different schools also as a means to support the project the organisation undertakes with parents. The teachers at the schools are involved with the parent engagement. As a result of the relationship that GADRA has built with the teachers in assisting them with their other political struggles with the state, GADRA is better able to mediate the relationship between parents and teachers. GADRA ensures that the teachers are involved with the parent engagement programme. This platform creates a space in which teachers and parents are able to work together in order to deal with problems and come to a point where they realise that they are working towards the same goals, as opposed to being on opposite sides of the fight for improving the quality of education. This is evident from the contributions made by both teachers and parents to constructing the programme for the parent engagement workshops. This is also reflected in the independent evaluation of GADRA, which states: ‘Several respondents referred to the success and importance of this [parent engagement] venture . . . The programme received strong support from parents in particular who rated it highly in their annual assessment of GMS [GADRA Matric School] at the end of both 2012 and 2013’ (Van der Mescht 2014: 41). The active participation by both parents and teachers in deciding the programme for the workshops allows the parties to have a sense of ownership over the development of the programmes. This is important in relation to the debate on depoliticisation in that it ensures that participatory development is occurring not at a superficial level, but rather at a transformative level. This kind of participation is the kind that White (1996: 146) interrogates in connection to the politics of participation. In her research, White seeks to determine whether or not the kind of impact that NGOs have on the communities with which they work is one that leaves the people empowered. As part of the empowerment process, this kind of transformative participation leaves the people of the community with a sense of consciousness about the relations of power. This consciousness is seen as instrumental in assisting the community to reach a place where they have greater confidence in their ability to make a difference in their lives through their own actions in transforming the structures around them. Transformative participation appears to be in line with the principles expressed by GADRA leaders and the aims of their parent engagement programme: I honestly think we are not going to have any change in our education system until our parents understand the issues and they get angry. And

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they understand that their children are being hard done by and they start demanding change. So that is where we are working. That’s the advocacy work we are doing. So we do a lot of educating parents to understand what their responsibilities are as far as their children’s education, but also their rights and what they have a right to fight for and what they have a right to expect . . . Next year is going to be exciting from that perspective because the schools will be conducting governing body elections. [In] most of our township schools, the governing body didn’t really function . . . Our governing body system in this country gives the school a lot of power . . . if they actually use it. We hope eventually to get kind of a citywide situation where governing bodies are talking to each other and supporting each other (Long, interview, 28 July 2014). Here Long illustrates how GADRA would like to use its advocacy role to empower parents so that they gain enough confidence to confront state organs and change the conditions in the schools. As discussed above, criticism of NGOs suggests that they may be reluctant to break down the societal structures that contribute to the perpetual cycle of poverty within communities, choosing rather to focus simply on alleviating the suffering of the poor, and thereby normalising the structures that cause that suffering. Although this has been seen to be the case in many instances, Edwards (2004: 15) indicates that there are well-documented instances where NGOs have successfully played a role in mobilising opposition to authoritarian rule and thus bringing about change. Yet, given the size of GADRA Education, this criticism has some truth to it. It is not possible for this organisation to easily influence education policies at national level, because it is not in a position of power in that context. However, this does not mean that GADRA has no interest in challenging power relations or that it perceives itself as being powerless in contributing to the altering of the education landscape. According to Westaway (2014), GADRA Education takes a stance on ‘disrupting power’ by using service delivery as a launch pad for an advocacy campaign. The leadership of the organisation argues that through providing excellent services to the Grahamstown community, the organisation is able to gain the trust of that community. This trust means GADRA Education occupies a position that is supported by the community and enables the organisation to carry out its advocacy campaign and mobilise the community as a whole. This is also supported by the findings of the GADRA evaluation report

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in which Van der Mescht (2014: 41–2) describes how parents associated with GADRA organised to demand that the municipality restore access to water after it had been disconnected for eighteen months. This example suggests that there is no clear line to be drawn between providing services and disrupting power, as the provision of services can empower people to be able to potentially disrupt the status quo. In the South African context, empowering the poor is a complex process that involves creating a space where there is potential for people to exercise their agency in a way that will alter the structures and thus institutions that contribute to the perpetuation of poverty in society. GADRA Education is able to provide useful skills to the Grahamstown community. However, rather than simply seeing its role as addressing certain ‘lacks’ in the community, GADRA Education’s approach suggests that what is valuable is the potential these acquired skills hold for the people in the community. This is not to say that acquiring skills automatically translates to a shift in the power relations in society, but empowering people with skills through the provision of services does open up the potential for a space where development can be politicised. The cautious and critical manner in which GADRA engages with the issues relating to education in Grahamstown is evidence of how the leadership of the organisation takes seriously the contradictions of working as an NGO, and reveals ways in which an organisation can deal with these contradictions. This point can be illustrated through the example of the GADRA Matric School. The Matric School offers young adults who have done poorly on their National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations a second chance to improve their performance. On first consideration, the Matric School seems merely to be filling a gap that has opened up because of poor provision of education by the state. It thus appears that the Matric School simply operates within the status quo, helping to prop up rather than challenge a dysfunctional education system. Yet, further investigation of the work that is done by the Matric School reveals a more complicated picture. During an interview, the Matric School principal, Melanie Lancaster, revealed how she sees the school as operating in a context of injustice rather than simply filling a gap in the education market. She commented: It really upsets me to think of the failures out there who really shouldn’t be failures . . . There are a lot of problems where students choose the wrong

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subjects – where to put the blame for that could be a number of factors . . . This is very horrific and they are bright students. Really, they are bright. There is nobody who should be failing (Lancaster, interview, 29 July 2014). Lancaster demonstrates an understanding of the schooling problem from a perspective that realises that, in most cases, learners who are mostly deemed to be failures are in fact disadvantaged by their circumstances or simply failed by the education system itself. What has been noteworthy and celebrated by the GADRA Matric School are the numbers of learners who are able to raise their low matric passes to bachelor’s-level passes, which qualifies them for entry into tertiary institutions. In other cases, learners who failed their first attempt at obtaining an NSC have done remarkably well at the end of their year at Matric School, and are therefore able to access many more opportunities. The teachers at the Matric School attribute these outcomes to the combination of programmes that are run by the school. The school places great emphasis on developing the learners’ ‘soft skills’, such as time management and effective communication, and is also invested in ensuring that its learners are offered a wellrounded education that goes beyond merely satisfying the approved curriculum. In partnership with the Department of Philosophy at Rhodes University, the Matric School offers a course in critical thinking skills. In this course, learners are challenged to think about different moral issues and other societal dilemmas. Learners also have the benefit of participating in the Pathways to Opportunities programme, which is run by a teacher at the school. This programme aims at developing a sense of self-awareness in relation to existing career opportunities. The programme has become one of fundamental importance because it has offered the school unique insights into the problems faced by young people at school-leaving age. A significant common finding has been that the socio-economic circumstances of learners have a significant influence on how they think of their futures. It is clear that the leadership of GADRA is conscious of the challenges faced by the Grahamstown community and shows a dedication towards creating programmes to directly meet the needs of the people. GADRA also values the relationships it has built with different stakeholders in the community, and takes seriously the idea of advocating with the community as opposed to advocating on behalf of the community.

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Conclusion NGOs are very complex organisations, and thus it is difficult to assume a clear position on the work that they do with the communities they serve. This predicament becomes particularly evident when dealing with education NGOs because education is understood to be a tool of empowerment. This study suggests that education NGOs can be instrumental in countering the barriers to education by providing access for people who are structurally excluded from education because of their socio-economic circumstances and state limitations in providing for welfare. In the case of the South African schooling crisis, understanding the role of NGO intervention is complex because access to education does not appear to be the root of the problem. Rather, the battle is around the quality of education that is provided for people who live in poverty. This issue of the quality of education thus has implications for the relations of power among the members of society. Van der Berg et al. (2011) make the argument that low-quality education is a poverty trap because it is a barrier to class mobility, which is associated with acquiring an education. Thus the subject of quality education lies at the centre of the debate on poverty alleviation. There is overwhelming evidence showing that the South African education system remains ineffective despite various reforms that have taken place over the years. This study found that although GADRA Education leaders acknowledge that they are confronted with great challenges in terms of bringing about changes in the education system, they are hopeful that with community mobilisation there is potential to disrupt the existing power relations between state organs and the public. By showing an awareness of the need to go beyond simply providing an educational service, GADRA leaders demonstrate the possibilities for NGOs to play a role in promoting development without reducing their work to the provision of services. The essence of these possibilities is not principally demonstrated through the services that the organisation provides for the community, but rather in the vision of what GADRA seeks to do with the community through the provision of education services. This is not to say that having a vision for society will guarantee that the organisation does not depoliticise the process of development. Rather, the contention is that having such a vision opens up the possibilities of progressive intervention. South Africa has a long history of education institutions being used as a site of struggle to bring about change in society. Education NGOs have the same

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potential, as they are in a position where they can work alongside communities to change the societal structures that prevent the reduction of poverty. Disrupting power relations in society is a lengthy process and one that requires people to be critical of the implications of the work that they do. There is a constant need to interrogate the idea of development and its long-term impact on communities, and the ways in which people envision the kind of society to which they belong. It is clear from the comments made by GADRA leaders that providing educational services need not necessarily be done in a depoliticising way. Such services can serve as a springboard for activism in the community and can help disrupt existing power relations. Development is understood to be a process of change within society, and it is not yet possible to determine whether or not GADRA Education is successfully achieving a transformation of the Grahamstown education landscape. A longer and much more in-depth study would be required in order to have a better understanding of the impact that the organisation has on the entire Grahamstown community. However, what is evident is that the organisation is able to effect some degree of change in lives of the people who have benefited and of those who continue to benefit from GADRA’s intervention.

References Besharati, N.A. 2013. ‘South African Development Partnership Agency: Strategic Aid or Development Packages for Africa?’ Research Report 12. Economic Diplomacy Programme, South African Institute for International Affairs. http://www.saiia.org.za/research-reports/ south-african-development-partnership-agency-sadpa-strategic-aid-or-developmentpackages-for-africa (accessed 20 August 2014). Brodhead, T. 1987. ‘NGOs: In One Year, Out the Other?’ World Development 15 (Supplement 1): 1–6. Comer, J.P., and Haynes, N.M. 1991. ‘Parent Involvement in Schools: An Ecological Approach’. Elementary School Journal 91(3): 271–7. Department of Basic Education (DBE). 2013. ‘General Education System Quality Assessment: Country Report South Africa’. Pretoria: DBE. Edwards, M. 2004. Civil Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Escobar, A. 1995. ‘The Making and Unmaking of the Third World Through Development’. In M. Rahnema and V. Bawtree (eds), The Post-development Reader. London and New York: Zed Books. Ferguson, J. 1994. The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. New York: Cambridge University Press. GADRA Education. 2012. ‘Strategic Plan 2012–2015: Transforming the Educational Landscape in Grahamstown and Beyond’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown.

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Gorden, K. 2004. ‘Depoliticizing Effects of International Development as the Praxis of Liberal Institutionalism’. http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/QEs/Gorden.Dev.QE2.pdf (accessed 1 June 2013). Holborn, L. 2013. ‘Education in South Africa: Where Did It Go Wrong?’ Good Governance Africa. http://gga.org/stories/editions/aif-15-off-the-mark/education-in-southafrica-wheredid-it-go-wrong (accessed 5 July 2014). Johnston, D. 2005. ‘Poverty and Distribution: Back on the Neoliberal Agenda?’ In A.S. Filho and D. Johnston (eds), Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader. London: Pluto Press. Lancaster, C. 1999. Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lehman, G. 2007. ‘The Accountability of NGOs in Civil Society and Its Public Spheres’. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18(6): 645–69. Manji, F. 1998. ‘The Depoliticisation of Poverty’. In D. Eade (ed.), Development and Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mouton, N., Louw, G.P., and Strydom, G.L. 2012. ‘A Historical Analysis of the Post-apartheid Dispensation Education in South Africa (1994–2011)’. International Business and Economic Research Journal 11(11): 1211–22. Riddell, R.C., and Robinson, M. 1995. Non-governmental Organisations and Rural Poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shivji, I.G. 2004. ‘Reflections on NGOs in Tanzania: What We Are, What We Are Not and What We Ought to Be’. Development in Practice 5(5): 684–95. Van der Berg, S., Burger, C., Burger, R., de Vos, M., du Rand, G., Gustafsson, M., Moses, E., Shepherd, D., Spaull, N., Taylor, S., van Broekhuizen, H., and von Fintel, D. 2011. ‘Low quality education as a poverty trap’. Social Policy Research Group. Stellenbosch University. Van der Mescht, H. 2014. ‘GADRA Education External Evaluation Report’. Available from GADRA Education office, Grahamstown. Westaway, A. 2014. ‘Quality and Equity in Grahamstown Education’. Grocott’s Mail. http://www. grocotts.co.za/content/matric-issues-quality-and-equality-gtown-education-09-01-2014 (accessed 21 November 2014). White, S.C. 1996. ‘Depoliticizing Development: The Uses and Abuses of Participation’. Development in Practice 6(1): 6–15.

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CHAPTER 7

The Obscure Anatomy of the NGO Sector Injairu Kulundu

Mind the gap It’s safe to say that we’ve lost contact The gap This tendency to watch our own backs The gap Do I really make a part of a whole? Help me see what this means to me ’Cause we ought to be building bridges. Same stinking story Skip the empty rhetoric That we’re gonna be building bridges When we have dead institutions Sugar-coating a solution When we oughta be building bridges I see the temptation Empty glorification When we oughta be building bridges

Helter-skelter Social justice adventure When we be trying to build these bridges Learning the ins and outs Bureaucratic roundabout When we try to be building bridges Trying to keep at it Hitting a moving target When we trying to be building bridges As the time that we take Looking at part of the whole increases Thinking the struggle Concerns another kind We’ll find we’re confounded Trying to live with diverging interests When we’re all just trying to live a decent life

T

his chapter critically analyses the obscure anatomy of the NGO sector from my perspective as a practitioner in the field. My reflections are based on my experience of the diverse people, programmes and practitioners I have come across in my seven years of work within the NGO sector. In this chapter I unapologetically use my role as an ‘insider’ (on various levels) to surface the contradictions between the knowledge about NGOs that we make public and the private knowledge that we only dare to whisper in corridors among colleagues and members of inner circles. In addition, I tease out the hidden spaces through which the work of NGOs steadfastly persists and produces real results – regardless of its inherent contradictions. Key themes that are explored in this chapter include internal

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integrity or internal schizophrenia in NGOs, how NGOs minimise the complexity of those who participate in their projects, and participants’ various ‘performances’ through the roles they play within the NGO system. Lastly, this chapter looks at where the NGO sector could be if it were to genuinely work with some of the contradictions of its anatomy, and suggests how praxis within the sector could shift to better address issues of social justice in South Africa. Private malfunctions: Internal integrity/internal schizophrenia Over the years, I have been intrigued by the innate contradictions between what non-governmental organisations say that they do and how they operate internally. The visions and missions that characterise NGOs often seem to speak about the way they want to work on the world rather than about behaviour that they themselves can convincingly demonstrate. Simply put, the internal dynamics of NGOs often paint a very different picture from what the organisations externally portray themselves to be. There is a sense of ‘schizophrenia’ that happens when staff are held accountable to deliver a product that speaks to particular values while having to endure internal circumstances that contradict the very values they are meant to promote. This means speaking of justice, freedom and equality while working in spaces that demonstrate many levels of prejudice on a daily basis. This is the experience of many NGO workers in South Africa. More often than not, those who are in higher-management positions within NGOs are white and/or of mixed-race origin, and those who do a lot of the work on the ground are black Africans. I hear conversations about race all the time among young people who populate these organisations. In the Western Cape, my new home, people have come to describe NGOs as cappuccinos, with the white foam on top, the milky-brown coffee in the middle and the black granules at the bottom. The perpetuation of these hierarchies en masse results in an atmosphere in which those at the bottom feel that their perceived competencies are conflated with their race. In such an atmosphere one can feel undervalued and underestimated, and ultimately underpaid for one’s contributions. This feeling weighs very heavily on the collective imagination of black NGO practitioners in this country. The irony of this dynamic within the NGO sector is that those at the bottom of the pile (the foot soldiers, if you like) often hold the most important job of translating the vision and mission of their organisation to the benefiting communities. This responsibility becomes especially intense when those at the bottom of the NGO

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hierarchy have to turn and face participants from the very same demographics as them and promote the values and ethics of the organisation that they serve. I am deeply interested in this space. I am especially intrigued by the shorthand and coded language created in these spaces that helps people perform this act. Despite the curses that NGO practitioners might utter under their breath when they step out into the stage, they still must find the language and authenticity to communicate to participants the value of what they are trying to do together. And this must be done with a dignity that is befitting of both the practitioner and those who are on the receiving end. To take this further, things get even more interesting when the contradictions are blatantly obvious – that is, when the very audience practitioners are serving can see the integral flaws in what is being represented but still open themselves up to the process. I am talking about the recognition by the audience that the practitioners are not in control of the vehicle, and that they are in fact promoting a mandate that is not fully theirs. This happens all the time, and we underestimate how shrewd participants are in picking up these frequencies (and how this greatly influences them). They watch and realise that a bigger game is being played. They smile in recognition and they get on with playing their role regardless. This sense of performance fascinates me. I will speak about this in greater detail when I focus on the roles of participants. The lack of integrity creates a sense of schizophrenia that seeps into NGOs. This schizophrenia is a lived experience for many workers in the sector. It contains the residue of the undigested traces of living in a segregated country and what it means to really be seen and heard across the divides. Rapid recuperation and counter-conversion The issue of internal schizophrenia within NGOs can make one think that the poor practitioners are simply doomed regurgitators of the mandate that is set from above. But despite the heaviness of this dynamic, the interactive space between practitioners and the participants they work with can completely change the game. The work that NGO workers do (behind closed doors and away from watchful eyes) is allowed a freedom that is often underestimated. Yes, the boxes required by funders will be ticked; yes, all required elements of the curriculum dictated from above are covered. But even so, there is far more that can happen within the interaction between practitioners and participants. When practitioners have the space to intuitively bring their work to life by bringing it into conversation with the participants they are engaged with, exceptional things can happen. People

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of colour (who make up the majority of those on the bottom rungs of the NGO world) are used to adapting, shifting and changing in remarkable ways. They are accustomed to working with what they have in order to achieve what they want or need to accomplish. The potential for converting the currency of what is being offered to something that is locally relevant is significant. Indeed, despite internal contradictions, the extent to which practitioners are able to work genuinely with what is given and use this as a vehicle for change and transformation is impressive. This ‘currency conversion’ is an underestimated capacity that opens up more possibilities than one might be aware of. To use Braidotti’s (2011) metaphor of nomadic movement or nomadic meaning making, in these instances there is a constant remapping of oneself in response to many dynamics and a constant reshaping of what one can offer that is often not seen. This has huge implications for NGO praxis, especially bearing in mind what Deleuze and Guatarri (1983) call the ‘molar lines’ (the spaces in which the baseline of hegemony is demonstrated) as well as the lines of flight that can create new possibilities and the ‘minor lines’ that one can fully inhabit even within oppressive structures. This sentiment also echoes bell hooks’s (1994) affirmation that even within a rigid academic system there is space to teach to transgress. The range of these possibilities and how they extend themselves within the current system need to be better understood and built on. Impaired vision part 1: Can you really see me? One of the interesting things about how NGOs craft their response to a certain social issue is that they do so in a way that highlights what an ideal finished product should look like. This is especially noteworthy when the ‘finished product’ is a person of a certain kind who is better able to respond to the social issue as described. This aspect of forecasting can create false homogeneous identities as a result of NGO interventions. By this statement I mean to highlight the fact that the prescriptive nature of some of these organisations results in a ‘prototype result’ that completely diminishes complexity. For example, in a youth empowerment project there may be an implicit assumption about what a participating young person should look like at the end of the intervention. This assumption is governed by the values of the organisation and its perspective of the ideal way forward. Yet, the tendency to forecast the result of the intervention does not open up the outcome to many ways of being. Instead, one way of being (in which the supposed solution resides) is fetishised, leaving in its wake a simplistic outlook that in some instances creates as many problems

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as it wishes to address. Such interventions create a situation where the ‘lucky’ recipients of the intervention are well versed in the ‘performative requirements’ of their allegiance. In other words, they know how they are supposed to act in order to be acceptable while also being well aware of what is not considered a ‘good way’ to behave. This is reminiscent of colonial times in which ‘grooming’ would allow the native to be considered ‘civilised’ in the presence of masters, but when he is back home he finds the space to articulate and to be ‘real’ about who he is and what he really feels (Mbembe 2001). What is significant about this sense of fractured identity is that the organisations in question do not get a chance to meet the person that they are working with in her or his entirety. There is a certain aspect of the subject that does not get full expression: the person’s point of view and how she or he sees the world. Many practitioners speak about how they honestly feel that the participants they work with are not fully understood by the organisation. There is a sense that participants’ worth is underestimated. Conversations about these contradictions and tensions become relegated to hidden corridors and are shared only with an allegiant inner circle that can be trusted to understand the complexity. I am interested in these dual representations, one for the face of the organisation and the other for an inner circle, and what they mean for social change. The lack of a space to invite participants in all their complexity minimises the potential for a full understanding of the possibilities that come with that, and also promotes a kind of censorship which prevents an adequate challenge of the status quo through the platforms available. The dynamic that I have described is an important part of the relationship that participants can have with NGOs. However, we can’t boil down this relationship solely to this result, as that would minimise the complexity of the interaction at play. There are other dynamics at work that subtly highlight the agency of participants in interesting ways. Impaired vision part 2: You don’t see us, but we see you1 Despite the censorship that happens through the performative requirements of being part of an NGO project, one should not make the mistake of underestimating what participants are able to make out of the opportunities afforded to them. People are primarily motivated by what they can get out of a particular situation. Who says that the participants are not playing a game themselves? Who says that the so-called beneficiaries of NGO work can only gain a sense of dependency from this relationship? From my vantage point of working with young people, it is clear

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that participants use a project as an opportunity that helps them navigate their complex social situations in many ways. They use it as a platform from where they can think about other steps they can take on their journey towards what they want for themselves. This sense of using the tools given for one’s own benefit echoes the words that Chinua Achebe once spoke in his defence of using the language of the ‘oppressor’ to articulate himself. He simply asked his audience not to be fooled by the fact that he was using the English language, because they had no idea what he was about to do with it. And indeed, that great master of African literature twisted the English language to fashion the spoken dialects of his local origin. Similarly, we should not simply judge participants by thinking of them as mere recipients of NGOs’ benevolence, for there are many things they do with what is offered to them. Of course, critics of Achebe warn that the use of English could erode local languages, which resonates with the argument that rather than seeking to benefit from NGOs, people should form independent local movements. Given the choices that participants can make, it is important not to always see participants as people giving themselves up to the system. There are many ways this game can be played, and I do believe participants are more aware than they might seem to be to an outsider’s eye about what they can gain and how they can create a parallel trajectory that serves their own interests while at the same time being a part of an intervention that also has its own interests. Participants see that a game is being played, and they are aware that to show the extent of their understanding is not the most strategic thing to do. This is a sentiment that is carefully captured in a poem by R.D. Laing: They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them that I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game (Laing 1972: 6). I have witnessed how young people in particular play this game. They are constantly sifting through the politics of the NGO space (just as they have to do in other spaces every day) and making choices about what benefits them, what is relevant to their life journey and what is not, and how to play this ‘game’. This is what characterises their hustle, and their relationship with the NGO sector is not outside this hustle.

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NGO as beast of burden: Whose will do you espouse? Despite the feel-good rhetoric that NGOs inspire through the seemingly altruistic values of their work, it is important to look at what these organisations have come to represent in this day and age. What is the social purpose of NGOs? What role do they play in the system? When looking at the role of NGOs from a postcolonial perspective, it is important to acknowledge that the crudest foundations of NGO work emerged from perceived ‘outsiders’ coming into a particular space in order to help a designated group of native ‘insiders’. These crude foundations may have evolved to encompass a broader perspective of who the ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are in a community, but there are certain aspects of this power configuration that are replicated in many modern-day NGOs. What endures is a power dynamic that plays out between NGOs and the people they purport to serve. Regardless of the research and consultation that goes into the process of identifying a need within the community and setting an agenda, there are still huge gaps between what is considered important by NGOs and what may be expressed by the untamed voice of the community itself. Whereas the proposed action might be crafted with the community in mind, more importantly it needs to be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the funders, who, in the end, sanction the possibility of the work. The funders are the primary market that NGOs need to serve. The challenge NGOs face in this regard is how to name the agenda (and amass the appropriate funding, which is a huge responsibility) while still being legitimate custodians of people’s will. The process of acquiring funding for an NGO does not allow for the kind of flexibility needed to fully involve the ‘beneficiaries’. In actual fact, most NGOs are tightly constrained by playing to the tune of the funders and shifting the goalposts of their intervention to suit the funders’ parameters. This sense of trying to marry the present needs of a community with what is deemed relevant and worthy in the eyes of outsiders raises questions about whose will NGOs espouse. The result of this dance between NGOs and funders is a prescriptive tendency that minimises complexity within some approaches. It locks people into being brokered for a particular aim with a diminished sense of power that accompanies their participation. Further contributing to this unwilling complicity is the fact that often there are useful resources to be gained by those who participate in NGO projects. This dynamic does not create an environment in which people can fully be what they want to be and say what they genuinely want to say. There is no authentic collaborative ethic, because in this way of working people simply insert

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themselves in a preconceived framework and play out their participation according to these parameters. This recolonisation of space is a performative dynamic that people get used to. They are well versed in occupying spaces in which parts of their knowledge and their way of being are not acknowledged as fully welcome. What people are ‘becoming’ or how they are evolving, or the new questions that they have as a result of the process, are often silenced in the face of the transactions between NGOs and their funders. Additionally, the fact that NGOs are often responding to the needs and requirements of funders means they often miss out on an essential aspect of ‘market-related feedback’ that should come directly from the people they are meant to serve. The power dynamics in place create a situation similar to that described by Kaplan et al. (2003: 135), where beneficiaries do not have the power to take their business elsewhere. So what does this mean? Participants may feel that they are being given something that is defined according to the value judgements and priorities of funders, and that their feedback is not really going to make a difference in terms of the content they are likely to be given. The worst result of this kind of dynamic is that ‘poor practice, or inappropriately deployed energies, does not always result in a lack of takers for the goods on offer’ (Kaplan et al. 2003: 135). There are few penalties for poor practice within this sector. Participants are in some ways doomed to take what they are given and make the most of it. This is because opportunities are scarce and the hustle is real. Participants learn to maximise whatever opportunities are on offer until they can progressively work themselves into a space that is more suited to their needs. Under this skewed sense of accountability, the service providers (NGOs) are playing to another audience (the funders) and the participants are left to navigate and make sense of what they receive. As I highlighted earlier, savvy young urban youths may have the shrewdness necessary to navigate this space in surprising ways, but it is important to acknowledge that sometimes they are not able to do so. Attempts to maximise what is on offer are often least successful in severely impoverished rural areas, where the power dynamics play themselves out in a manner that further diminishes the sense of agency of the particular group being ‘served’. I have watched as a group of elders gather in a room and wait to hear what a particular project will bring for them in their communities. The sight of these distinguished elders assembling as if summoned to pay attention to something important, waiting to hear what has been brought for them and then being offered

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little of value is disheartening. And the weight that comes with working with the disappointment of past promises and the reality of little real development happening in their world is truly depressing. The truth is that what people want is not authentically invited to be part of the conversation in most NGOs. As a result, people have become afraid to ask for what they want, or perhaps have become desensitised to the fact that they can in fact make demands of what they feel would be best for them. This is a matter of diminished agency. NGO beneficiaries have become so reliant on patronage systems and so accustomed to their supplicant roles within them that their participation is much like the dubbed laughter one encounters in US sitcoms – hollow and devoid of spontaneous and genuine response. Rethinking the prototype in the present moment So what does all of this mean going forward? Despite the fact that the anatomical contradictions within the NGO sector play themselves out over and over again, there seems to be unwillingness to reimagine adequately what this space could be. For the most part, it seems that NGOs have decided to be the go-between for the centre and the periphery (Kaplan et al. 2003: 147). At worst, they act as brokers mediating the effects of poor service delivery in situations where the mainstream relationships and processes of society have failed. The intention is not to seek to intervene into the malfunctioning of the relationships themselves, but to act as an efficient and effective palliative measure (Kaplan et al. 2003: 147). White (2013) states this simply by saying that NGOs ‘are not in the business of revolution, they are in the business of risk management’. If indeed NGOs wish to provide a more just society, then why don’t they do more to intervene in malfunctioning relationships? Why do they position themselves merely to patch holes in the system’s workings instead of challenging injustice in a more systematic and meaningful way? Why do the majority of NGOs work to fix isolated experiences of poverty and degradation while failing to speak coherently about the devastating effects of unbridled privilege and what this creates? Where are the NGOs trying to ameliorate the brutal effects of privilege in this country? Why is only part of the picture problematised? Or in the words of Kaplan et al. (2003: 146), ‘Why do NGOs rest with siding with the intentions of those who dominate our social, political, economic and developmental sector?’ And even though some of these conversations are open to the public, why is it so easy for NGOs to knowingly replicate these malfunctioning relationships and injustices?

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We can dance around the system itself, learn how it works and navigate it to our own ends, but that does not detract from the premise on which NGO work is based. We need to better think through what NGOs can contribute to society. The visions that NGOs represent have at worst become business models rather than clear strategies for social change. NGOs are holding onto this space for dear life and further adapting themselves in response to the growing scarcity evident in the funding environment, especially after the 2008 recession. It is becoming tougher to run an NGO as the gap between the rich and the poor becomes more glaringly obvious. The spaces that people are already occupying in shifting and subverting hegemony are indicative of growing practice that must be maximised. With the structure as it is, social justice is a struggle that is played out strategically every day in between the cracks where one can make more or less of the space given. Yes, there are lives to be lived and bills to be paid, and people will make the most of what they get in order to sustain themselves. Yes, we can be overtly critical (we are very good at this) and focus on the sense of complicity that comes with this and how this creates a more unjust system. I am far more interested, however, in thinking creatively about how we can open up these spaces and earnestly begin to name and work with the glaring gaps within the NGO system. We need to get to a point where these conversations in the corridors can be spoken of boldly, where the brick walls of the system can be sung out loudly to help us find resonance and a collective voice in order to better chart our way. We need to find a language to express the invisible work that is being done despite the internal schizophrenia to be documented and earnestly acknowledged. We need to use this language to inspire practitioners to recognise, build and advocate for deeper appreciation of what they contribute, and to build this into practice. We need to find ways to articulate the competencies needed to navigate the gaps between practitioners and participants. The currency between these gaps is underestimated, especially by those who traverse these boundaries on a daily basis. I am interested in the solidarity that could potentially be garnered if those who traverse these boundaries can recognise each other and work together towards strengthening their praxis. Operating in the in-between spaces needs to move from isolated practice to something that gains the benefit of such solidarity. It is important that we remember that acts of transgression within the system also help to build alternative realities that participants can recognise. We need to maximise the usage of the space that we have no matter how precarious it may seem.

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Granted, this might seem like a small win if success is defined as the delegitimisation of the system in itself. But my sense as a practitioner is that these spaces do not have to be only debilitating. We can work subversively in existing spaces in ways that inspire the change that we wish to see. It is tricky, but the space is there, no matter how obscure it may seem. Practitioners who operate in these spaces might not have the broader mandate of NGO boards and higher management to sanction the complete audacity of their actions, but they do indeed have the power to in some way ‘free life from where it is trapped’ (St Pierre 2004: 283) through their ‘in-between’ actions. But we cannot stop there; we cannot simply resign ourselves to tracing the innards of the NGO system and subversively working within it. We must couple this strategy with consistently thinking through other ways to ‘trace new lines of flight’ (St Pierre 2004: 283). A broader emancipatory outlook must consistently challenge us to create and act on a trajectory that goes beyond the trappings that we continue to navigate on a daily basis.

Note 1. Track title in the Roots Crew album Things Fall Apart (1999).

References Braidotti, R. 2011. Nomadic Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. 1983. On the Line, trans. J. Johnston. New York: Semiotext(e). hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to Transgress Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. Kaplan, A., Soal, S., and Taylor, J. (eds). Dreaming Reality: The Future in Retrospect. Cape Town: CDRA. Laing, R.D. 1972. Knots. New York: Vintage Books. Mbembe, A. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press. St Pierre, E. 2004. ‘Deleuzian Concepts for Education: The Subject Undone’. Educational Philosophy and Theory 36 (3): 283–96. White, C. 2013. ‘The Philanthropic Complex’. Chimurenga Chronic, August.

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CHAPTER 8

Infiltration and Instigation How White Suburban Activists Act Out Left Politics on Black Bodies Koketso Moeti

I

nfiltration of black politics by white leftists is nothing new. In South Africa, white-led left organisations have looked to black people for relevance for decades. For example, Archie Mafeje has argued that the real reason behind the two-stage theory (first winning national liberation, then struggling for socialism) of the South African Communist Party (SACP) was to justify the party’s entry into the African National Congress (ANC). The SACP was a white-dominated organisation that at the time could not relate to an increasingly right-wing white working class, but could not recruit in the black working class because that class had its own leaders and organisation (Mafeje 1978). Sakhela Buhlungu’s analysis of the role of white advisers in the union movements in the 1980s also shows this attempt by the white left to have influence in black movements (Buhlungu 2006). There have been various moves to block and escape this influence, reflected in the tensions in the 1920s and 1930s between the ANC and the SACP; the tensions and splits in the ANC in the 1950s; the Africanist groups that were expelled from the ANC in 1970s; and, of course, the formation of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Most of these attempts had limited impact – in part, I think, because at the time it was not clear what political ideology to adopt in contrast. That is, politically, it was not apparent which theoretical resources black-led movements could draw on at that point in time. There are also many examples of white gatekeepers, yet the history is very murky and hardly documented. For instance, there are stories of white leftists in Lesotho and elsewhere working in the 1960s to ensure that the ANC rather than the PAC became the favourite vehicle for foreign aid. So now that we have some historical context, I would like to look at what is happening in contemporary South Africa. Many within the left have critiqued NGOs, and this has led to academia moving towards supporting social movements

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rather than NGOs. But how this has played out is that the responsibility of being on the left is handed over to black bodies without their consent, and leftist practice has been reduced to having the correct analysis of what is going on. The focus is on scoring points in the echo chambers of the left. In this relationship, white leftists are the knowledge producers and black people are reduced to mobilisers only. These white leftists are racially insulated from some of the radicalness of the leftist practices that they impose on these black bodies. This insulation is not merely about the fact that when blacks are practising left politics in their informal settlements and the police come, these white leftists are safely ensconced in their walled houses in distant white neighbourhoods. It is more than that: it is about how white leftists are more generally insulated from the consequences of their arguments. If we look at how the left has supported land invasions, for example, I have yet to see anyone support land being invaded across from his mother’s house, his father’s house or his uncle’s house, so that keeps that black struggle in its place. Many of you are familiar with the video of the story of ‘Thandi’, used by the National Planning Commission to promote the National Development Plan (NDP).1 The story shows Thandi’s expected life trajectory and how the NDP will change that. What the video does not show, however, is the story of ‘John Smith’ and how his lifestyle is sustained at the expense of Thandi. Likewise with white allies of social movements: many point out the inconsistencies of whites who are ‘out there’ ignoring how their own existence reinforces the racial dynamics of power, or they acknowledge their privilege but refuse to do the hard work of completely rejecting the benefits of it. So the violent intimidation and repression faced by black social activists is something white leftists often write about and use to legitimise the ‘radicalness’ of the movement, knowing very well that they are shielded from this and also reducing the black bodies involved to props to evidence their good ‘allyship’. I know that there are structural limits to how far a nine-to-five working suburban person can be a leftist, but let’s face it: in South Africa for the most part these structural limits have not been pushed. Consider how language has been used as a tool to maintain the dominance of white middle-class leftists. Much of the critique about social movements relates to that fact that they are represented in English. We must consider what it means that in a country where non-English-speaking people make up the majority of the general population and the majority of those who are most affected by injustice, it is the ‘allies’ who must be accommodated by our switching to languages that

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are not our own. But it’s not just about the use of English; it is also about the adoption of the educated language of the day. Political education has played a key role in the reinscription of the superiority of typically the white middle class. Marxist or Fanonian language is used, and any questioning of approaches rooted in this language is portrayed as somehow a betrayal. Black leftist struggle tends not to be able to relate to sources outside of the English spheres, although there are exceptions, such as Mxolisi Mgxashe’s discussion of how aspects of the PAC’s armed wing Ama-Afrika Poqo drew inspiration from the practices of initiation schools (Mgxashe 2006). Another issue I find difficult to grapple with is the romanticisation of black life and struggles. The actions of some social movements are defended by saying that movement members are exercising agency. I struggle with this agency because we operate within a superstructure that is white and male and heterosexual and so on. It is within this superstructure that agency is supposedly exercised. But choices are never made in a vacuum; they are influenced by the superstructure. I am not saying that if left alone poor black people would discover true radicalness and then all would be well and end up rosy. Rather, I am saying that we have serious questions to ask about the way things are being done. Della Porta and Diani (1999) argue that social movements should be non-hierarchal and representative, and should have decentralised decision-making structures and increased participation, but there has not been enough research aimed at finding out whether social movements do in fact operate in this way, and this applies especially here in South Africa. It is uncritically assumed that within social movements there is internal democracy. With regards to solidarity interventions, it is worth noting that there has been some critique of the white left in South Africa, although some of it was mobilised to insulate certain social movements that were favoured at the time. However, despite these reflections on solidarity, the basic structure remains the same: a handful of white suburban activists engaging together with a reasonably replaceable group of black township dwellers where the point of meeting is the solidarity of the moment. This has been seen in Cape Town, Mandela Park, Khayelitsha, Sweet Home Farm, Marikana, Philippi East. The division of labour remains clear, however: poor black militants of a particular type are sought by white suburban activists. Given this structural division, I do not see how the equality that is necessary for this negotiated solidarity is possible even in the narrowest sense. Some of you may have read ‘Vans, Autos, Kombis and the Drivers of Social

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Movements’ by Ashwin Desai (2006). Many have tried to discredit this source as being an attack on a particular social movement, but the substance of that critique has never been adequately addressed. And this kind of analysis, along with the experiences of social movement leaders, points out how white influence remains very strong even now. I have no answers about this and it is something that I think we will continue to grapple with, but I will say this: when privileged people are acting in solidarity with these social movements, it should involve putting their privilege at some risk. And this risk involves knowing that the world doesn’t revolve around you and your comfort zone. A key message to people of privilege is that you actually are not what you think you are, because structures of privilege occlude judgement, making it much harder to face who you are and what your motivations are. Another thing is that we need to stop restricting our politics to the townships. Please, people of privilege, do not do politics for other people. Let that lefty politics also show in your immediate environment. The world is not waiting for leftist rebellion to erupt. Building the politics of solidarity and anti-white-supremacist, anti-patriarchal, anti-heteronormative capitalism is damn hard. I am not saying that suburban people can’t be involved at all in township politics, but what we have seen is way too many examples of dodgy power relations when this happens. So I would like to close by asking, where is the self-critique? I am not seeing it. Where is the reflection on how your own personal political practice is racially inflected? I don’t see this self-critique.

Note 1. See ‘Planning for Thandi’s future – Diagnostic Report – National Planning Commission (NPC)’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIiRsFYsRcg (accessed November 2014).

References Buhlungu, S. 2006. ‘Rebels Without a Cause of Their Own: The Contradictory Position of White Officials in Black Unions in South Africa, 1973–1994’. Current Sociology 54: 427–51. Della Porta, D., and Diani, M. 1999. Social Movements: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Desai, A. 2006. ‘Vans, Autos, Kombis and the Drivers of Social Movements’. Paper presented at the Harold Wolpe Memorial lecture series. http://wolpetrust.org.za/dialogue2006/ DN072006desai_paper.pdf (accessed November 2014). Mafeje, A. 1978. ‘Soweto and Its Aftermath’. Review of African Political Economy 5(11): 17–30. Mgxashe, M. 2006. Are You with Us? The Story of a PAC Activist. Houghton: Mafube.

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NGOs

Part III Conversations

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Gladys  Mpepho  (in  conversation  with  Thembani  Onceya)

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CHAPTER 9

NGOs Bringing False Hope and Empty Promises Gladys Mpepho (in conversation with Thembani Onceya)

Thembani Onceya: Please introduce yourself.1 Gladys Mpepho: My name is Gladys Mpepho; I am the chairperson of the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) in Rhini (Grahamstown). TO: Why did you join the UPM? GM: The government made me join the UPM. The government has betrayed us, they treat us like we are nothing, they make empty promises and give false hope. My first encounter with the UPM was through Ayanda Kota. Ayanda was persuading the people of Phaphamani to toyi-toyi (march) to demand electricity for the community. I realised that the only way people can get the government to deliver services in our communities is if we fight, because if we don’t fight our situation will never change. TO: NGOs work closely with social movements. What involvement do NGOs have in the struggle for social justice in South Africa? GM: I personally don’t like NGOs, because I think NGOs are just like government and political parties. The role of NGOs is to provide funding for social movements, but the funding comes with an agenda. So I would not say that they are contributing to the social justice struggle, because they control my politics yet they are not in my situation. I do not understand why NGOs have to ask for funding on my behalf without my presence if they are going to use the funds to assist me. We are excluded from those funding conversations, yet we are told that NGOs are working for us. Yet they do not account to us; instead, we account to them. I have never seen someone who works for an NGO in my community or whenever we march to demand service delivery, so I cannot say that I see NGOs contributing

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to the community or to social justice. I have heard a couple of people say they believe that NGOs are contributing to their communities, but in my three years in the UPM I cannot say I have witnessed good relations between NGOs and communities or NGOs and social movements. You also have a lot of rich people in these NGOs and you can see that they are rich by the cars they drive. I just ask myself, how is a servant of the people living in such luxury while their comrades are poor? Where are they getting the money to buy these luxury cars? How much does an executive in an NGO earn? For these reasons, I think NGOs are similar to government and political parties. TO: Are there any positive contributions? GM: NGOs that work with social movements only assist these movements with finance for political projects. It seems as though funders do not trust poor people to handle their funds, because funders prefer working with specific people. So I guess we should be thankful that NGOs help us with getting funding for our political projects. TO: What kind of support would social movements like from NGOs? GM: Thank you for asking that question. Firstly, NGOs should work with us and not for us. If NGOs want to assist social movements with funding, it should not come with an agenda; instead, we should all contribute to the agenda. Secondly, NGOs and social movements need to realise that people do not eat ideas, proposals and documents, and, most importantly, people cannot survive on charity. I think NGOs can assist in empowering people in the community. I was talking to one of our comrades in Johannesburg and he told me that his movement, with the help of a funder, donated five sewing machines to five women in their community to start a business. If NGOs could assist communities and social movements to start projects that empower people within the community, that would be great, as it will increase participation in and strengthen social movements. Lastly, I would really like to see NGOs step out of their comfort zone and join us in our daily struggle against social injustices in our communities.

Note 1. This conversation was conducted in isiXhosa and translated into English by Thembani Onceya with the assistance of Nthabiseng Seroba.

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C H A P T E R 10

Collaboration and Co-option Reflections on the Relationship Between NGOs and Social Movements Ayanda Kota (in conversation with Sally Matthews)

Sally Matthews: Please tell us a bit about the organisation you are involved with – the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM). Ayanda Kota: The UPM is a grassroots movement that was formed in 2009 to address the unemployment crisis in South Africa and to encourage community members to be active citizens in the struggle against unemployment. The formation of the UPM was a contestation of space. We realised that only particular people were allowed to speak about the unemployment crisis and how it should be resolved, while others were excluded from this conversation. We realised that we cannot be spectators in our own struggle, so we took a conscious decision to be active as role players in our struggle. Furthermore, we realised that the political parties who supposedly represent the poor and unemployed were part of the problem because of their relationship with capitalists. For example, it seems as though the African National Congress (ANC) has been captured by the elite – Marikana is a good example. Another example: the ANC wants to implement the youth wage subsidy even though there has been much contestation against the subsidy by trade unions and social movements. In essence, the UPM is a grassroots movement that encourages active participation by the unemployed in the struggle against unemployment because we believe that we are our own liberators. Nobody can liberate us but ourselves. SM: What is the relationship of the UPM with NGOs? AK: Like I said, the UPM believes that we are our own liberators. So we refuse to be the forgotten voices and to be treated as victims; we are full-blown political actors. The UPM is critical of NGOs because of their attitude towards the struggle and

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Ayanda  Kota  (in  conversation  with  Sally  Matthews)

the people within the struggle. NGOs, just like politicians and other experts, enter these spaces with a messiah complex, as if they have all the answers. Most NGO workers only feel comfortable sitting in their offices and drawing up proposals for funding while dictating what should and what should not be implemented in the social movements. They shy away from fieldwork and from protesting, mobilising and organising people; they believe that they are the ‘brains’ and we are the numbers. Again, there is this attitude that people in marginalised communities are just victims, not full-blown political subjects. So we believe that the unemployed, the landless, the shack-dwellers and everyone else should not be treated as victims. NGOs should operate in such a way that they support the struggles of social movements; they should not dictate or try to control these movements. I was reading about the Arab Spring and I came across an article about what happened in Tahrir Square in Cairo. There was an influx of NGOs that wanted to assist with basic needs like water, food and health care as a humanitarian intervention. But again, we see a recurring pattern. These NGOs didn’t recognise the agency of the Egyptian people, and by not recognising this agency they could not support already existing social movements in the struggle for freedom in the country. Instead, most NGOs wanted to get involved in advocacy, forming their own social movements or advocating for policy changes. Again, we see this pattern of civil society norms, where NGOs choose to approach the struggle diplomatically, but in doing so they tend to undermine those who choose a different approach. SM: What do you understand to be the difference between social movements and NGOs? AK: Social movements are rooted in the community, and they understand that without the people there is no grassroots movement: hence, social movements receive their mandate directly from the people within communities. The members/ activists of the social movements are people from these communities and are active in identifying problems in the community, specifying the causes of these problems and finding possible solutions. The NGOs, especially those that work with social movements, serve as intermediaries between the funders and the movements. The funding proposals are informed not by communities but by the market. This means we have to ask questions like: Who are the funders? What are they willing to fund? Can we realign our focus with the paradigm shift of 1994 or the funders’ paradigm? It seems as

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though NGOs receive their mandate from funders – if you want to know what NGOs are all about, follow the money and you will find out. All social justice victories have been achieved through consistent and persistent struggle, not as a result of ivory-tower discussions about policies, which policy is right and which policy is wrong. Social movements are embedded in the communities – without communities, without people, there will be no movement and certainly no victory. We understand that without these communities there would be no UPM. It is from the people that we get our mandate, as opposed to NGOs, who get their mandate from funders. SM: But isn’t it often the case that social movements and NGOs are getting their funding from the same places? AK: Yes, in this country NGOs and social movements are competing for funding. My understanding is that social movements apply for funding for political work without it being detailed and will try to use the funds to address the immediate needs of the community. NGOs, on the other hand, will receive funding and decide on the projects that they will establish in the communities, without the consultation of the community, to exhaust their funds so they don’t have to give money back to the funders. So with social movements we use a bottom-up system, whereas NGOs use a top-down system. One could also say that social movements compete for funding from NGOs while NGOs compete for funding to fund social movements. It is competition for survival as NGOs will not survive without these funds. One should interrogate why NGOs serve as intermediaries, in most cases between funders and social movements. These funding organisations expect us to be spectators because we are ‘uneducated’. They don’t trust that we can handle our funds, or they don’t trust that we will use the money to better our communities, so they would rather have ‘educated’ people handle these funds and redistribute them to different social movements. Hence, we are competing for funding with other social movements, and that has its own political consequences. SM: But don’t you think that sometimes movements have particular people that are dominant in the movement and that sometimes the approach is not as bottomup as it may seem?

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Ayanda  Kota  (in  conversation  with  Sally  Matthews)

AK: You are right, but I would actually rephrase your question. Let me make an example with me, Ayanda, who has been a movement leader for many years. The question should be directed at Ayanda: How come you have travelled this road all this time? How do we make sure that we create another layer of leadership? I think social movements have failed in the ability to create another layer of leadership. I think we should take this seriously, to avoid seasonal memberships where you have people leaving movements after two years. You can attribute that to the presence of academics who become dominant actors within these social movements. The voices of the academics become the voice of the movement. That deceives people, because it seems as though leaders and members within these movements can articulate and understand their situation. That’s why it is crucial that we produce leaders within the communities who are devoted and well informed about the politics of social movements. SM: Often leaders from social movements are recruited by NGOs. What are the risks and benefits of that process? AK: The individual benefits because he or she earns a salary that will better his or her livelihood. However, it could also benefit the movement, because if an individual is getting a monthly salary that person can still continue with the struggle and use the salary to finance costs of the movement. The problem is that NGOs approach the individual, as opposed to the movement, so as to work with only some of the individuals in the social movement. SM: At present, NGOs approach people who have proven themselves in social movements and offer them jobs. But I’ve heard you say elsewhere that you think NGOs should rather approach a social movement as a whole and the movement members should decide who within the movement should work with these NGOs. AK: Yes; maybe NGOs should put people from movements on their payroll to do the work of the social movement rather than the work of the NGO. NGOs are taking people out of movements in order to make the respective NGO more credible, but forgetting that this is at the expense of the movement. Political parties also do this, but their intention is different. Whereas NGOs co-opt people in order to make their organisations credible, political parties want to dissolve the social movements.

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SM: In closing, what role, if any, do you see for NGOs in the struggle for social justice in South Africa? SK: I think many NGOs in this country are characterised by management that always refers to a book. They will tell you: ‘Don’t raise these questions, because in Leon Trotsky’s book, this volume, this page, it says . . . ’ Or, ‘The answer is there if you look at Karl’s Marx book, this volume. The answer is there.’ SM: So NGOs are very much rooted in fixed ideological positions? AK: Very rigid, not just ideological, and very orthodox, such that there is no pluralism and no terrain for contestation. I think there has to be pluralism, there has to be a space for contestation and new ideas. We have to understand that you might have the best formula in the world, but it cannot solve all mathematical problems. NGOs need to recognise that they do not have all the answers, so they need to open space for pluralism and contestation of ideas in order to learn. Although NGO workers are orthodox and they went to school, they need to realise that they can learn as much from someone who lives in the township in a shack as the shack-dweller can learn from them. These people who have studied dialectics but don’t understand that anything dialectical is two-way: I find it very odd. If these people have studied dialectics, they should understand that it is conversation. It can never be one-way; it has to be two-way.

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Tshepo Madlingozi (in conversation with Sally Matthews)

C H A P T E R 11

There Is No ‘Outside the Law’ Social Movements, the Law and Social Justice Tshepo Madlingozi (in conversation with Sally Matthews)

Sally Matthews: You have many years’ experience working as advocacy coordinator for an organisation that aims to advance social justice – the Khulumani Support Group, which has the stated aim of ‘build[ing] an inclusive and just society in which the dignity of people harmed by apartheid is restored through the process of transforming victims of gross violations of human rights into victors’. Can you briefly explain what Khulumani does? Tshepo Madlingozi: Thank you. I first would like to point out that Khulumani is not an NGO; Khulumani explicitly self-identifies as a social movement. Khulumani was formed in 1995 in response to the setting up of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Victims and survivors of pre-1994 gross violations of human rights – including killings, disappearances, violence of a sexual nature, unlawful detention, denationalisation, torture and destruction of property – had not been consulted in the establishment of the TRC; nonetheless, they decided that they would not be silent or silenced but would ‘Speak Out’ – hence ‘Khulumani’. During the TRC, Khulumani members worked to offer support to those testifying and to make sure the TRC functioned in a victim-centred way. After the TRC, victims realised that to a large extent the TRC had been merely an exercise in legitimating the elite settlement, that victims were merely fodder for facilitating the ‘transition’, and that victims’ pain and suffering had been used by the new black ruling elite to extract concessions from the white establishment. As one of the first post-1994 social movements, Khulumani learned several lessons from the experiences of the pre- and post-TRC processes. Some of these lessons were articulated explicitly by members, others less explicitly. The experiences I am referring to here relate to, inter alia, the lack of consultation in the setting up of the TRC (only big human rights NGOs and churches were consulted), as well as the fact that narrow legalistic definitions and requirements

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of the TRC Act excluded many victims, that the TRC operated in a manner favourable to powerful actors (by being perpetrator-friendly), that beneficiaries of apartheid and colonialism were given a free pass into the ‘new South Africa’, that the drafting of TRC recommendations did not involve victims, and that resonant cultural symbols and rituals – such as ubuntu and traditional African cleansing ceremonies – could be mobilised and abused in service of ends that had nothing to do with African conceptions of justice and in ways that paradoxically perpetuated epistemicide (the marginalisation and ‘inferiorisation’ of indigenous knowledge). These experiences taught victims that there were many continuities in the state mode of politics between the pre-1994 and post-1994 regimes in the sense of regarding poor and vulnerable people as dispensable in decision-making processes, that statist processes should always be approached with suspicion, and that laws derived from the ‘best constitution in the world’ can be exclusionary. After the TRC, victims focused on completing the unfinished business of the TRC, and today Khulumani’s purpose is encapsulated in the movement’s vision: ‘transforming victims into active citizens’. This vision is propelled by the slogan ‘The past is in the present’. It is a membership-based organisation with branches made up of between 50 and sometimes more than 100 people in different provinces. The most active branches meet twice a month, while some meet perhaps once in three months. The branches elect representatives to respective provincial steering committees. The highest decision-making body of Khulumani is the national steering committee. A national contact centre is based in Johannesburg. Khulumani works to fulfil the unrealised demands for reparations, redress, social reconciliation, and community reharmonisation, healing and social justice. SM: You indicated earlier that Khulumani is a social movement rather than an NGO, but how easy do you think it is to differentiate between NGOs and social movements? Aren’t the lines between them often blurred? TM: It is rather voguish to claim that the lines between social movements and NGOs blur. NGOs are usually staffed by professionals, have registered themselves in terms of the Non-Profit Organisations Act, rely on and are inspired by donors’ and funders’ programmes, usually have a stakeholder relationship with the state, and have client communities who never have any meaningful say in the policies drawn up by the NGO programme officers. In that sense, NGOs can be very statist in their mode of operation.

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Tshepo Madlingozi (in conversation with Sally Matthews)

A more important distinction – at least for my activist and academic purposes – is that NGOs inhabit the sphere of civil society. Social movements are made up of people and organisations that are often at the margins of, if not totally excluded from, civil society. In the sphere of civil society, liberal democracy and its institutional procedures and processes obtain. For their part, social movements often operate in the sphere where a mixture of patronage, repression, social fascism and illiberalism are the order of the day. While state–NGO relationships are adorned with parliamentary submissions, angry op-eds, police-sanctioned marches, workshopping and stakeholder meetings, talk-radio face-offs, and litigation, state–movement dialogue is usually mediated by bullets, tyre barricades, arrests, disruptive marches, and general harassment by state and non-state elites. It is not far-fetched to suggest that in neo-apartheid South Africa, NGOs function in what Frantz Fanon (1967), with Algeria and South Africa in mind, designated the ‘zone of beings’, while social movements, as the many cases of police torture and protestor killings suggest, operate in the ‘zone of non-beings’. Or, to invoke another theorist, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and a concept he deploys in relation to the modes of governance operating in the Global North and the Global South, there is an ‘abyssal line’, where on one side of the line – the civil society side – governance is geared towards managing the tension between regulation and emancipation, while on the other side of the line appropriation and coercion are the order of the day (Santos 2007). Nonetheless, it is true that the lines between NGOs and social movements are often blurred. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has become an even more professionalised movement, with a multimillion-dollar budget and formally educated officials and interns. In contrast, because of the nature of its constituency – overwhelmingly middle-aged, often sickly and having suffered for more than two decades – Khulumani often forgoes tactical repertoires associated with social movements for more in-system tactics and innovative cultural forms of protests. Similarly, somebody not familiar with the out-of-public operations of the shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, or unaware of the choices forced on this movement by repression, will see Abahlali clamouring for ‘meaningful engagement’ and showing respect for court processes and think that these insystem tactics and civil society jargon make Abahlali a membership-based civil society organisation. So, yes, lines sometimes get blurred during the flow and ebb of struggle, but I still think that the distinction is important in order to highlight the statist nature of NGOs and their complicity in maintaining a truncated

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form of democracy. I am, however, impatient with scholars who seek to make the conceptual distinction on the basis of an activist grouping needing to have some ‘counter-hegemonic’ – or worse, ‘revolutionary’ – strategies and tactics to be anointed as a social movement. SM: You have used your legal background to assist groups like the Khulumani Support Group. However, as you acknowledge in a recent book chapter (Madlingozi 2013), some commentators argue that the use of the law in social justice struggles can result in the demobilisation, co-optation and disempowerment of social movements. Could you explain why some commentators believe this to be the case? TM: The critique against the human rights discourse – not against ‘human rights’ per se – can be grouped into three categories. First, there are Marxists and neoMarxist critics who claim that ultimately the legal system is an instrument of the ruling class and can never be used in service of counter-hegemonic goals. Even worse, legalism can induce a false consciousness whereby radical demands are transmuted into ‘human rights’ claims, thus changing the overall strategy of the movement. A second set of critiques is directed more at tactical and organisational levels. Briefly, the argument here is that, in liberal democracy, human rights discourse has so much currency as the only legible script of emancipation that, once deployed, it inevitably overshadows other radical discourses that speak to problems of political economy, structural racism, heteronormativity, etc. Legal advocacy campaigns and litigation efforts also cost a lot of money, and they can end up crowding out and displacing other tactics. Related to this is the fact that in many cases, once movements decide to appeal to human rights discourse, lawyers and other legal researchers end up – by dint of their positionality, class power or, in the case of South Africa, whiteness – becoming de facto leaders who not only advise on tactics but also direct the overall strategy of the movement. A final critique is that in historically white-supremacist societies, Euro-American modern constitutionalism like that found in South Africa simply perpetuates whiteness as a system of privilege that makes invisible and delegitimises race-conscious strategies and movements. Put more radically, as a product of European modernity, such legal systems constitutionalise societies, where the only hope for a black person is to assimilate into the extant white world. Or, as Magobe Ramose (2014) puts it, in the case of South Africa the settlement that sired this constitutionalism

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legitimised historical injustice on questions of land and thus racial inequality; furthermore, its Euro-American nature further marginalised traditional African conceptions of justice. The point is that in such a system movements that are antineo-apartheid are already disempowered if they embrace the hegemonic human rights discourse. SM: You argue that using the law need not have this effect. Can you briefly explain why you believe this to be the case? TM: In my research I have found that movements have been able to – tactically, not strategically – appropriate legal concepts, procedures and symbols to achieve certain goals. Firstly, movements have used court cases as forums to expose and publicise injustices; for example through the water-meters case (the Mazibuko case),1 the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) was able to publicise – beyond its constituency and academic supporters – the fact that rich (mostly white) suburban residents get credit for water usage while poor (mostly black) township residents do not. Secondly, litigation compels evasive and dishonest local politicians and officials to engage with local communities and to disclose details of state policies. Reflecting on a case brought by the Concerned Citizens Group in Durban, Ashwin Desai (2002: 73) concluded that ‘litigation consumes the energies of the other side, ripping aside the mask of political rhetoric and forcing the council to reveal in sworn affidavits the brutality of its anti-poor policies’. Thirdly, movements have used court cases as rallying points and as a way to publicly display some counter-power. This is especially the case for movements that have faced a lot of repression when they deploy radical tactics. Engaging in courtroom battles, even if unsuccessful, can also afford a breathing space to besieged movement activists and can also enable ordinary residents to still be part of the movement without the fear of being caught up in violence. Fourthly, successful anti-eviction cases have at times led to the consolidation of a movement’s support base and the recruitment of new members. Temporary court injunctions, when combined with other extrainstitutional victories, can (re-)energise the target community, who now see that the state can be defeated. Lastly, successful but very narrow court victories have been given wide interpretations by movement leaders to legitimise counter-hegemonic, extra-legal tactics. Consider the following statements by an APF member upon hearing the news that the high court had declared the installation of prepaid meters unlawful: ‘As we speak now, members of the community of Phiri are digging up the

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meters and bridging [by-passing] them, and they are allowed to do so because the court ruled in their favour.’ In this reading, the high court ruling granted legitimacy to the movement’s ‘Destroy the Meter/Enjoy Free Water’ campaign! Away from the courts, counter-hegemonic movements have mobilised socioeconomic rights by appropriating its discourse(s) to legitimise extra-institutional, extra-legal activities. Examples here include invoking claims to ‘rights’ that are not provided for in the Constitution, such as ‘right to the city’ (Poor People’s Alliance), ‘right to electricity’ (Soweto Electricity Crisis Coalition and APF), ‘right to resist eviction’ (APF), ‘right to home’ (Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign), ‘right to land’ (Landless People’s Movement) and ‘right to work’ (Unemployed People’s Movement). In these instances, counter-hegemonic movements appropriate the language of socio-economic rights to animate and justify extra-legal, counterhegemonic activities. SM: The courts have brought significant victories for the poor and disempowered – think of the Grootboom case (in which the courts found South Africa’s housing policy to be unreasonable in that it did not adequately protect the rights of vulnerable, homeless people who had been evicted without being provided with alternative accommodation) and the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo’s successful attempt to get the KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act declared unconstitutional. However, critics point out that despite such successes, vulnerable people continue to be evicted, displaced and made homeless. Are such successes in court empty victories? TM: This is the debate that is taken up in a recent book I co-edited: Socioeconomic Rights in South Africa: Symbol or Substance? Contributors range from anthropologists to political scientists to lawyers and to activists. If you read the book carefully, you will see that the jury is still out. My personal sense is that 90 per cent of court victories have been hollow victories. In any case, courts do not have the power to implement their decisions, and at Khulumani we have several court judgments that have not been implemented. This is particularly jarring if you consider the fact that by the time lawyers make submissions to court they have already panel-beaten movement demands into ‘realistic’ or ‘attainable’ claims in line with the constitutional provisions of affording ‘access’ to various socioeconomic goods ‘within available resources’, as per the state’s macroeconomic policies.

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SM: So would you agree with those who argue that while the law can be used to extract concessions from the state, it cannot be used to bring about more radical social change? TM: The point is that those hegemonic in the sphere of civil society fetishise constitutionalism and embrace the myth of judicial neutrality. All life in this young society is suffused with human rights discourse. There is no ‘outside the law’. Those who argue that movements should operate outside of the law and at a distance from this statist discourse are ivory-tower radicals who never have to take tough decisions, radical purists who can’t organise a piss-up in a shebeen. Movements appropriate tools available to them, and if those tools are used tactically, they can indeed extract concessions from the state – and let’s be clear, social justice campaigns are about extracting resources from the state. The challenge is to make sure that the legal tactics and strategies do not become the be-all and end-all; that legal ideology does not overdetermine the movement. Ultimately, my personal opinion is that the law can never ever be an instrument for radical change. In this regard I agree fully with the critiques I outlined earlier, especially the view of hegemonic legal system(s) as being complicit in structural racism and suppression of African ways of being-in-the-world. Having said that, however, I can never advise any of the movements I work with not to use the law.

Note 1. Mazibuko and Others v City of Johannesburg and Others (CCT 39/09) [2009] ZACC 28; 2010 (3) BCLR 239 (CC); 2010 (4) SA 1 (CC) (8 October 2009).

References Fanon, F. 1967. Black Skins, White Masks. New York: Grove Press. Desai, A. 2002. ‘We Are the Poors’: Community Struggles in Post-apartheid South Africa. New York: Monthly Review Press. Madlingozi, T. 2013. ‘Post-apartheid Social Movements and Legal Mobilisation’. In M. Langford, B. Cousins, J. Dugard and T. Madlingozi (eds), Socio-economic Rights in South Africa: Symbol or Substance? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ramose, M. 2014. ‘Ubuntu: Affirming a Right and Seeking Remedies in South Africa’. In L. Praeg and S. Magadla (eds), Ubuntu: Curating the Archive. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Santos, B. de Sousa. 2007. ‘Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges’. Review 30(1): 45–89.

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CONCLUSION

Conclusion Dilemmas, Possibilities, Unity and Struggle Mazibuko Jara This final chapter is adapted from concluding remarks made at the end of the colloquium ‘NGOs and Social Justice in Africa’ held at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, in September 2014.

B

efore I get lost in my own ideas, I have one or two messages for the student participants in this colloquium. After you finish your studies, please go out and, adapting the Christian injunction to go forth and multiply, dirty your hands in NGOs and people’s organisations and so on. Ultimately that will be the best arena for learning beyond the theories that you are taught at university. But as you do it, approach it politically, although not in terms of ‘big P’ politics, but rather in the sense of ‘small p’ politics: politically in so far as whatever is being done in society or whatever shapes society ultimately has to do with power and interest. I think this is the most crucial message that has come through in various ways in this colloquium. Of all the speakers, I decided not to write a paper, partly because I struggle with writing, but my choice is also a reflection of my own intellectual process in so far as my approach is conversational. So what I’ll be doing in this concluding presentation is to test some reflections and ideas that are in flux – in flux from having been shaped over some 25 years of efforts, of failures, of successes and of some lessons. Part of what has come through for me in those 25 years has been the ability to be critical and frank, which at times can upset people or can be misunderstood. But despite that consistent faculty of being critical and being frank, I have also tried to be open to learning and to being influenced. What I am going to present is a set of some modest but also ambitious perspectives and proposals. They are not maximalist, but they contain three features that coexist but also challenge each other: reform, transformation and revolution. I think it is useful not to regard these three features as distinct or separate from each other.

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What I am also trying to do is to go beyond making a problem statement. I think it is helpful to have a problem statement as a tool for analysis, but if it is done for its own sake it is not adequate to meet the challenge of changing society. Ultimately, it is in the actual dynamics of the motion of social processes that questions or phenomena become clearer and alternatives get imagined, prefigured and struggled for. We cannot end with the task of stating the problem. Moreover, what I am putting forward here is also something that deliberately and consciously seeks to go beyond moral outrage. It is one thing to be morally outraged about the failures and shortcomings of our society, and the systemic foundations of misery, squalor and poverty. But I think we need to go beyond moral outrage by actually going back to the systemic roots of these problems. The question is, then, what approaches should we adopt to do this systemic analysis? Further, what exactly is the task of building social forces for change, for emancipation – or, let me put it in this way, social forces for a radical project of anti-systemic transformation, social forces that can challenge, resist and even dare to constitute elements of an emancipated society in the here and now? Let me state it up front: in my view, that alternative society cannot be anything short of a socialist society. Many times when we are involved in these kinds of debates, in academia or in NGOs, we approach this question of an alternative society in less than definitive terms, perhaps because we think it is useful to be open-ended about it. I don’t have a problem with being open-ended, but I also think that we risk not putting forward very strongly and very clearly the extent to which this society will be different from the one we live in today. From my own perspective and from my own reflections and activism, the idea or the goal of socialism does put forward very starkly and very distinctly what this society could be. This is different from talking about socialism in the sense of a blueprint. Thinking beyond NGOs I want to start with a reflection on the title and the abstract I gave for this presentation. I wanted to avoid falling into the trap of being confined by the title of the colloquium – NGOs and Social Justice in Africa – because I think the task goes beyond thinking about NGOs. It is far more useful to think about what the dilemmas and possibilities around social change are, and up to now I think we have done that very well: we have explored some NGO-related dilemmas and have also begun to think about some other emancipatory possibilities. So ultimately what I want to suggest is the importance of both unity and struggle. Unity is

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significant in so far as whatever views people have of the notions of social justice or the alternative society, whatever locations they are in, there needs to be some level of agreement and unity of purpose. The other part of the dialectic is that of struggle. So with and against, unity and struggle: that is the kind of logic that is most useful. Real historical change will come not from so-called civil society and the activities of NGOs, but rather from what is referred to in our lexicon as ‘motive forces’ of change. As I have just implied, those motives forces are not going to be NGOs. I think the contributors to this colloquium have put forward very strong arguments in this regard. These motive forces of change will be the strata in society that are variously described by the three words oppressed, exploited and dispossessed. What this immediately implies is that human bodies and their intellectual, organising and political capacities are going to be required in taking forward the struggle; it is not going to happen in an abstract way. It is going to require those human bodies to resist those evictions, to act as human shields, to speak, to dramatise the crisis, and so on. In addition, in this category of the oppressed, exploited and dispossessed are those whose objective interests cannot be adequately addressed by and dealt with under the systems of oppression, exploitation and dispossession that exist today, the foundational such systems being capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy. So if we are going to think about change, these motive forces have to be aware that there may be immediate issues, there may be immediate struggles or forms that they may win, but ultimately, collectively, their objective interests will always be subordinated by these systems of oppression and exploitation. Therefore, these motive forces have to be self-aware; they need to know why they are located where they are in this society and within the system of oppression and exploitation. Part of that self-awareness has to include an understanding of the extent to which they are products of these oppressive and exploitative systems. Thus, it is not acceptable that in our movements we as men, for example, do not adequately think about our own positioning in society as oppressors and about how this plays out in the struggles or organisations that we form. If we were to do that, that would indicate quite a significant level of self-awareness. Another feature that will be required of these motive forces of change would be what Koketso Moeti, in Chapter 8, refers to as ‘agency’. Let me adapt that somewhat and refer to it as ‘self-agency’. This relates to the extent to which people are acting in a conscious way in their own self-interest, whether that is expressed

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through ‘hustling’ or other notions people have referred to, but also through selforganised activity. This is where I think the critique of NGOs has been very useful because, building on Michael Neocosmos’s conceptualisation of presentation versus representation, I maintain that NGOs have not necessarily paid attention to facilitating or triggering self-organised activity. An important issue is that of how knowledge is produced – knowledge about systemic and structural conditions, about tools of analysis, about visions of society – as well as questions of immediate and long-term strategy. These issues are integral to how motive forces constitute themselves as a social force with a social weight and the possibility to upset power, or, to use a well-worn phrase, as a class in itself and of itself. What that will require is, very crucially, deliberate attention to how we build critical consciousness, an area where self-awareness is going to be extremely significant. As Ayanda Kota has stressed in Chapter 10, social movements must speak for themselves, but in that speaking for themselves, to what extent are they engaged in a process of unlearning the oppressive discourses that are present in society, and in that process learning anew in terms of new possibilities, new futures, and so on? Building the social forces that can drive the struggle for change If we are to open a new path in rebuilding the social forces that can drive the struggle for change, there are a number of features that are required as part of a broader, long-term strategy. The new path must be sustained, it must be mass-based, it must be participatory, it must be transformative, it must be about organising. I will explain these five features in some detail, but I must first point out that the new path is clearly different from mobilisation. Mobilisation is essentially about moving people into action for short-term goals: a march, a series of campaigns, and so on. This is different from sustained organisation, because organising is about building transformative dimensions of power: structural power, movement power and the direct power of social forces over the long term. So when the workers came out on strike in Durban in 1973 and built their movement to the point where they formed the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), right to the stage where this federation was at the height of its power, that was clearly a most powerful demonstration of a stratum of the oppressed having built its power in these three dimensions: structural, movement and direct. This example of COSATU makes it very clear what the difference is between mere short-term mobilisation in contrast to long-term organising and the long-term building of

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organisational power. The most successful example of this in the world right now is probably Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST – from its Portuguese name, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), with the landless having been a powerless, dispossessed sector of society up to 1984. Since then, the MST has become a significant social power because, despite its many limitations, it has built and deepened the dimensions of structural power, movement power and direct power. These examples show that if we are to do something useful in approaching this task of rebuilding social forces, we cannot limit our approaches to mobilisation. We have to think in some creative ways about building organised power in the sense that I have suggested. Clearly, if our strategy is organising and not just mobilising, it has to be sustained; it has to be for the long haul. It cannot just be a question of what we will do for the next three years. It has to be something that takes full account of what it will take to change society fundamentally and that is cognisant of the requirements of these human bodies and minds, these human aspirations and the human drama of this long-term struggle. It is also logical that the social forces which will drive the struggle forward need to be mass-based. The strategy for social change has to entail a social base, a social force; it cannot be just a few individuals or a few experts, a point that has been adequately discussed by other contributors. However, one of the mistakes we have made up to now is to think of this social base as an undifferentiated mass. This mass is not homogeneous, and is shaped within itself by very oppressive patriarchal gender relations. So if our strategy is to be mass-based in a new emancipatory sense, it has to pay deliberate attention to how to change the public face, the voice, the interest that shapes that mass, particularly when it comes to challenging patriarchy in society and also in our movements. The third element is that the strategy has to be participatory. Here my use of the word ‘participatory’ is different from the sense of something being participatory in the way invited spaces such as this colloquium are. The nature of a colloquium is that it is an invited space. Typical examples of invited spaces are imbizos, school governing bodies, ward committees, and so on. In these spaces, we can assemble in one place, speak out and verbalise the crisis, but we don’t actually have the power to then act on what we have verbalised. Also, these kinds of spaces do not give us moments or opportunities for conscientisation and for the production of knowledge in a way that involves learning not just from ourselves but also from the generalised experience of struggles elsewhere in the world. These spaces

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are also not participatory in so far as they are not about self-development. True participation requires the creation of spaces for conscientisation, spaces for knowledge production – not from above, but from below, and in horizontal ways. Such spaces should also be participatory in so far as they involve us collectively realising our collective power to change things. Within that collective, we will have our own individual expressions and ways of becoming new human beings, but the collective must also be democratic in real and quite fundamental ways. The last feature of what I think would be a useful strategy for rebuilding the social forces is captured by the term ‘transformative’. Part of the strategy has to be to transform our own consciousness; it has to transform our own power and positionality. I have now moved back to the village after having been working in political organisations, in NGOs, in movements, and also at the university as a university researcher. But for someone like myself, there is this question of power and positionality that constantly traumatises me, because in those rural villages where I work in Keiskammahoek, there is such dispossession, there is such disempowerment that has taken place over centuries, that someone like me is positioned in a very powerful and potentially very problematic place. So how do people like me transform themselves from this elitist position in relation to the constituency or social base that they seek to work with? I don’t think it is easy; it is an ongoing challenge. You can apply this challenge to yourself as an educated person, as a man, as a white person or as any other privileged person in an organisational or social context. The other element of being transformative goes back again to patriarchy, or to what I am referring to as oppressive gender relations. This is quite fundamental. We have become blind to the role that patriarchy plays silently and in hidden ways in terms of how we structure organisations. If we are to talk about emancipation, how do we ensure that the process of emancipation allows us to transform our understandings, our approaches, our practice when it comes to our positionality as men? What you have seen in our organisations in South Africa is the appropriation by men of the language of the struggle of gender equality to perpetuate sexist features and oppressive features in our organisations. I have also seen some women playing along to that male use of power in organisations in ways that really seal off the possibilities for building, or rather refiguring, gender relations anew in our organisations. This transformative element is also linked to what I think we cannot avoid: prefiguring the future emancipated society. I am not one who believes that we

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should wait until the moment of victory of the revolution before we actually begin to live out and experiment with what we want to achieve. I think it is possible to do things here and now with regards to elements of emancipation. Another element of being transformative relates to the question of how we can address immediate demands in a way that links them to long-term perspectives, such that these demands can be related to attempts to address structural and systemic issues. For example, access to water is an immediate demand and it is absolutely important as it relates to immediate dignity, but we need to think about what else it is linked to in so far as systemic and structural barriers are concerned. What are the systemic foundations related to the problem of water? The last component I want to put forward with regards to being transformative relates to points that have received much attention over the last few days: the questions of consciousness, analysis and action. The Freedom Charter was dead from the moment it was adopted in 1955. It gained material life and grasped the consciousness of the people only in the 1980s, when people were in action. Their minds were able to open up to ideas and possibilities to the point where James Motlatsi could declare in opening the 1985 congress of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) that mineworkers must take control. That was not going to be possible without those workers moving into action. So, I think these examples of the Freedom Charter and the mineworkers basically show in a dramatic way how education for its own sake, consciousness building for its own sake, and analysis for its own sake can only go so far. Until people move into conscious action, it is not going to be possible for them to attain and realise a higher level of understanding of themselves and of the society in which they live. Those striking Marikana workers in 2012 learnt things in those few short weeks that would have taken them years to learn if they had not taken the action that they took. So, to sum up, what I am putting forward is that if we are building the motive forces for emancipation, that emancipation would have to be a radical transformative project that ultimately opens the door for the democratic socialist transformation of society. In building those kinds of social forces, a key strategy, which is different from what NGOs normally do, is to combine the above features into a coherent plan of sustained, mass, participatory, transformative organising. During this colloquium, we have spoken a lot about how NGO-based strategies can be depoliticising in that NGOs are not about building a new form of social power. What has not been adequately discussed up to now relates to the way that NGOs lack both structural and systemic analysis and counter-hegemonic

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strategies. This has been implied in various ways, but I want to bring out this point clearly. Another set of limits we need to take into account is the material realities of the oppressed strata that prevent people from organising effectively. When black left activists want to organise a meeting, they have to go through various hoops such as trying to organise taxis and so on, which is very different from the experiences of white left activists or middle-class activists who can get into their cars and move easily to and from whatever activity. That’s just one small example. When a worker living in the township has to leave at six in the morning to go to work, and then at the end of the working day has to queue for some two hours in a taxi rank, it is not going to be straightforward for that person to come out as a social actor, as a political actor. The material realities of the oppressed, the dispossessed and the exploited mean that they are almost structurally disabled from being political or social actors. This limits organisation; this limits the constitution of the new person, of the new agent. For the chronically unemployed, there are other structural disablers. The fact that the unemployed are outside the discipline of capitalism ends up being a problem in itself. Whether we like capitalism or not, the fact is that it disciplines one to wake up and be at work at eight o’clock and to have a structured day, a structured week, a structured year, and so on. Those who are outside work have not experienced that kind of capitalist discipline. They would have developed a different self-discipline if they had their own independent means of existence, but oppressed, dispossessed and exploited people have no ecological, social and economic means to exist and to be self-disciplined because of 350 years of cultural devastation. This is a serious structural disabler. We come across this in the work we do in Keiskammahoek. People don’t understand why we need to take time asking questions and debating issues. They ask, ‘Why do we have to go to a meeting? Why can’t you guys get the money from funders and give us jobs?’ Our approach as an organisation is different from that. We go to these meetings and we say that what we’ve got here is a process, a difficult, long, boring process. The process of disempowerment has actually taken away people’s ability to imagine how to organise society. The other limit we have to face is that the oppressed are themselves products of oppression and imbibe many of the discourses of oppression. I am not romantic about the oppressed, because it is easy to find reactionary tendencies among the very forces who should be fighting and mobilising for emancipation. While you

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can come across that, what you can also discover, which I like, is that the best of the poor are actually full of disdain, rebellious, disrespectful, rude and out of order, and that is good. This attribute is the kind of instinct we need to bring out and shape and build upon in a very different way. Strengths and weaknesses of South African social movements Despite all manner of weaknesses, social movements in South Africa have achieved one crucial thing that we must dare to hold on to: the dramatisation of the social crisis. That drama is very important. The throwing of stones and all that goes with it is absolutely important. It not yet disrupting power, it is not yet constituting an alternative, it does not yet constitute a social power, but it’s a very useful confidence builder that can open the door. However, despite that dramatisation, I do not think that in South Africa we have anything coming close to social movements of a kind required to change society. In my view, there are five reasons for this. Firstly, like NGOs, the majority of what pretend to be social movements have not taken the time to analyse the systemic and structural roots of the problems that face them. Secondly, they are focused on the question of the immediate, which is important, but that question of the immediate has meant short-term struggles that do not link to structural and systemic roots of the problems they face and the need for a long-term perspective. You win access to treatment for HIV, you win access to antiretrovirals, but you leave the public health system unaddressed. The third challenge or weakness is the fact of ANC hegemony, which has forced people to seek concessions from the state and not to go beyond seeking concessions from the state. The fourth problem, as I have already implied, is a lack of strategy and vision. Finally, the fifth major weakness is that those of us acting in social movements have not paid enough attention to the intellectual task. We have allowed anti-intellectualism to emerge, yet the example of a Moses Kotane – even the example of a Gwede Mantashe, whatever his problematic political stance is today – speaks to a very proud and rich history in South Africa of organic intellectuals of the oppressed emerging in struggle, grappling with ideas and shaping society. We have basically allowed the dumbing down of our society even in the way in which we constitute our movements. The examples of the MST and of the Zapatistas in Mexico are very interesting in this regard because they have paid sustained attention to the development of organic intellectuals of the oppressed. Any intellectual of another kind, whether

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from a university or whatever, is equalised immediately by getting into an MST or Zapatista space in ways that we are not doing. In the 1980s in South Africa, fourteen-year-olds who were already activists in the struggle against apartheid could read and engage with texts of serious revolutionary theory. At that time, ideas were beginning to emerge that could not only help explain where people were but also give people the tools to envision a different society. Furthermore, in contrast to what pretends to be social movements in South Africa, the MST and the Zapatistas have gone beyond the immediate to embrace a broader perspective for the long term, but in ways that also address the immediate in the here and now. Examples to learn from So, if there are all these problems with NGOs and with social movements, and if I’m suggesting the strategy I have outlined above, what examples do we have that we can learn from? What examples do we have of organisations that have the features I described earlier? While none of the examples I am going to discuss now present the totality of all the characteristics I have put forward, I think they do contain significant elements of transformative, emancipatory strategy. The first example is land NGOs in South Africa. These NGOs have sustained a very particular critique of market-based land reform, one that did not come from mass organisations of the landless. That critique of failed land reform came from land NGOs, and what is very interesting about them is that once they realised that as NGOs they could go only so far, around 2004 they began a serious and deliberate shift to mass-based organisation, to mass orientation. Examples of such organisations are the Surplus People Project (SPP)1 and the Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE).2 There has been what I think is a rather undue attention paid to the Landless People’s Movement (LPM). The LPM entailed some short-term drama, which I think messed up in various ways, but overall it was a very limited experience in building sustained rural mass movements. Through the TCOE shift to building mass organisations, such regionally based mass organisations as the Ilizwi Lamafama Small Farmers Union, which organises in 44 villages in the Buffalo City municipality, have emerged across different districts of the country. The building of these small movements has taken effort and consciousness building. Through campaigns like the Vulamasango Singene Campaign,3 at least 50 000 people in the Eastern Cape have been organised in very conscious ways around the issue of land restitution and reparations. If it had not been for some of the progressive NGOs, we would have not seen this shift.

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Indeed, it is a problem that the mass movements which have emerged in the rural sector have largely been formed by NGOs and are still dependent on them. We need to acknowledge this, but our reflection should not stop there. For example, the farm workers’ rebellion in the Western Cape from November 2012 to February 2013 would not have been possible without the work of NGOs like the Women on Farms Project,4 the TCOE and the SPP over some fifteen years building possibilities for dehumanised farm workers to begin to realise themselves as human beings. So the picture is far more nuanced than just NGOs acting against mass organisation. In the case of rural people, unlike urban workers or the urban unemployed, they are isolated and this makes organising difficult. These land NGOs of various types have played a crucial role in bringing some semblance of organisation. Another example of an NGO doing positive work is the Church Land Programme,5 which is mentioned by Firoze Manji in Chapter 1. This organisation seeks to play a particular role in building the capacities of the oppressed to grapple within this society. The Church Land Programme sees itself as playing the role of accompanying the oppressed in their journey to self-discovery and self-realisation. Other organisations that do not fit the dominant model of NGOs, and thus deserve more attention from academics working on these questions, include the Co-operative and Policy Alternative Centre (COPAC),6 the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG),7 the Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC),8 and Khanya College.9 These four are anti-capitalist NGOs that contrast sharply with the dominant thesis in our debate: namely, that NGOs depoliticise the struggle. These organisations are committed precisely to politicising the struggle, particularly in the anti-capitalist sense. In relation to the state, they seek to build mass movements that can challenge the state, but also to begin to think about things beyond the state. Other examples I want to discuss relate to new processes emerging in South Africa. In particular, I want to speak about two groups with which I have some involvement: the Awethu! People’s Platform for Social Justice and the United Front initiated by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). These two examples can help us think about what forms of organisation and what processes will take forward the struggle for social justice. In the case of Awethu, we began with a big public launch in November 2013, but after that event, what we have done is to say, ‘Slow down. Let’s not go out and organise campaigns; let’s actually institute a process of consulting people in the provinces.’ The Awethu approach aims to see how we can combine the capacities located in NGOs with a

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broader process of reconstituting social forces through dialogue. The United Front displays similar features in that they promoting the idea that workers and the unemployed need to reconnect. There is now talk about building broad people’s coalitions. Both the United Front and Awethu are new, but I think they bring to the fore concrete questions of how we think about forms of organisation. The useful thing about both organisations is that they break out beyond the limit of the party political form. I am a political activist, I have been a member of a political party, I would like to belong to a socialist worker party once it is formed, but despite my party political-animal status, I think the party political form is limited and cannot answer all of our questions. Much more useful is a diversity of people’s movements and a diversity of popular alliances on the ground working on specific issues, including rising to the challenge of addressing the weaknesses I pointed to earlier. Conclusion My fundamental thesis is that we should go beyond thinking about NGOs and rather think of our task as being building popular power for emancipation and for a radical project of transformation. This task involves many dimensions, including the question of race. We have to address and think through race, but I think we have to go beyond some of what I think are limiting formulations on the issue of race. Through the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the apartheid era, we had a far more progressive approach to the question of black liberation and nonracialism. Yes, there were limits relating to the divisions between the UDF and the Black Consciousness movements, but there was a very useful principle in the nonracial project as the UDF represented it. This has been lost, such that when there are explosions of anger against the system we have, you then get notions that go against what I think is actually quite an emancipatory non-racial project. While the UDF should have spent more time thinking about the approaches that Africanist and Black Consciousness thinkers such as Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko were putting forward, I think there is some value in reasserting a progressive non-racial project which takes into account the experiences of the Pan-Africanist movement and Black Consciousness, but in ways that go beyond just dealing with the pain of being black and being oppressed. There is space for discussion of race, but some of these discussions don’t go far enough in presenting the notion of a new society. Biko said that in the new South Africa there will be no black and no white, there will be humanity – we need to work out what that means.

174

CONCLUSION

Clearly, NGOs are not up to this task; I don’t think I need to repeat that. What we need to think about is a whole range of other forms of organisation and other forms of struggle. Now let me make another controversial point which relates to the conditions that will best allow us to take forward these struggles. Vladimir Lenin talked about the democratic republic under capitalism as presenting the best conditions for the working class to take forward its struggle. I have a similar view about the South African Constitution. I do not think we can just dismiss the Constitution as being merely liberal democratic. If you look at the struggles of workers throughout the 1980s, even before the new Labour Relations Act was formally established, workers through their struggles in the apartheid period had in fact themselves established the framework for post-apartheid labour-relations legislation. When Mrs Komani took the apartheid government to court to challenge the exclusion of black women from being residents of Cape Town, she was in fact writing the new Constitution.10 So as much as the new Constitution is indeed influenced by imprints from other jurisdictions, we should not forget that it also has a mass imprint. The October 1989 Conference for a Democratic Future laid out the main parameters of this Constitution using the Harare Declaration as a basis. So to say that the South African Constitution is Eurocentric or elitist is actually to ignore how the people in action, in struggle, wrote certain elements of the Constitution in very fundamental ways. In addition, the inclusion of socio-economic rights in the Constitution is quite important – it is a victory for the people, and I don’t think we should give that away. Similarly, regarding land, those on the left make a massive mistake to agree with the Democratic Alliance that section 25 of the Constitution is a property clause. It is not; it is a clause mandating expropriation of land for redistribution purposes. In my view, we throw out the baby with the dirty bath water if we read the Constitution in very limiting ways. I think there is space for struggles around the Constitution in order to test its limits. Obviously it is not socialist and it falls short of responding to the African context, but at the same time I think it reflects a radical transformative logic that coexists with elements of liberalism, and I think the Constitution represents the nature of the historical compromise that produced it. We need to struggle around it, and in fact I dare to argue that the radical logic of social justice has the best potential to take forward the struggle towards resolving what has been referred to as the ‘black condition’ in this colloquium and overall oppression, exploitation and dispossession in our society. So what I am presenting here is the thesis that the Constitution is a tool that we can use despite

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its limitations. It has the potential to open up space for struggle, for transformative change. Finally, to approach the task of changing society solely through the work of NGOs is to limit our imagination. Maybe what we need to think about is the question of what capacities, what spaces for reflection and strategic development, which tools and kinds of action we need to build. For me, that question opens up a wider range of possibilities. Within that question lies another: what elements, what momentum, what capacity for a new society can we imagine and build in the here and now?

Notes 1. See http://www.spp.org.za/. 2. See http://www.tcoe.org.za/. 3. See http://www.brc21.co.za/vulamasango/main.html. 4. See http://www.wfp.org.za/. 5. See http://www.churchland.co.za/. 6. See http://www.copac.org.za/. 7. See http://www.ilrig.org/. 8. See http://aidc.org.za/. 9. See http://khanyacollege.org.za/. 10 . For a discussion of this court case, see R.L. Abel, Politics by Other Means: Law in the Struggle Against Apartheid: 1980–1994 (New York: Routledge, 1995), 24–43.

176

NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

Notes on the Contributors Kirk Helliker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology as well as Director of the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies at Rhodes University. His main research areas are agrarian land reform, civil society and theories of social emancipation, with a particular focus on Zimbabwe. Kirk spent fifteen years in Zimbabwe, where he worked in the field of rural development, before rejoining academic life in 2006. One of his interests is in the role of NGOs in struggles around development and transformation. Mazibuko Jara is Executive Director of Ntinga Ntaba kaNdoda, a communitycontrolled organisation that works in thirteen villages in Keiskammahoek South in the Eastern Cape. He is also a member of the steering committee of Awethu, a platform of civil society organisations and social movements working for social justice in South Africa. In addition, he is a founding member of the Democratic Left Front and a Research Associate at the Law, Race and Gender Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. Ayanda Kota is a member of the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) in Grahamstown and former president of the Makana Football Association. He is a campaigner for social justice whose activism has its roots in the Black Consciousness Movement. Injairu Kulundu is a social practitioner, vocalist and lyricist who uses politics, drama and arts-based methodologies as part of her praxis. She has experience in creating and participating in social learning projects that aim to engage the whole person (mind, heart, body, intuition and the imagination) in meaning making at the edge of our subjective boundaries. She is interested in mapping the transgressive learning of change drivers on the continent to better understand how we can regenerate liberatory pedagogy in contemporary Africa. Injairu is a PhD candidate at the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes University.

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Tshepo Madlingozi teaches law at the University of Pretoria. He is also a research collaborator with the Portugal-based ALICE project, which is dedicated to promoting epistemologies of the Global South. Tshepo also serves as an advocacy adviser and board member for the Khulumani Support Group and is a member of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution. He recently coedited Socio-economic Rights in South Africa: Symbol or Substance? (2014). One of Tshepo’s key research areas relates to the use of the law by social movements, including questions about how the law (and NGOs providing legal advice) can assist social movements in their attempts to achieve social justice. Firoze Manji is a Visiting Researcher at the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University. He was formerly the Director of the Pan-Africanism Institute at ThoughtWorks, and head of the Documentation, Information and Communications Centre of the Council for Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Pambazuka News and Pambazuka Press/Fahamu Books, and founder and former executive director of Fahamu – Networks for Social Justice. Firoze has published widely on health, social policy, human rights and political science, and pan-Africanism, and has authored and edited a wide range of books on social justice in Africa. He is coeditor with Sokari Ekine of African Awakenings: The Emerging Revolutions, and co-editor with Bill Fletcher Jr of Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amílcar Cabral. Sally Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University. She teaches African studies, comparative politics and African political economy. Her main research interests relate to the politics of development and NGO work, and to race and higher education in South Africa. Koketso Moeti is the founder and Executive Director of amandla.mobi, a public benefit organisation that works to turn every cell phone into a democracy-building tool. She is also the National Coordinator of Local Government Action, a loose alliance of organisations supporting communities in their local government struggles. Koketso has a long background in civic activism and has over the years worked at the intersection of governance, communication and citizen action.

178

NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

Gladys Mpepho is Chairperson of the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM), a social movement, in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape. Michael Neocosmos is Director of the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University (UHURU), a research centre focusing on questions relating to human emancipation in Africa and the Global South. Before joining Rhodes University, Michael taught at various universities throughout the continent. His main research areas are rural development, migrant labour, ethnicity, citizenship, state and civil society, and political transition, as well as issues of social theory concerning development, democracy, human rights and political subjectivities. He is editor of Social Relations in Rural Swaziland  (1987) and author of The Agrarian Question in Southern Africa (1993), From Foreign Natives to Native Foreigners: Explaining Xenophobia in South Africa (2006 and 2010), and Thinking Freedom in Africa: Towards a Theory of Emancipatory Politics (2016). Patronella Nqaba is a Researcher at the Public Affairs Research Institute in Johannesburg. She has experience in communications and has completed an MA degree in political studies at Rhodes University. Her thesis is titled ‘NGOs and the Depoliticisation of Development: The Case of GADRA Education in Grahamstown’. Thapelo Tselapedi teaches politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg. He is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics, at the same university. His doctoral thesis is titled ‘The Darker People, Decolonisation and the Making of the International: A Theoretical Enquiry’. He holds an MA degree in political and international studies from Rhodes University. After completing his master’s thesis, an exploration of the nexus between social movements, party politics and civil society, he left academia to join an NGO in Johannesburg as a researcher writing about social movements. In addition to co-writing ‘Reclaiming Power: A Case Study of the Thembelihle Crisis Committee’, published in the Good Governance Learning Network publication Active Citizenship Matters, he reviewed the book Popular Politics and Resistance Movements in South Africa in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies. Thapelo is also an active public speaker.

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NGOs AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND BEYOND

Ashley Westaway is the Manager of GADRA Education, a Grahamstown-based public benefit organisation which provides key education services and advocates for transformation of the school education system. He is also a Research Associate in the Department of Education at Rhodes University. He has written on land reform, rural development and rural politics, with a particular focus on the Eastern Cape.

180

INDEX

INDEX

Abahlali baseMjondolo 20, 45, 50 n.3, 66, 67, 158, 161 Abuja Agreement (UK-Zimbabwe, 2001) 91 Achebe, Chinua 136 ActionAid 29 Afghanistan 34

Benjamin Mahlasela High School (Grahamstown) 102 Biko, Steve 54, 56, 58, 63, 64, 67, 69, 70, 174 Black Consciousness Movement 55, 56, 61, 69, 174

Africa

black radical tradition 61, 63, 64, 69, 144



economic growth 30



uprisings 30

Border Rural Committee (BRC) 114–15



views of 42

African National Congress (ANC) 56, 61, 66, 67, 68–9, 142, 151, 171 African Peer Review Mechanism 43 African Renaissance 43 African Union (AU) 43, 44 Africanism 55–6, 174 Alcoholics Anonymous 3 Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) 173 Althusser, Louis 48–9 Ama-Afrika Poqo 144 Amnesty International 3

Burkina Faso 22–4, 30 Cabral, Amílcar 25 Campaoré, Blaise 22, 23, 24, 30 Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) 93 capitalism 26, 29, 39, 43, 48, 49, 56, 58, 64 CARE International 29, 85, 96 n.6 Carroll, Rebecca 65 Church Land Programme 50 n.3, 173 civil society 9, 10, 26, 29, 32, 33–4, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50 n.1, 66, 158, 162, 165

Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) 160–1

class 55, 58, 63, 64, 65

Arab Spring 6, 152

climate change 28, 29

Archie Mbolekwa Senior Primary School

colonialism 4, 37, 59–60

(Grahamstown) 104 Awethu! People’s Platform for Social Justice 173–4

colonialism ‘of a special type’ 55 Commercial Farmers Union (Zimbabwe) 90 Community-Based Resettlement Approaches and Technologies (CREATE,

Balindlela, Nosimo 106 Bantu Education 100–1

Zimbabwe) 83, 86, 90, 91, 96 n.6 Concerned Citizens Group (Durban) 160

181

NGOs AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND BEYOND

Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) 166–7

Friedman, Steven 59, 64 Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) 82, 95 n.5

Co-operative and Policy Alternative Centre (COPAC) 173

GADRA Education 11–12, 102–3, 104–5, 106–7, 109–10, 111–12, 113–14, 115,

corporate social responsibility 29–30

117–19, 120, 121, 123–4, 125–6, 127, 128, 129

decolonisation 25–6 Democratic Alliance (DA) 67, 175



124–5

Department for International Development (DFID, Britain) 80, 93, 95 n.4 development 4–5, 6, 8, 9, 21, 43, 44, 122, 129 ‘development pornography’ see victimhood Doctors Without Borders see Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Dugard, Jackie 66 Environmental Liaison Forum-Nongovernmental Organisation (ELF-NGO) Land Working Group (Zimbabwe) 83, 88 Fanon, Frantz 25, 37, 39, 40–1, 42, 57, 144, 158 Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (FCTZ) 86, 92 Farm Orphans Support Trust (FOST, Zimbabwe) 87, 92 Foundation for Human Rights 51 n.10 Freedom Charter 51 n.10, 55, 62, 169 freedoms

emancipatory 10–11, 14, 19–21, 25, 30, 32–3, 35, 36, 38–9, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49–50, 51 n.6, 51 n.9, 164, 168–9,

parent engagement programme 122–3,



primary school literacy project 121



tertiary education bursaries 110–11, 114

GADRA Matric School (GMS) 103, 104, 110, 111, 113, 124, 126–7 General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) 86 Graeme College (Grahamstown) 108 Grahamstown (Rhini)

poverty 118–19



schools 101–5, 106, 108, 109, 110, 113,



service delivery 149

114, 118, 120, 123, 125 Grahamstown Area Distress Relief Association (GADRA) 100, 117 Grahamstown High School Principals’ Forum 111–13, 123 Grahamstown Tertiary Education Bridging Programme (GRATEBP) 103–4 Henderson, Thelma 102–3, 104–5, 106, 107, 108, 110 human emancipation see freedoms, emancipatory human rights 6, 13, 32, 34–5, 42–3, 44–5, 46–8, 159, 160, 162

174, 176

individual 66

ideology 48–9



licensed 10, 20–1, 25, 26

Ilizwi Lamafama Small Farmers Union

French Revolution 36–7

182

(Eastern Cape) 172

INDEX

Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG, Zimbabwe) 85, 88, 91, 96 n.6

Louverture, Toussaint 37 Lumumba, Patrice 25

International Criminal Court 34

Lutheran Development Services 93

International Fund for Agricultural

Luthuli, Albert 61

Development (IFAD) 83 International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG) 173 international non-governmental organisations

Mafeje, Archie 69, 142 Magubane, Bernard 57, 58, 67, 69 Mamdani, Mahmood 42, 49, 59–60

(INGOs) see non-governmental

Mandela, Nelson 61, 68

organisations, international

Manicaland Development Association 96 n.6 Mantashe, Gwede 171

Kangai, Kumbirai 84

Marikana 26, 151, 169

Keeton, Margie 115 n.2

Marx, Karl 39, 48

Keiskammahoek 168, 170

Marxism 46, 51 n.11, 59, 144

Khanya College 173

Mary Waters High School (Grahamstown)

Khulumani Support Group 13, 156, 157 Khutliso Daniels High School (Grahamstown) 102, 108, 110, 113

101, 108, 110, 113 Masifunde 103 Mbeki, Govan 106

knowledge 166, 167–8

Mcuba, Radio 113

Kotane, Moses 55, 171

Mda, A.P. 55

Kunzwana Women’s Association (KWA,

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) 3, 42

Zimbabwe) 92

memory 26–7 metropolitan left 12, 54, 57–8, 61, 62, 63–4,

Laing, R.D. 136

65, 67, 68–9, 70, 143–5, 170

Lancaster, Melanie 126–7

Mfazwe, Wendy 113

land networks 79, 80, 83, 95 n.3

Mills, Charles W. 59, 69

Land Rights Network Southern Africa

missionaries 4, 5, 21, 30, 34, 101

(LRNSA) 79, 95 n.3, 95 n.4

Mngxitama, Andile 64, 69

Landless People’s Movement (LPM) 161, 172

‘Model C’ schools 105–6, 107, 108, 112

Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST,

Motlatsi, James 169

Brazil) 167, 171–2 LandNet Africa 79

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC, Zimbabwe) 89

Lembede, Anton 55–6

Moyo, Sam 82, 85, 88–9

Lenin, Vladimir 39, 40, 175

Msimang, Sisonke 68

liberal tradition, South African see

Mwelekeo Wa Non-governmental

metropolitan left Locke, John 36, 51 n.7

Organisation (MWENGO) 80, 81, 84, 94

183

NGOs AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND BEYOND

Nathaniel Nyaluza High School



and human rights discourse 34

(Grahamstown) 101, 102, 108, 110,



and ideology 155

113



image of 9, 132

National Association of Non-governmental



intermediary 75

Organisations (NANGO, Zimbabwe)



internal dynamics 131–4, 140–1

91



international (INGOs) 1



Kenya 1, 77, 78



and land reform 76–81, 172–3

National Development Plan (NDP) 143



Malawi 80, 81

National Land Alliance of Zambia 80



Mozambique 77

National Land Committee 78, 95 n.3



Namibia 79

National Land Forum (Tanzania) 78



and neoliberalism 5, 29, 34, 119

National Union of Metalworkers of South



and participants 133, 134–6, 137–9



recruitment of staff 154



and representation 27, 30–1



and social justice 6–7, 8, 9–10, 11, 12,

National Constitutional Assembly (NCA, Zimbabwe) 89, 90

Africa (NUMSA) 173 National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) 38, 169 neoliberalism 5, 21–2, 30, 33, 45, 46, 119

14, 29, 117, 139–40, 149–50, 155,

Ngcoza, Ken 108

165, 169–70

NGO Consultative Land Conference



South Africa 1–2, 54, 63, 68, 78–9, 132,

Nkosi, Lewis 61



and the state 33, 35, 44, 50

Nombulelo High School (Grahamstown)



Tanzania 78



technocratic approach 8, 120

Non-Aligned Movement 42



Thailand 77

non-governmental organisations (NGOs)



Uganda 78



and advocacy 11–12, 28, 31, 76, 100, 115



welfarist 11–12, 100, 115, 117, 119, 139



Africa 1–2, 4–5, 6, 24, 25, 34, 42



and white saviour complex 22, 23, 35,



Burkina Faso 24



challenges to 6



and young people 134, 135–6, 138



characteristics and definitions 2–4, 7–8,



Zambia 80



Zimbabwe 11, 75, 81–90, 91–5

(Zimbabwe, 1997) 83–4

102, 108, 110

14 n.2, 32, 33, 38, 157–9

and community empowerment 47, 122, 124, 125, 126, 129, 150, 166



education 128–9



funding of 2, 9, 29, 33, 41, 79, 137, 138, 152–3



growth of 1–2, 5–6

184

153

152

Norwegian People’s Aid 84 Ntsika High School (Grahamstown) 102, 108, 110, 113 Occupy movement 6 official development assistance (ODA) 2

INDEX

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 1, 14 n.1

Silveira House (Zimbabwe) 96 n.6 slavery 37, 51 n.7, 57

Organisation of African Unity (OAU) 43

Sobukwe, Robert 55, 56, 61, 70, 174

Oxfam 3, 22, 24, 29, 80

social democracy 46 social justice 7–8, 11, 36, 62, 153, 162, 175

Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) 55, 56, 142

social movements 4, 13–14, 26, 27, 32, 33,

patriarchy 167, 168

38, 81, 142, 143, 144–5, 149, 150,

P.J. Olivier High School (Grahamstown) 108

151, 152, 153–4, 158, 159, 161, 166,

Plan International 92

171, 172

Podemos (Spain) 44

socialism 164, 169

politics, nature of 8, 37–8, 39–41, 43, 44,

South Africa

48, 49, 50 Poor People’s Alliance 161 poverty 4, 5, 8, 22, 29, 64, 118–20, 121, 122, 125, 128 privatisation 21, 24, 28, 106, 108 race and racism 55, 56, 57, 58, 59–60, 62, 63, 64–5, 67, 69, 70, 132, 174 Rawls, John 62 Red Cross 3 representation see politics, nature of resource extraction 28, 30 Rhodes University 127 Rhodes University College (RUC) Coloured Practising School see Mary Waters High School Rhodes University Outreach Programme 104 Rosa Luxemburg Foundation 41 Rukuni Land Commission (Zimbabwe) 82, 83, 84, 95 n.5 Rural Network 20



civil society 54



constitution 62–3, 107, 157, 159–60, 161, 175–6



education 101–2, 105–6, 107–8, 109,



housing 161



inequality 60



labour law 175



land policy 78–9, 175



the left see metropolitan left



legal system 159–62



literacy and numeracy 107, 121, 122



post-1994 negotiated settlement 62, 63,

118, 121–2, 128

66, 68

whites 54, 55, 56–7, 142, 143–4

South African Communist Party (SACP) 55, 63, 64, 69, 142 South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) 123 Southern African Network on Land (SANL) 95 n.3

Sankara, Thomas 22, 23, 24

Soweto Electricity Crisis Coalition 161

Save the Children 29, 90

structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) 5,

school governing bodies (SGBs) 106, 122, 125, 167

34 Surplus People Project (SPP) 172, 173

185

NGOs AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND BEYOND

Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) 93 Syriza (Greece) 44

water 160–1, 169 Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign 161 Women and Land in Zimbabwe 93 Women and Land Lobby Group (WLLG,

T.E.M. Mrwetyana High School (Grahamstown) 108, 110

Zimbabwe) 82, 83, 85, 87, 90 Women Farmers Conference (Zimbabwe,

Thatcher, Margaret 26

1995) 82–3

Thema, R.V. Selope 56

Women on Farms Project 173

trade unions 3, 142, 151, 166

Women’s Action Group (Zimbabwe) 82

transnational corporations 29, 30

Working Committee on Land Reform in

Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) 158 Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE) 172, 173

Namibia 79 World Bank 41 World Vision 29, 92–3

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 42–3, 156–7

youth wage subsidy 151

Tyala, Zak 113 Zapatistas 171–2 Uganda Land Alliance 78

Zikode, Sbu 66

Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) 13,

Zimbabwe

149, 151–2, 153, 161 unemployment 170–1



human rights 89–90, 95



land occupation (Third Chimurenga) 89,



land reform and development 11, 75,

90, 91, 92, 93–4, 95

United Democratic Front (UDF) 174 United Front 173, 174 United States Africa Command (US AFRICOM) 28 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 93–4 Upper Volta see Burkina Faso

81– 95

structural adjustment 81

Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions 89 Zimbabwe Farmers Union 95 n.5 Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) 82, 84, 89

Van der Mescht, Hennie 111–12 Velile High School (Grahamstown) 113 victimhood 24, 25, 45, 47, 152 Victoria Girls’ High School (Grahamstown) 108 violence 19, 22, 24, 25–6 Vulamasango Singene Campaign (Eastern Cape) 172

186

Zimbabwe Regional Environment Organisation (ZERO) 79, 82, 84, 85, 88, 92, 95 n.3 Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association 84 Zimbabwe Women’s Bureau 82 Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) 84, 89

INDEX

187

NGOS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND BEYOND

188

INDEX

189

NGOS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA AND BEYOND

190