Finding Solid Ground: Civil Society Organizations in a Democratic South Africa
BY LEHN BENJAMIN
In January 2006 a group of nonprofit directors in Cape Town wrapped up a two year commitment to a peer learning cooperative. This initiative was intended to strengthen the capacity of black women leaders and improve the sustainability and effectiveness of the nonprofits they directed. These women all had significant organizational experience but were relatively new to their leadership positions. The issues they addressed would sound familiar to many nonprofit executives in the United States: ineffective board governance, increased competition for funding, and difficult leadership transitions. Yet this group of women confronted these management issues along side larger questions about the role of nonprofits in one of the most historically significant democratization processes of our time: the ending of apartheid and the transition to a representative democracy. This cooperative, funded in part by the Mott Foundation, was one of many initiatives intended to encourage a vibrant and strong civil society in South Africa. The experiences of these women highlight some of the issues facing nonprofit organizations and their evolving role in South Africa’s democratic transformation.
South Africa has a long history of organizations operating outside of the state for collective purposes. Under apartheid (1948-1994), the state had an amicable relationship with nonprofits serving white South Africans while repressing oppositional organizations—including the African National Congress, the Black Consciousness Movement and the Pan African Congress—that worked for the rights of disenfranchised South Africans. By the 1980s, the state loosened its grip on black civil society, partly in response to continued resistance on the ground and partly in response to reformist elements in the ruling party. These changes were meant to co-opt some portion of the disenfranchised population and placate mounting international pressure to end apartheid. Instead the state’s actions spurred the rapid growth of civil society organizations and strengthened the anti-apartheid movement. For example, the United Democratic Front was established in 1983 as an umbrella coalition for anti-apartheid organizations and at its peak represented over 700 groups and close to 3 million people. These organizations challenged apartheid through various legal and protest actions and created space for individuals to bridge racial and class divisions to build the relationships that were necessary for the peaceful transition to a multi-racial democracy.
Following the democratic elections in 1994, South Africa’s new government worked to create an environment in which nonprofits could flourish. The government passed the Nonprofit Organization (NPO) Act in 1997. This established an NPO Directorate to support and strengthen civil society organizations and it repealed the 1978 Fundraising Act that prohibited organizations and individuals from receiving or giving donations without the approval of the state. It also called on government to coordinate policy implementation with nonprofits. The government then set up the National Development Agency and the National Distribution Trust Fund to administer public and private funds to nonprofits so they could better address communities’ socioeconomic needs. In 2000, and again in 2006, the government took steps to improve the tax code to benefit nonprofits. Organizations could now register with the South African Revenue Service to become Public Benefit Organizations, thereby giving organizations tax exempt status and providing tax breaks to potential donors. At the same time, new coordinating organizations emerged within the sector. The Nonprofit Consortium was established in 1998 to ensure a supportive legal framework for nonprofits by simplifying compliance requirements, ensuring ease of organizational incorporation and training nonprofits to lobby. The South African NGO Coalition was founded in 1995 as a membership based organization and is now the largest single umbrella organization for nonprofits in southern Africa.
Today South Africa has approximately 100,000 civil society organizations, exceeding the numbers for most developing countries. Collectively these organizations expend $1.7 billion and employ about 9% of the total formal non-agricultural workforce (employing more people than the mining, construction or transportation industries). This aggregate picture fails to convey some striking differences among these organizations, including differences in their funding levels and their relationship to the state. Half (53%) are community-based organizations working at the grass roots level to meet citizens’ basic survival needs and operate with little or no formal funding; 16% are religious organizations; 11% are organizations that have registered under South Africa’s Section 21 Companies Act and tend to be larger, more professional organizations that contract with the state; 5% are unions; 4% are trusts or foundations; and the remaining nonprofits are either burial societies, cooperatives, political parties or other types of nonprofits.
Despite the growing number of nonprofits and the steps taken to create an enabling environment for the sector, South African organizations confront several challenges in the new political context. Donor priorities have changed. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the amount of funds from European and US donors flowing into South Africa increased. International donors saw civil society organizations as the legitimate representatives of the people, whether they were providing services or resisting apartheid. To avoid scrutiny by the state, funding was often covert and consequently, donors’ expectations for their grantees were minimal. After the first democratic elections took place donors began to channel resources to support the new legitimate government. Consequently, many organizations that received international funding prior to the democratic transition found themselves struggling to stay afloat. A 1996 survey found that most civil society organizations collapsed because international donors withdrew their funds.
A shift in donor priorities was not the only challenge for South African nonprofits. Following the elections, the role and purpose of many organizations that formed to fight apartheid was no longer firmly established. At the same time, an estimated 60% of civil society leadership moved into government or the commercial sectors. Many civil society organizations struggled to meet the new technical and professional requirements of donors. In the case of the WNC, donors expressed interest in continuing to fund the coalition but concerns surfaced about the strategic direction and capacity of the organization. The old Women’s National Coalition leadership moved into government and the new leadership was unable to put forward a strategic national agenda for a women’s movement and failed to meet some basic funder reporting requirements. Other organizations successfully redefined their missions in a way that aligned with donors’ concerns. The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) moved from “promoting democracy to making it work better.” The Black Sash, established in 1955 by white women to protest forced removals and pass laws, reconstituted itself in 1995 and “moved from fighting apartheid and building democracy to defending civil rights and promoting social justice.” Redefinition of organizational mission was critical in continuing to secure donor support.
Civil society organizations also faced critical questions about their role in relation to the state: were they partners in meeting massive development needs, watchdogs in ensuring the state was accountable, policy advocates, or an oppositional voice when the state failed to respond to citizen concerns? Before 1994 the relationship between many organizations and the apartheid state was oppositional. Immediately after the elections, both government and civil society leaders saw nonprofits as partners in addressing a myriad of social and economic issues left by 400 years of colonialism and over 40 years of apartheid rule. After a brief honeymoon period, civil society leaders began debating whether this partnership role would compromise their independence or whether collaboration with government was necessary to ensure that government policies better addressed societal problems. At the same time, government officials began to question nonprofits’ espoused watchdog function, raising concerns that nonprofits were simply the carriers of foreign donor agendas rather than the priorities of South Africans. Newly elected government officials saw themselves as legitimate representatives of their constituency, not unelected nonprofit leaders. In fact, studies had shown that donor funding in South Africa favored urban nonprofits with a regional focus that mirrored donors’ ideas and conceptions of democracy.
The relationship between civil society organizations and the new democratic government was also shaped significantly by South Africa’s integration into the global economy. In 1996, the government faced strong opposition from organized labor and other groups when it dropped its social welfare policy framework, the Reconstruction and Development Plan, in favor of an economic policy framework called Growth Employment and Reconstruction that focused on reducing tariffs, deregulating industry, and privatizing state assets. During this period, local governments introduced cost-recovery schemes that resulted in water and electricity cutoffs to millions of South Africans for nonpayment of bills, while unemployment was rising and communities were confronting an HIV/Aids pandemic. Government failure to adequately respond to these issues and the growing recognition that its new policies likely exacerbated the problems, spurred the formation of new oppositional organizations—including Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee and the Treatment Action Campaign—along with survivalist groups that now tried to meet basic community needs.
South Africa’s successful democratic transition was undoubtedly one of the most significant events of the 20th century. The country now has free and fair elections, universal adult suffrage and one of the most far reaching constitutions to ensure the protection of legal and civil rights. But democratic consolidation depends on more than a set of formal institutions and procedures. Scholars, policymakers and donors suggest that civil society plays a critical role in this process by promoting pluralism, fostering political participation and encouraging democratic norms. As the South African experience suggests, ensuring a strong civil society is no small feat, even for a country with a historically vibrant third sector. For the women who participated in the cooperativeone of the most significant benefits was realizing they were not alone in the challenges they faced leading their organizations in a country undergoing dramatic change. Not only were they creating systems to effectively manage their organizations in this new environment, they were redefining their organization’s role in a post-apartheid era. As South Africans continue to debate the role of these organizations in the new dispensation—and with it, their vision of a democratic South Africa—they join a growing worldwide conversation about civil society’s contribution to democracy.
Lehn M. Benjamin (lbenjami@gmu.edu) is assistant professor of nonprofit studies in the Department of Public and International Affairs (http://pia.gmu.edu/). The terms nonprofit, civil society, and nongovernmental organizations continue to be debated in South Africa but there has been some formal agreement to use nonprofit. The term “black” was used by the anti-apartheid movement to refer to all those disenfranchised under apartheid: African, “Colored” and Indian. The peer learning cooperative was a project of Inyathelo; its methodology was developed and trademarked by Andre Zaiman and Piet Hunan. For more information on the peer learning cooperative go to http://www.inyathelo.co.za. This article was first published in print and citations have been removed due to space limitations, but are available from the author.
