Working with Government (2016)

Persistence, Persistence, Persistence!

The Complex Process of Engaging with Government

Nobhongo Gxolo June 2016

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Title: Persistence, Persistence, Persistence! The Complex Process of Engaging with Government Published: Oxfam Australia in June 2016 Author: Nobhongo Gxolo Editors: Glenise Levendal and Caili Forrest

Copyright: Oxfam gives permission for excerpts from this book to be photocopied or reproduced provided that the source is clearly and properly acknowledged.

Disclaimer: The views in this publication are those of the respective contributors. These views do not necessarily represent those of Oxfam or any donor or support agency. The interview and review process was participatory and consent around content and inclusion of information was granted to Oxfam by participants.

Contact Details: Oxfam Australia 132 Leicester Street Carlton 3053 Victoria, Australia Phone: +61 3 9289 4444 Email: enquire@oxfam.org.au Website: www.oxfam.org.au

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Contents

1. Executive Summary ............................................................................................................... 3

2. Introduction............................................................................................................................. 6 3. Common Threads and Lessons ......................................................................................... 8 4. Reflections from Partners ............................................................................................. 11 4.1 The Triangle Project on upholding rights ............................................................. 11 4.2 Sophakama on being truly community based ...................................................... 15 4.3 Save the Children and prioritising the young child ............................................. 22 4.4 CREATE working for disability inclusion .............................................................. 25 4.5 Lima and building for better lives .......................................................................... 32 4.6 Women on Farms Project and power in women’s hands.................................... 37 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 43 6. References.................................................................................................................................. 45

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1. Executive Summary Engaging government is a complex process regardless of the why, how and what – whether it is for cooperation or resistance, directly or indirectly, formally or informally. This is as true for individuals and communities as it is for civil society organisations (CSOs), especially given our history and the current context of democratic South Africa. It is something we have discussed many times in many different ways within the Oxfam Australia partnership in South Africa.

This documenting project draws on the experiences of selected partners based in South Africa and their engagement with government at different levels and in different ways. The aim of this collection of short case studies is to share these experiences as CSOs engage and work with government under different contexts, in order to highlight lessons learnt. The report captures the various strategies that Oxfam Australia’s partner organisations have been using to engage with government, as well as documents their successes and challenges.

Through a series of interviews with partner organisations conducted at the end of 2015, this report seeks to engage with both the unique cases, as well as consolidate the common threads and lessons across partner reflections. It is hoped that this will add richness to the insights offered on the complex interactions between government and civil society.

Overall, it was found that CSOs partnering with government can be a complex process, often challenging, that requires time and dedication – especially from the CSO. Regardless of positioning, engaging with government is necessary for civil society in the advancement of people’s rights, supporting communities as active citizenry, holding departments and officials to account, participating in policy making, obtaining funding and/or working on joint projects.

In this light, there are various key lessons that can be shared.

Firstly, there is no one correct strategy to deal with government. Strategies will shift within organisations and even within one project and process. The ability to adapt and be flexible here is critical. Both cooperation and resistance can be effective given the circumstances, and circumstances are all unique and constantly changing. This diversity is reflected in the partner experiences documented. There are instances of formal partnerships where CSOs ‘cut ties’ with government after continuous unsuccessful attempts to

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receive assistance. Some CSOs, like Women on Farms Project (WFP), obtained results through resistance when they stand up to overtly challenge and hold government to account.

In this dynamic context, it is also essential that organisations are clear about their role, strategy and identity, particularly where representing and/or supporting communities. A CSO that hasn’t fully identified its purpose runs the risk of being absorbed and its role reengineered to suit government’s needs.

Once a CSO and community establish a good working relationship with government, the partnership can be beneficial as different entities pull their varied expertise and resources together in order to create change. However, building and maintaining a relationship with government can be difficult. Trying to negotiate this process takes time and energy away from an organisation’s operations and the objectives it needs to meet. Another key lesson then is to persist and to dedicate the time and effort to these relationships on an ongoing basis. It is work, so work it.

Moving away from common lessons, it is also interesting to highlight some of the unique cases, approaches and challenges which partner organisations reflected on in this process.

The Triangle Project works against the discrimination of people based on sexual orientation and gender identity. They reflected on the formal policy structures on hate crimes which they are involved in, and alluded to the challenges with changing the mindsets of those delivering services such as police and nurses. They also recognise the limitations within which government operates from a capacity and resources point of view and encourage civil society to take this into account when interacting with various officials and departments.

Sophakama works in the township area of Joe Slovo in the Eastern Cape and provides various services in the community including home-based care, treatment, prevention, support to children and child-headed households and so on. Sophakama consists of members from the community and has a long history working with community members and government. The Sophakama approach demonstrates some of the key elements of a truly community based way of working with government. They also recognise the dynamic aspect of these partnerships as well as the importance of managing conflict and actively building partnerships.

Save the Children has been working on early childhood development (ECD) interventions for some time, and part of this work has involved working with, as well as influencing, government. They often find that they are the communication link between government and communities, including being able to support communities to raise various issues on to the 4

government agenda. Save the Children, in this reflection, articulates the importance of both the formal (bureaucratic, institutional) and informal (interpersonal) interactions with government.

CREATE works for community rehabilitation and the inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of household and community life. In particular, their case study demonstrates the complexity of interacting with both traditional authority structures and local government. The success of their experiential and participatory approach when engaging all stakeholders, including government structures, is also notable.

Lima focuses on rural development through skills transfer, infrastructure provision and capacity building, particularly around agriculture. They relate to government as a service provider which is a relatively unique approach for a civil society organisation. They work with various government departments on multiple projects across SA, and take a constructive and non- confrontational approach, with a successful partnership as the key objective.

Lastly, WFP’s work is centred on all aspects of the lives of women who live and work on farms. They support women to participate in decision making and take control of their lives and work at an individual and community level. WFP works with women to build leadership in holding government to account and to raise their issues on to the policy agenda. They have run numerous successful campaigns and often employ creative interventions to build momentum and apply pressure.

Amidst all of this complexity, it is hoped that these insights – both the crosscutting and the unique – will add to the understanding of interactions between civil society and government, as well as provide practical lessons for organisations to take forward in their own work.

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2. Introduction In a Centre for Policy Studies research paper, State-Civil Society Relations in South Africa: Some Lessons from Engagement (Ranchod, 2007), civil society has been described as the third sector – operating outside of both state and market.

In an online interview on The State of Civil Society in South Africa (Camay, 2013) the common thread that holds civil society organisations together is that they exist in public life to promote public good. It is further postulated that “the strength of a country’s civil society is often used as a measure to determine the strength of its democracy”.

In the research paper by Ranchod (2007) it is argued that while the majority of South Africans lived under the oppression of the apartheid regime, many civil society groups had aligned themselves with the African National Congress. Before 1994, these entities shared the vision of wanting to “overthrow the state and replace it with a democratically-elected government” (Ranchod, 2007: 3-4). With the advent of the elections, and the election of the ANC as the first democratic ruling party, civil society organisations (CSOs) were able to redirect their energies. CSOs were able to focus their attention on the interests of the communities they represented: their wants and needs.

The Centre for Policy Studies research paper by Ranchod (2007: 4) states that, After 1994, civil society organisations began to normalise their activities by pursuing citizens’ aggregated interests through seeking to place them on government’s agenda. Because of a weak opposition in Parliament post 1994, the ANC’s former civil society allies have increasingly had to fill some of the void and lobby, oppose and criticise their former (and current) partners. Even those who had not aligned themselves with the ANC found they now had to deal with a legitimate, representative government and this required new forms of engagement.

The new political structure and methods of formal engagement made for new opportunities and challenges.

Therefore, civil society engagement with government in South Africa evolved and continues to evolve in a number of ways. After the 1994 elections, these organisations were able to focus their energies on the work of building a democratic South Africa – a South Africa that would, for the first time in the country’s history, ensure that the rights of all citizens,

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especially those who were previously disadvantaged under the rule of apartheid, would be upheld and protected. CSOs aimed their efforts at upholding the interests of vulnerable people, advocating for their rights which had largely not been recognised up until now.

These rights are espoused in the country’s constitution which is internationally lauded as being the most comprehensive when it comes to the rights of the individual.

Civil society also became the government’s ‘watchdog’; it became a measure meant to ensure the state’s responsibility and accountability. In establishing responsibility to the citizens they served, CSOs also invested in human rights education and awareness. This was to allow communities access to knowledge and the capability to effectively claim their rights as well as hold duty-bearers to account.

Another factor that fuelled engagement between CSOs and government was that after the emergence of a democratic South Africa, a number of private international donors pulled their funding from civil society which caused some organisations to close their doors while others battled to stay afloat. Some of the CSO representatives interviewed for this paper stated that funding remains a significant challenge.

In this context, this paper shares the experience of Oxfam Australia’s partner experiences of working with government in different contexts for the purposes of highlighting lessons learnt.

It aims to capture the various strategies that Oxfam partners use to engage with government, as well as document successes and challenges of this process.

Seven partners participated in this reflection, of which six are featured in this piece, namely the Triangle Project (TP), Sophakama, Save the Children, CREATE, Lima Rural Development Foundation, and the Women on Farms Project (WFP). These partners were selected as case studies for this project because of their differing approaches in the way they engage with government to bring about their intended respective objectives. To gather these reflections, desktop research, and a series of interviews were conducted with representatives from the partner organisations.

A point to note is that this report investigates the nature of the relationships between CSOs and government from a civil society perspective; therefore, all views on the relationship with government come from a civil society background. Further, the viewpoint from CSOs tend to be from a managerial position given the representatives interviewed. This is an important factor to bear in mind, as others within the sector might have different experiences. These reflections then should not be taken as generalised views, but rather as unique experiences 7

from individuals working in particular organisations during a specific time within the sector.

Shedding light on these experiences is nevertheless valuable as through their own reflection, these individuals give us insight into potential lessons, successes and challenges which may have resonance with others from a learning and sharing perspective.

3. Common Threads and Lessons Partnerships are dynamic and continuously evolving, and depend on a number of factors.

These factors include how the different parties treat each other, the nature of the partnership, the time and energy that is put into the relationship to help it grow, being cooperative and considerate of the other party’s needs, as well as achieving a party’s own interests and meeting their own agendas – which is often topmost.

These six CSOs – Triangle Project, Sophakama, Save the Children, CREATE, Lima and WFP – have had different and unique experiences when engaging with government.

However, despite working on different issues in different contexts certain parallels can be drawn. These interesting commonalities are a useful starting point before zooming into each story.

We all work with many faces Different CSOs have varying relationships and ways of engaging with government. These often ebb and flow within one CSO-government relationship. Around a particular issue, it is common for a CSO and communities they support to cooperate with government processes, as well as resist, put pressure and hold government to account within those same processes.

On the other hand, the word ‘government’ is in fact blurry when we think about it a bit more deeply, as it also has many faces. There are the different spheres of government (national, provincial, local), the different sides of government (political and administrative), and the different government departments and ministries within all of that (e.g. Basic Education and Social Development).

Grasping how government works Just as in all relationships, each side comes with its own complexities. Attempts to understand the complex nature of government require various nuanced approaches, as reflected by the partners’ input. It is critical to be able to understand the parameters under which the government operates. CREATE noted how understanding government protocol is 8

a good way to get buy-in, and Lima recommended that CSOs locate themselves in positions where they can assist government in achieving their mandate. When dealing with government, it’s also important to understand the restrictions under which it functions. TP pointed out how under-capacitated a lot of departments are; lack of service delivery is sometimes a result of this, rather than an overt intention to simply not deliver. The organisation also highlighted limited budget as one of the possible hindrances that can keep government from assisting an organisation in the way that they would like.

Organisations that have put time into trying to build and maintain their relationships with government, often result in stronger partnerships. This is because they engage more openly with one another. Often these engagements are both formal and informal. Elements of the former are evident in the paper trail of agendas, meetings, and discussion points from which memorandum of understandings (MOUs) are drawn up between government and a particular CSO. As an official body dispensing funding and resources, this is imperative.

Informal interactions between government and CSOs are equally important because they pave the way for these discussions and meetings to happen. In any partnership, interpersonal relations are critical and the government-civil society dynamic is no different. It is on this that trust is built and understanding reached.

As an extension of this, the partners who formed part of this case study noted the positives and negatives of approaching individuals within government versus approaching the larger government institution. Approaching the larger institution can often be overwhelming and impersonal. Having a close relationship with an individual within a department to assist CSOs might seem easier and could often expedite information sharing. Conversely, Save the Children spoke to how sometimes the official elected to champion a certain cause may not always have a vested interest in it. This can lead to the cause not being a priority for them and so a half-hearted attempt is put into campaigns and attempts at interventions.

Sophakama also reflected on the risks of staff turnover in government. Maintaining a relationship with the larger institution could mitigate the impact if a particular champion were to leave, as there could be other people in the department who are already invested in continuing a good relationship to fill this gap.

So what wins – individual or institution? It seems the best is to be somewhere in between.

The need to look inwards It is also important for CSOs and communities to be clear about their expectations and objectives so that they are not easily swayed by the government agenda. Clear and transparent communication is imperative when dealing with the government at all levels. As an organisation, it’s important to be clear and firm about one’s own method of engagement.

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Being explicit about an organisation’s own frustrations, recommendations, and issues about delivery is important, otherwise, as Sophakama warned, they could be swallowed by government’s agenda and goals. Developing constructive contestation, through careful thought given to the organisation’s needs and the method of approach could allow for more open dialogue and constructive criticism.

For a CSO’s relationship with government to be successful, it’s important to always refer to the needs of the people which it represents and/or supports. Sophakama argues that being immersed in community social activism is important for an organisation’s own sustainability.

CREATE notes the importance of having the community represent themselves – speak in their own voice. This is also one of the reasons WFP encourages women on farms to attend meetings with the municipality so that they are capacitated to engage with government on that level. Representing the community while maintaining a relationship with government is a delicate balancing act. In order for it to be sustainable, these relationships need to remain mutually beneficial.

It is work, so work it Working with government is a good idea and can be beneficial, in fact necessary to achieve true development in South Africa. However the reality is that is does require work and persistence. Government, at any level, has its own policies and structures which it must follow, and this can be challenging to the outsider partner, and often time consuming. There is value in CSOs critically engaging and working with government in an attempt to support the communities they work with. This is because often government has resources, funding and access that organisations and communities need. However, CSOs wanting to pursue a reciprocal relationship with government must be willing to put in the time and energy in establishing and maintain a good working relationship.

Probably one of the clearest and most repeated message from civil society when it comes to working with government is ‘persistence, persistence, persistence!’. It takes perseverance for a CSO to build and maintain a cohesive and mutually beneficial relationship with government. WFP described their approach, in attempt to gain results, as “continuous, determined and repetitive” in their case study below. WFP said that a number of their partners had chosen to opt out of engaging with government because the relationships became too difficult to maintain, however WFP chooses to persevere with their relationship because having access to government spaces means being able to engage with their policies firsthand, and at a more intimate level.

In the context of scarce resources, trying to negotiate this takes time and energy away from the CSO’s core focus. However, organisations that have put time and effort into trying to 10

build and maintain their relationships with government often find that government engages more openly and is more encouraging of them and their work.

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4. Reflections from Partners Oxfam Australia partners with many CSOs in SA who have, since their inception, established some sort of relationship with government. The following organisations were selected because of how they engage and work with government in an attempt to investigate their various approaches and practices. The ultimate goal is to increase the understanding of CSOs and government relations, as well as assist other organisations by sharing practical lessons. These reflections were gathered from a series of interviews with representatives from the partner organisations.

4.1 The Triangle Project on upholding rights South Africa’s constitution is innovative in that it was one of the first that made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal. In December 2006, SA became the first country in Africa, and the fifth in the world, to legalise marriage between same-sex couples – a law passed by the National Assembly under the Civil Union Bill. SA was then one of only a handful of countries offering not only legal protection but marriage benefits to partners in same-sex relationships. That said, a civil servant or member of the clergy can still decide against marrying a same-sex couple if the union doesn’t sit with their personal beliefs and the individual will not face any recourse.

In reality, there is a disparity between the constitution on paper, and the lived experience of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community in the country.

Homophobia and subsequent hate crimes related to this are experienced by many LGBTI persons across the country. In the online article Classify ‘Corrective’ Rape as Hate Crime (Wesley, 2012) a hate crime is defined as “any incident that constitutes a criminal offence perceived as being motivated, in whole or in part, by prejudice, hate, or bias”. It is a crime focused on othering by attacking identity. Perpetrators target someone, not because of who they are as an individual, but because of what they represent, thus denying victims the right to participate openly and equally in society.

The paper Hate Crimes in South Africa (CORMSA, 2009: 1) further highlights the importance for prejudice-related violence and crime to be categorised differently. This is because leaving these incidents undistinguished, as simply criminal, “undermines social cohesion and fails to provide protection against crimes motivated by discrimination and prejudice”.

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Discrimination against LGBTI persons is why organisations like the Triangle Project (TP) are important. The organisation has been around for almost 20 years, advocating for the: “the full realisation of constitutional and human rights for LGBTI persons, their partners and their families” according to their website1. TP focuses on three programs: health and support services; research, advocacy and policy; and community engagement and empowerment.

The Triangle Project’s objectives include initiating and mentoring LGBTI support groups and community-based organisations, education and training, supporting this community to help them extend their networks, as well as building community activism and advocacy through encouraging self-reliance and self-determination.

Matthew Clayton, Research, Advocacy and Policy Manager explains: “Our offices are in Cape Town, although we have safe spaces all over the Western Cape where we run our programs”. The safe spaces aren’t necessarily physical, instead they are platforms that offer LGBTI people a space to share their experiences. According to the website, the Community Engagement and Empowerment Program (CEEP) helps to provide tools for the LGBTI people to have a strong, positive and visible presence in their communities. “Groups are encouraged to be part of any forums, networks, and social mobilisation in their communities in order to have their voices heard. They are also encouraged to take up positions in their communities to give LGBTI [people] a stronger voice”.

The spaces are designed to initiate and co-ordinate activities for LGBTI expression. Clayton explains, “[w]e use research and community networks to build up these spaces. We speak to policy makers about their lack of intervention in meeting their own objectives”.

The work The Triangle Project tries to empower LGBTI persons in substantive ways. Clayton says: “They’re discriminated against when it comes to work opportunities. A butch lesbian or an effeminate man may struggle to get work based purely on how they present”. That is just one of the common discourses in the safe spaces facilitated by the organisation. Another is access to stability and adequate resources – which are lacking. These factors are often linked to the violence and targeting of LGBTI people.

Clayton explains gender-based violence and hetero-normative body policing as inherently problematic, especially when factoring in the attitudes of men who think it’s okay to police people who don’t meet or fit their expectations of gender roles. This, because of the gender

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http://triangle.org.za

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norms they’re accustomed to and their static ideas of gender, “...puts a ceiling on the work we do – on how far we’re able to take it,” he says.

Poli ti cs of t he comm uni t y’ s space Speaking to the lack of empirical data that has been cultivated with regard to LGBTI persons, Clayton says that the community that TP engages with is a very heterogeneous group. “We work with more than 200 people, black Africans, who live in townships and coloured people in rural townships in Cape Town. Very little research has been done about their feelings towards the government”. He adds that when people are unemployed or work part time, where there’s no secure place to stay, no access to transport and no money for airtime, it’s a tall order to ask for them to collaborate with your objectives.

Clayton believes that most LGBTI people are generally dissatisfied with the way in which government is providing services to them, especially in how these services aren’t equitable or accessible to the community. He says, “The problem with policy is that it reaches a dead end at the police officer’s desk or the nursing station. There lacks a political will to address things like hate crimes, to look into the discrimination at state hospitals, police stations and public schools”.

Working with government The Triangle Project has been working with government in different ways at least since the establishment of the democratic government. Clayton says that TP has sought and received different inputs during this time, some more formal than others.

One example that speaks to the formalised structure of this engagement is the government funding that the organisation receives. This comes from departments like the Department of Social Development and the Department of Health. They also engage through the National Task Team on Gender and Sexual Orientation-based Violence Perpetrated against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Persons developed from a national task team sanctioned by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development in 2011. This team was implemented to fight the scourge of increasingly prevalent homophobic rape that is being experienced particularly by the “working class and poor, black LGBTI people who live in townships and rural areas as they are subject to homophobic and transphobic crimes” (Dept of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2014: 3). They also work through the Victim Empowerment Program (VEP) in the Western Cape which focuses on offering support to both the survivor of a crime of violence, as well as their family, in order to try and help them cope with the trauma and impact of the incident.

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TP receives formal funding from the Western Cape Government, as well as from international organisations. The organisation is also supported by the direct services it provides on an ad hoc basis to various communities, for which government is meant to be responsible. This acts as an alternative source of funding for the organisation, but overall funding is sporadic.

Clayton says that over time, TP has developed a decent working relationship with both the provincial and national governments. He mentions their responsiveness to what the organisation asks for as an example, but also speaks about the inherent tensions, saying “...neither [provincial or national government] takes very well to criticism. Our relationship is based on the understanding that even though we work together on certain issues we still have our own mandate...When it comes to policy development it’s fair to say that they have an awareness of the LGBTI people. That said, we have found that the issues that we’re concerned with are sometimes not their priority. Sometimes the hetero-normative status quo still comes across even though it doesn’t come from a place of malice”.

What CSOs should keep in mind Clayton says they’ve found a fairly productive formula in conducting their affairs with government: “The strategy we’ve employed while working with government hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s a continuous process. I don’t see the tactics changing or needing to change”. His advice is:

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Sometimes government doesn’t take well to criticism so “to ensure an easier working relationship with provincial and national government you have to couch your critique in a nice delivery”.

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Know what you want before you approach them but know their limitations. “You’re never going to get everything you want from the government. They have very clear ideas about what they want and their own spending priorities. There are very strict parameters and not a lot of money to play around and do things that they haven’t already been budgeted for”.

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Government can be helpful in that it can use its clout to get you access.

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The government is under-capacitated, “so sometimes when they don’t deliver it’s not out of malice, but sheer impracticality”. He refers to the training backlog of about 1.1 million nurses in the country. “So as much as we wish they could do more it’s also worth understanding that they have 52 million people that they’re trying to take

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care of. That said, we’re not asking them to do extraordinary things – just the things they’ve committed to doing over some time now”.

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Funding changes priorities and, although not ideal for strategic planning, organisations have to adapt.

4.2 Sophakama on being truly community based HIV and AIDS is an ongoing challenge in South Africa. The country has some of the highest records of AIDS-related deaths globally (Cullinan, 2014). With this there are various consequences for South African households, including the challenge of care, a large number of children orphaned through these deaths and the proliferation of child-headed households.

It was this difficult reality that motivated Namhla Sineke, the founder and Director of Sophakama, to find volunteers willing to assist at an aftercare program for children at the no -fee Joe Slovo Primary. This is a school situated at a township by the same name in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality in the Eastern Cape. Sineke’s work with orphaned and vulnerable children (OVCs) at this school, the only one in the area, made her realise that there were bigger issues at hand which impacted not only on the child’s academic performance but their home environment as well. Many children were looking after extremely sick and dying parents. This made school neither a focus nor a priority. That’s when she realised that to in order to alleviate some of the pressure these children were under, implementing a home-based care program was imperative.

Michael Matanzima, the organisation’s manager, says that this was when the programs, which included HIV and other chronic illness awareness and information about accessing grants from the government, evolved. They were based on the needs of the community.

There are almost 70 000 people living in Joe Slovo, two thirds of whom are unemployed, with the majority having attained mostly basic education levels.

When Sophakama was formed, it was dependent on volunteers who were initially willing to give of their time, but with no foreseeable financial remuneration, they often ceased with their service. It was thanks to a stable team of five selfless and dedicated members that the community-based organisation grew to what it is today. Over time the organisation was able to organise for the volunteers to receive a stipend. Considering that many families are surviving off the grants they receive for their children, it was a good incentive to become a part of the organisation. There are now dedicated volunteers who offer their services to the 16

improvement of the quality of life of the surrounding community. They also assume different roles within the organisation, including 10 fulltime employees, and one consultant.

The work According to the mission statement on their website, the organisation strives to: “make a difference in this impoverished community (Joe Slovo Township) through a range of community services which include Health Services (Disease management), Health Communication (Prevention), Children Services (OVCs) and Advocacy (Accessing Social Services) and Improving Livelihoods”.

Since Sophakama gained its formal registration in 2003, it has launched a number of programs and campaigns in an attempt to realise its mission statement. As per Sineke’s assessment, children in this community face many challenges which impact their school attendance and performance. Children generally look after parents who are often too sick and incapacitated to work, or their parents are struggling to find employment because of their poor education levels and lack of access to opportunities. This results in there being little to no money to meet people’s basic needs.

The Children’s Support Program run by Sophakama, which relied on partners Oxfam Australia, Terre des Hommes and the Networking HIV, AIDS Community of South Africa (NACOSA) has been implemented from 2011 to date. It provides nutritional and psychosocial support to enrolled children. Here children are provided with homework assistance, counselling, and subscribed to necessary feeding schemes. Their life skills are expanded by being informed about their rights and responsibilities. They also participate in dialogues, holiday camps, and sports and recreational activities.

Sophakama’s Health Services program relies on trained counsellors to disseminate information as well as male and female condoms. They also employ HIV testing kits provided by the Department of Health.

Health Communication (Prevention) is linked to the HIV testing and counselling (HCT) facilities which are offered to the community. TB screenings are also performed since early detection is key. Awareness about mother to child prevention (MTCP) is part of this list.

Calendar events like World AIDS Day and 16 Days of Activism Against Women and Child Abuse are leveraged for heightened awareness and rollout.

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The Advocacy and Improving Livelihoods program ensures that both children and their parents have the necessary documents to access government aid and allocation to facilities like grants and RDP houses2.

Poli ti cs of t he comm uni t y’ s space Sophakama works in the context of persistent poverty and high unemployment. When Sophakama first started working in this community, the organisation had to contend with some tough challenges. Matanzima elaborates, “When we used to do HIV-awareness campaigns on World AIDS Day for instance, we would wear T-shirts with HIV/AIDS messaging on them. A lot of community members took this to mean that we, as members of Sophakama, were in fact positive. It took our volunteers and carers who were willing to sit down and speak to the community candidly to try and dispel these myths, as well as being open to partake in the testing themselves. That’s the work they put in to try and change the community’s perception”.

Another issue he highlighted was that people from Joe Slovo struggled to see how someone who shared their background could help them overcome their challenges. Sophakama’s volunteers proved them wrong – uplifting their community through their dedication and care.

Matanzima speaks to getting one’s hands dirty at a grassroots level: “One of the advantages of Sophakama is that we’ve been working in and with the community of Joe Slovo for many years. The dedication of the care workers contributes to the reputation that the organisation has built over this time. Being known by the community you serve is advantageous.

Sometimes there are people who live here who hold high profiles and can act as ambassadors to the outside world. Some of our volunteers, for instance, are part of ward committees. This can mean smoother communication between the entities – when you’ve got someone championing for your needs”.

Sophakama’s contribution to the community has been acknowledged in the public sphere. In 2014, at the Nelson Mandela Bay Chamber Awards, they took home first prize for the best CSO in the Health Awareness category, and yet another prize for being an Outstanding Wellness Team.

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RDP stands for the Reconstruction and Development Program which was one of the key socioeconomic government programs in the 1990s in South Africa. Among other things, it focused on providing access to housing and other infrastructure and services. The term ‘RDP housing’ is a common one still used to describe low cost social housing.

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Sophakama’s involvement in Joe Slovo has affected the attitude of the community.

Matanzima says that in the past a lot of people were demotivated because of their difficult situation, but with the assistance of the organisation there has been a noticeable change in their mindsets. He makes an example of people living with HIV who were category 3. The HIV in their system had lowered their CD4 count significantly and made their bodies deteriorate to the point where they had become symptomatic. But with the assistance and encouragement of the volunteers, they were able to move back up to a category 2 which was less severe. “You find that people want to become self-sufficient and are motivated to stay alive and be present for their children. The outlook is improving,” he says.

When it comes to the psychological and emotional effects of poverty in a home, he speculates that it’s the parents who feel the brunt of it as they’re the ones whose self-esteem takes a knock because of what they can’t provide for their children. “In some homes, when you speak about nutrition and malnourished children they ask: ‘What can we do?’ If a child is excelling in sport and they need to go away to play at a different city there’s no money to take them there, no money for a new kit or equipment. I think if communities can return to the spirit of Ubuntu – sharing and supporting each other – we’d be halfway there. It’s one of the reasons people have been encouraged to form stokvels3 for instance. Because together they are able to furnish their homes, item by item, when it’s their turn to collect from the stokvel”.

Working with government When it comes to politics in the area, Matanzima explains that in the past there was an African National Congress (ANC) majority in the community, but the introduction of the Economic Freedom Front (EFF) has opened up a new ‘can of worms’. Although the majority of Joe Slovo is black, a number of people from the coloured community have relocated to the area. With regard to their politics, this has meant an introduction of Democratic Alliance (DA) supporters, according to Matanzima. So it’s fair to say that there’s a clear and distinct division when it comes to political alliances. This can translate to tensions and division within the community.

“As Sophakama, although we work with the municipality and government, we’re quite transparent about not having any political affiliations with any party...We are an NGO [nongovernmental organisation] which commits itself to activities which benefit the community.

3

A stokvel is a South African term for a savings group.

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We are an entity that is independent from the government so it’s important that when we function in that space, we always make sure that our voice is heard”.

Matanzima explains that he used to work at a union. The founding director of Sophakama used to work at Red Cross. Before they transferred to the CSO, they’d built relationships with a number of people in their respective spaces. This resulted in the different government departments inviting them, in a personal capacity, to the events they were holding. Both Sineke and Matanzima’s introduction to various departments occurred before Sophakama was formed. With the formalisation of Sophakama, government relations ran a little smoother than they might have otherwise, as both Sineke and Matanzima had already established relationships and various lines of communications with different government representatives.

Because Sophakama has taken time to build relationships and their reputation over the years, they are able to lobby government for support to assist the organisation in meeting its objectives. Sophakama has the freedom and space to speak to government departments about its needs even when there is tension between the two sides. Matanzima says this was particularly prevalent when newly hired officials expected the CSO’s volunteers to do their work for them. “For instance, when it comes to screening the community for different diseases, that’s something we do on Fridays as per an agreement dictated by our policies.

But some of the new officials wanted us to do these screenings at their whim. We were at loggerheads over this for months”.

The CSO remains present and visible within the community. One way they’ve done this is by partaking in the Clinic Committee of Joe Slovo. Quarterly meetings are held where clinic and CSO representatives meet to discuss the effectiveness of awareness programs in the community; this forms a platform for the participants to address the challenges faced by the communities they work in. Sophakama has worked at cultivating a relationship with the Health Department, the Metro AIDS Council, and the NMB Children’s Sector. By being persistent with its communication and relationship-building, Sophakama is now able to raise the issues that they need the government to tackle. This has created opportunities for them to collaborate with the government on many programs where they work hand in hand to reach shared goals.

An example of the above was when Sophakama was approached to assist and offer support for HIV Counselling and Testing. Clinic staff used to come into the community to try and encourage members to test but the turnout was consistently low. When Sophakama was heading the awareness campaigns and doing the testing as a solo entity, more people would 20

come out wanting to know their status. After some investigation it was found that community members didn’t trust the clinic staff and government officials to keep their results private because they weren’t familiar with them. But they trusted in, and knew that they could rely on, Sophakama.

“This is also because once you get tested it’s common practice for our volunteers to visit you at home to check in – especially if your results were positive. They’d follow up on issues such as acceptance of status disclosure and positive living to ensure that the clients stay healthy for a long time before they need to start using ARVs [antiretrovirals], as well as if they were adhering to the medical instructions. They also encouraged positive members to disclose to their partners, explaining why this information was important in helping their partners protect themselves as well,” says Matanzima.

The government sees and acknowledges the change Sophakama is creating. Matanzima says “Even though we’ll fight at boardroom meetings, we are not enemies the next day. We take the time to work through our conflicts and reach an understanding where we can…I’ve fought with the Department of Social Development for instance. We work with children who are struggling to get government funding. And if I don’t get a response from the appropriate person in the department, I’ll skip protocol and go to someone more senior. The truth is that we do need funding from them, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t critically engage with them as civil society”.

According to Matanzima, when it comes to government keeping its word, they deliver more often than not. He refers to the Disaster Risk Reduction Department which was dealing with illegal electricity connections. It was a very dangerous situation and children were being electrocuted by live wires. The government welcomed people who wanted to work with them to find a solution to this problem and to help prevent these disasters. Together they went around looking for secure lines and covering exposed wires with patches and ensuring that the wires are up in the poles. “Effectively, we were trying to ensure safe illegal connections,” he laughs.

Working with government can also get complicated though, this is mainly because of the bureaucracy that sometimes comes with the many different lines of communication and it isn’t always clear what the protocol is. Matanzima speaks of launching a complaint that didn’t reach the relevant ears because one person tells you to call someone in Bisho and the other tells you to get in touch with someone in Pretoria. Sometimes you find that the different departments don’t necessarily communicate amongst each other which can be problematic if 20

the issue affects more than just one department. With policies changing, it’s also common to find one person telling you to do things one way and another telling you something different because the officials themselves aren’t always on the same page. “So trying to get a memorandum of agreement or a contract can simply be a disaster,” he says.

What CSOs should keep in mind Sophakama has been working with the Joe Slovo community for 12 years, and some of its managers have been working with government towards similar ends for even longer. Here are some of the insights from Matanzima during this time:

•

For the sake of continuity, a CSO should try and form relationships with actual departments and not with individuals because they come and go. Once they’ve left, one has to start again working at establishing and building a relationship with the next official.

•

It is important for a CSO to participate in the social activism space in a community.

For instance, being recognised in the Metro can make it a little easier to receive funding because of a letter of recommendation from someone in the community who can vouch for the work the organisation does.

•

CSOs should be careful not to be absorbed by the government as that will mean losing their own identity.

•

Sometimes in this line of work, one can find that CSOs are better capacitated than government to perform certain functions. When government realises this, in some cases they may find it threatening or want to take advantage.

•

It takes time. Sophakama is only now reaping the fruits of what they implemented in the past.

•

In order to ensure sustainability, it is important that the relationship between government, community and the CSO remain mutually beneficial.

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4.3 Save the Children and prioritising the young child In South Africa, the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) estimates that “only between 26-29 percent of children in the 0–4 age group participate in any type of ECD service outside the home” (cited in Save the Children, 2015: 24). The concern is for the remaining third who do not have access to any ECD services, and for those that do there is also concern around the quality of the programs that are being provided. This is why organisations like Save the Children step in, attempting to affect change.

According to the Save the Children South Africa – Vision 2020 (2015: 13) report, the current South African government inherited “a child-rights landscape marked by systemic exclusion of the majority of children from basic quality services...high levels of child poverty, low education among children and their parents and caregivers, poor health and nutrition, and fractured families”. There has been some progress in alleviating a handful of these problems, for instance child poverty has been reduced. Access to water on site and sanitation have improved. Access to healthcare facilities has improved and so has access to ECD programs for 4 to 5 year olds.

The work Save the Children focuses on five thematic areas, namely: early childhood care and development, health and nutrition, education, child protection and children’s rights governance. They offer assistance in an attempt to address the needs of the most disadvantaged communities. Mari van der Merwe, the Early Childhood Care and Development Program Manager, says: We use various strategies and child participation is key to our theory of change. That said, it is difficult to get very young children 0-4 years to be explicit about their wants and needs...One of the techniques we’re using is to engage with duty-bearers – get them to state how they’ll meet their mandated responsibilities for young children, and recording their responses. We’re pedantic about producing records so that when there is poor or no delivery in terms of the commitments made, we can hold them accountable by referring to those records, reminding them of what they’d said they’d do.

Children have many rights which communities and caregivers are often unaware of.

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Save the Children’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Program aims to benefit children by supporting their right to holistic care and development at ECD centres. The program creates awareness around the importance of the first years of a child’s life, as well as the role that access to and correct use of water, sanitation, health and hygiene play in this care and development.

Poli ti cs of t he comm uni t y’ s space Van der Merwe states that a child’s development is, in significant part, determined by the community they stay in. The ECD program is therefore community driven. She elaborates saying: We start with a needs analysis of the ECD sector and engage with stakeholders affected by, and/or responsible for, young children. We ask questions like: what is the situation in the community? What are all the facts? What tools can we use to help tackle the issue? In this way we can share with the community details of the situation and a joint action to address these can be identified and implemented.

When it comes to the problems that vulnerable communities face and how they go about trying to manage them, van der Merwe says that: In many communities members are overwhelmed. There’s a sense of not knowing where to start. One assumes that people know how to get themselves out of the situation they’re in but that’s not always the case. As Save the Children we play a mentoring role. Recognising the issues that the community face we offer resources that empower with knowledge and capacity to address these situations. We’re always looking for ways where we can work with and assist the community.

Working with government According to van der Merwe, working with government has been a balance of both formal and informal approaches. She says that being in the field for many years and knowing who to speak to was advantageous, but even then there were instances where one had the challenge of finding out who exactly was responsible for what. Another challenge van der Merwe describes is that of firstly making contact with officials, and then having to go through a certain checklist when dealing with them like: ‘Who are you? What is your position? What are you responsible for?’. She adds, “One can only really engage with them once these questions have been covered. As in any sector, there are some truly amazing people extending themselves and going the extra mile and others who have no commitment”.

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As this Early Childhood Care and Development Program Manager tells it, there are other challenges too, like the lack of open dialogue and capacity building, and of government allowing CSOs to step in and take over their responsibilities. In fact, it was this need that contributed to the organisation creating workshops to facilitate this conversation because they found that managing expectations was an important part of working with government.

“I can influence what we’re doing on the ground and on a national level and bring current information to the community about what’s happening at national level,” says van der Merwe.

This is a particularly important function because there is a lack of two way communication between government and the community.

According to van der Merwe, government support for the young child stands out in the Western Cape. She says that the Western Cape in particular has achieved some amazing things. “They’ve aimed for the most practical solutions without lowering the quality of the service being provided to the young child”. She adds, “There isn’t enough sharing of best practices between the provinces. The Western Cape was the first to recognise home-based centres that were caring for more than six children. They’ve now written new norms and strategies to accommodate these spaces rather than simply shutting them down for noncompliance: a learning that should be shared”.

The problems plaguing children in disadvantaged communities are still very real. Sometimes you’ll find that the government won’t be willing to speak to one ECD Centre, but when 20 of them come together and unite their voices, then you witness power in the collective, active citizenry, says van der Merwe.

Seemingly unlikely government entities are also sometimes involved in the work done by Save the Children, like the Department of Human Settlements and the South African Revenue Service (SARS). Van der Merwe says “They come to bring knowledge to the community. For instance ECD centres operate as small businesses”. Therefore there are various SARS requirements which they have to meet, and this can seem like an overwhelming task for small operations.

What CSOs should keep in mind For Mari van der Merwe, although working with government can be complex, her work has taught her some lessons along the way. These include: •

The need for open, transparent communication between government civil society.

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•

Not underestimating the amount of time and effort it takes to engage with government. Hierarchy and bureaucracy impact the process at all levels.

•

Knowing that it takes hard work to build working relationships with officials. “Our relationship has grown with many officials to the level where we know each other personally – or at least to the level where you know that someone will take your call, and that you’ll take theirs. And that’s key to dealing with government”.

•

Recognising that the young child and ECD needs to be made a priority on the agenda of all three levels of government.

4.4 CREATE working for disability inclusion Based in Pietermaritzburg, CREATE is an organisation which focuses its advocacy on disability rights and community-based rehabilitation. The organisation’s work includes training, research and advocacy. They work with the participation and involvement of organisations for people living with disabilities, parents groups, communities, municipalities and government departments, as well as other CSOs and businesses.

CREATE’s expertise lie mainly in training and advocacy. The CSO develops participatory training courses which it implements using interactive materials. CREATE’s advocacy and lobbying is rolled out at local, provincial, national and international levels. With regard to the latter, for instance, the organisation was at the forefront in developing the first shadow report on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the United Nations Convention in 2010.

The latest Stats SA Report on persons living with disabilities (2014) confirms that at an individual and household level, people living with disabilities are more vulnerable.

Individuals, for example, experience greater challenges in accessing education and employment, and households headed by a person with a disability were found to have less access to basic services. These findings reinforce the importance of organisations like CREATE. The work Dr Sarah Rule is the Managing Director of CREATE. According to her, the training that the organisation implements happens as a response to the needs of other organisations and whomever else requires it. “Our trainings are often in workshop form but not entirely. It’s very

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participatory. We work from where people are at and then we take them to where they’re happy to be”.

Rule explains that CREATE’s interactions with traditional leaders are very experiential and participatory. The organisation spends time trying to get them to understand disability so that they can use it to work better with people with disabilities in traditional courts. She says “We’ve been successful in changing the attitudes of the people we’ve worked with. During one of the workshops we held, the leaders stopped us during the training and headed up a mountain. They went up there to apologise to the ancestors for how they had been treating people with disabilities in their community”. She says people often think of tradition as an inhibitor because they think it’s unchangeable, but often it’s not.

For the progression of the rights of people with disabilities it’s important for power-holders to change their stance. This recognition is especially important when, according to the Integrated National Disability Strategy - White Paper (1997), “There is poor service infrastructure for people with disabilities in underdeveloped areas”. CREATE works with disadvantaged, mostly rural communities although the organisation does some work in various townships as well. The people they work with deal with poverty in their everyday lives.

Poli ti cs of t he comm uni t y’ s space People living with disabilities often feel ostracised, but the landscape is changing. Rule says that discrimination and negative perceptions of people with disabilities are evolving to the extent that even traditional leaders are advocating on their behalf. She says: For instance, when it comes to the issue of housing, it’s these leaders who are working together with the municipality to ensure that when houses are built for people with disabilities they have accessible doorways and are close to main roads for taxis and access to other public transport options. The great thing is that these processes run much smoother with the municipality once you’ve got the traditional leaders’ support.

People living with disabilities face a lot of extra costs that many do not consider. “When people carry their wheelchairs onto a taxi they are generally charged double the fair for the seat they’re taking up, as well as the seat their chair will take. When it comes to education, often people with disabilities don’t make it to matric. Further education is almost nil,” says Rule.

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According to the Integrated National Disability Strategy White Paper (1997: 7) the high levels of unemployment in these communities can be attributed to a number of factors including: Low skills levels due to inadequate, discriminatory attitudes and practices by employers, past discriminatory and ineffective labour legislation, inaccessible and unsupportive work environments, the fact that menial labour is often the only option for poorly skilled job-seekers, inadequate access to information, and ignorance in society.

Another key factor is that organisations working in the disability sector are fragmented.

However, an example of how the different groups can unite was in 2010 when the Rights of Persons with Disabilities report was due. Rule says “We came together as civil society groups and wrote a shadow report. As CREATE, we spearheaded this process and various other organisations also contributed. It was good for us to be working in numbers and speaking in one voice, especially because the disability sector is so fractured”.

One of the challenges recognised by CREATE is that a lot of people living with disabilities don’t know their rights. Rule states that they’re oppressed and they have very low selfesteem; they’re disempowered and this translates to their not feeling like they’re in a position to challenge others. This makes it even more of a struggle for them to confront the constant discrimination they face. Most people are ill-equipped to manage the challenges of having people with disabilities in their homes and communities. What has happened in the past is that this group has been shunned, discriminated against, or forgotten.

In one community where a colleague of Rule’s had been working with parents of children with disabilities she held seven workshops which reached about 140 people. Many mothers of children with disabilities came forward and shared their stories, which were often heartbreaking. There was a general sense of hopelessness and helplessness in the experience that these women were sharing. A lot of them felt like they didn’t have the support that they needed and most of the time they felt like they couldn’t see a way out.

CREATE started off by conducting disability awareness and sensitisation workshops. They looked at things like people’s experience of or with disability, and which terms were appropriate to use, dealing with one’s own understanding and looking into where one’s own discrimination comes from. People with disabilities were also involved in some of the

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workshops and Rule emphasises that it was invaluable getting them to share their insights about their lived experience.

Working with government CREATE has done much of its work with government, doing participatory work with the municipality, and the Premier’s office in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). There is a lot of political tension in KwaZulu-Natal. This is common, especially when local and national elections are nearing.

According to Rule, what heightens this situation is that the traditional leaders are aligned to different political parties. This is a challenge which makes it all the more difficult for these different factions to work together. CREATE has tried to get traditional and municipal leadership to work together but sometimes the divisions run deep. At times they don’t even want to meet in the same room, so CREATE has to make provisions for different meetings, making things quite complex. Fortunately, CREATE has a good working relationship with the manager of Human Rights at the provincial Premier’s office.

A report produced by CREATE, Disability Inclusion: Possibilities and Progress (2014: 10), details a study that was conducted with the aim of exploring the reasons for the “progress that uMfolozi Municipality and KwaSokhulu Traditional Authority have made in disability inclusion in their geographical area”. The team was particularly interested in Mfolozi Municipality because although people with disabilities had been trained in 10 of the 11 districts of KwaZulu-Natal, the Mfolozi Disability Forum remained fully functional and has not stopped working to improve the situation of people with disabilities since the initial training was implemented. Some of the other forums lost steam over time or became defunct like the uMgungundlovu Disability Forum.

Rule elaborates on the lessons from the work in uMfolozi saying, To be most effective we must work at the pace of the people who are affected.

Sometimes it’s the people with disabilities who raise the questions asking how they can address certain issues with the municipality. It comes from them and then we assist them from there. The objectives may also come from the municipality.

In general, however, the notion of human rights is low on the agenda in a lot of these communities in that there is a poor sense of general awareness about these types of issues.

For instance, there was a lack of knowledge and awareness about people with disabilities 28

living with HIV in the Ugu District. “In 2012,16.7% of people with disabilities were HIV positive, the third highest at risk group in South Africa,” according to Disability Inclusion: Possibilities and Progress (2014: 17). CREATE worked with a number of councillors in the municipality and the Department of Health introducing the idea of disseminating HIV awareness. This is especially important because for a long time, persons with disabilities weren’t considered by HIV counselling and treatment,” says Rule.

There are key roles in local government in terms of fulfilling the rights of people living with disabilities. The Disability Focal Person is a government representative who is responsible for liaising with people with disabilities and the municipality so that they can put together an informed budget. This is just one of their responsibilities and others include providing guidance for disability analysis as well as developing and implementing programs like poverty alleviation, job creation, HIV and AIDS and rural strategy and ensure responsiveness to disability, according to the Disability Framework for Local Government 2009 -2014 (DPLG, 2009).

At Msunduzi, where CREATE is based, the Disability Focal Person would get more achieved if they worked by consulting more rather than making autonomous decisions on behalf of people with disabilities. It’s more effective when budget allocations and the like are discussed in a broader space, says Rule, in order to ensure that there is appropriate and effective expenditure. “An active and empowered Disability Focal Person is imperative,” she says. Another key role is that of the Community Liaison Officer who is designated to communicate with traditional leaders in the community. There are various levels of program officers that CREATE works with, but the people in these respective titles are the most involved.

CREATE also finds once-off spending on people living with disabilities problematic. The celebration of single-day events like the 3rd of December – International Day of Persons with Disabilities – is one such example. “They [government] should be more focused on longevity and capacity but they don’t focus on putting their budget to that. It’s a complex issue. It really depends on the Disability Focal Person and how empowered they are. That said, it also depends on the municipality. If this representative is strong in their position then they can advocate accordingly,” says Rule.

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Recently a CREATE staff member was at Woza Moya 4 conducting a Cerebral Palsy training session. There had been a specific request made from people who wanted to know about it.

Rule says that the workshops are always participatory and experiential and that they are adapted according to what people have requested. She adds that, “With traditional leaders we might talk about access to justice when it comes to the needs of people who are visually or hearing impaired. How they might participate in the rural court. In the municipality this would include national outcomes and strategic objectives”. According to the Disability Inclusion: Possibilities and Progress study (2014: 36) “Traditional leaders still play an influential role in rural society in KwaZulu-Natal, so these changes can have an important and beneficial impact on the communities they preside over and the people with disabilities who live in them”.

The KZN Province launched its Back to Basics Program in early 2015. The then Premier, Senzo Mchunu, and the MEC for Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs, Nomusa Dube-Ncube, spearheaded the program which had its focus on “rekindling the spirit of effective service delivery, efficient administration and clean governance in the province”.

This is according to the province’s Department of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) website5. Rule says that the program has scope that deals with policy, recruitment and financial issues when it comes to people living with disability.

CREATE is funded by private donors. The organisation doesn’t usually ask for or receive funding from government. Instead, they will approach government when they are in need of tangible and specific resources, like assistance with transport in getting people with disabilities to an event, or requesting the use of a free venue and/or catering. Rule mentions that “Sometimes government does pull through and pay but relying on them for this is challenging and depends on where they are in their financial year”.

What CSOs should keep in mind Working with a community with such specific needs can be demanding. CREATE has made its mistakes along the way, like any other organisation. Rule shares some of those lessons: •

As a CSO, learn the power dynamics within the municipality you’re operating in.

This way you can liaise with the relevant person for the needs your organisation wants met.

4

Woza Moya is a civil society organisation working in the Ufafa Valley in Ixopo, KZN. For more information see their website: http://www.wozamoya.org.za

5

http://www.kzncogta.gov.za/Newsroom/LatestEvents/2015/KZNGetsItsMunicipalitiesBackToBasics17Feb.aspx

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•

The effectiveness of the relationships between a CSO and the different municipalities it works with are dynamic so they will vary. CREATE has managed to establish good relationships with the municipalities in Umfolozi and Umzimkhulu.

Although the same can’t be said with regard to the relationships with other municipalities. The effort that an organisation puts in plays a big role in this.

CREATE, being a small organisation, does a lot of travelling in order to attend workshops and training sessions in different parts of the province. This has meant that the organisation doesn’t get to spend as much time in a single municipality, engaging with government, as some other organisations might be able to. The more time the organisation spends with one municipality, the more evident the change.

•

It’s imperative to work within the government’s protocol system. The more a CSO respects this protocol, the more likely it is to get buy-in not only with government officials and the municipality, but with traditional leaders as well. Being cognisant of, and respecting, government’s structure is important.

•

Going above and beyond makes a difference. Being available beyond the commitments the CSO has scheduled and showing up for impromptu, unplanned government events is important. When necessary, see what funding you can allocate to these sorts of situations so that your organisation is represented at these meetings and functions. The more available a CSO is to their municipality, the more willing and open the municipality is to its concerns.

•

Maintaining good relations with the government also means considering and managing relationships with these different structures. For instance, if, as a CSO, you’re involved in the hosting of your own function, it won’t hurt to invite the different and relevant people in the government hierarchy.

•

Always try to have the people you work with represent themselves – with their own voice. There needs to be a lot more awareness about the issues affecting marginalised communities, and focused initiative aimed at their being enabled to speak collectively. “There needs to be a groundswell of people speaking up in order to force those who hold power to respond” says Rule.

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4.5 Lima and building for better lives In 1989 the Lima Rural Development Foundation was established. According to its website, their focus is on providing “a sustainable and integrated rural development service to many urban and rural communities”. The organisation offers training and assistance to people both in urban and rural communities by ensuring that they have access to “appropriate institutions, local economic development and training to empower rural people, particularly women, in their own developmental efforts”. This is all an attempt to try and overcome poverty.

Lima places emphasis on the transformation of the agricultural sector. To achieve this, it uses a three-pronged approach which includes ensuring it works from a base of farm-worker equity share programs, smallholder farmer support programmes and training, striving for black empowerment, as well as supporting a successful and sustainable land reform process. “We also find that many of the households we assist are often headed by females, and it is part of Lima’s mission to empower and support women in rural South Africa as much as possible. ,” says Pellow-Jarman. Lima implements projects in all nine provinces of South Africa.

The Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) program, for example, which received support from Oxfam Australia, focused on the increased access to, as well as the effective use of, improved and sustainable water supplies, sanitation, and hygiene services. Because marginalised groups like women, children, the elderly and people living with disabilities are often at risk, the WASH program focuses its energies on these groups in an attempt to decrease their vulnerability. The role Lima played in this project was to provide WASH infrastructure and education while facilitating conversations about healthy water use. Lima provided infrastructure to rural houses that included things like gutters, water storage tanks, irrigation systems to water gardens, and fencing to protect said gardens from trespassing animals. “Our focus was on proving agricultural infrastructure mainly with the intention of improving people’s livelihoods by providing them this access,” he says.

The work Lima is a service organisation which, amongst other services, offers engineering-based infrastructure solutions to communities around the country. It is a “sustainable and integrated development service”, according to its website.

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It’s important to understand that the organisation implements on behalf of government as well as private funders. According to Project Manager, Grant Pellow-Jarman, Lima does not make implementation decisions – those are made by the funders. Instead the organisation offers guidance and tries to provide as much input into the project design as possible through a process of consultation and engagement with the client, creating a programme according to that particular funder’s needs. Lima then follows a structured implementation plan as set out by the various Departments. This structured plan may or may not include suggestions made by Lima.

The funding itself sometimes happens on a month-to-month basis and is very uncertain.

With the current South African economy being weak, Pellow-Jarman argues that organisations and government budgets are tight and there is not as much generosity with funds as was seen in previous years. Securing funding has turned into a large focus as it becomes more and more difficult to access. Pellow-Jarman says even within projects, funding is often inconsistent. He says: During implementation, Lima has had examples of funding ending before the programme has been fully implemented. This puts the implementer (Lima) in a difficult position, but more importantly reduces the impact on the ground. Government Departments are often faced with the challenge of selecting which development projects will benefit the most from funds allocated, or over allocation of funds.

One of Lima’s objectives is to provide training to empower and uplift women, especially those in rural areas. Pellow-Jarman says that there’s a focus in the organisation to create an environment where they can be successful which is one of the reasons most of the organisation’s staff are female. According to the organisation’s company profile, Lima employs over 145 people, of which 87% are from previously disadvantaged groups and more than half of whom are women. Lima also works with 19 specialist sub consultants.

Poli ti cs of t he comm uni t y’ s space The communities which Lima serves have a certain shared context in that they are marginalised, lack infrastructure and are under-resourced. Pellow-Jarman says, “People are surviving off social grants and remittances from family members living out of town. It’s a month to month struggle. There’s a lack of access to transport, shops, services, [and] travel is expensive, making things more difficult. Access to agriculture infrastructure is limited but needed”. Here the organisation steps in with the aim of trying to build infrastructure and capacity in these areas. Capacity to use the infrastructure the organisation builds is 33

imperative, otherwise communities would be left with technologies and resources able to significantly improve their lives but wouldn’t know how to go about using and maintaining these. He adds, “This is why we conducted our practical training sessions. We have facilitators who work with the communities training them on how to use the infrastructure�.

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Lima has made some notable progress in creating a successful environment for small-scale farmers to operate.

There is a strong sense of tradition in the rural areas in which Lima works. Pellow-Jarman doesn’t believe that this would necessarily be the case in urban areas: “Before we can even think of implementation there are a couple of steps that we need to follow, like making ourselves known to the councillor. Then you need to go to the traditional authorities. It may also be a plan to interface the two”. He adds that there’s also often a civil structure, a committee elected by and representing the community, which speaks on their behalf and is part of the decision making process as well.

These representatives then hold meetings in order to relay information to, and communicate with, the community. The community’s voice is always important and listened to. “We’ve just had a project discontinued because the government and the community couldn’t come to an agreement as to how a particular project should be implemented and where, and so ultimately the project has been called off,” he says. This is an example of conflict between community and government and perceptions of where resources are required. Lima as the implementer can only facilitate, advise and guide these conversations.

According to Pellow-Jarman, there’s often a lot of political interference in the type of work that Lima does. This can be frustrating, especially when there are politicians trying to gain political leverage. Their approach can interfere and is not always constructive for the work that the organisation does.

Although the challenges facing the communities that Lima works with are more similar than not, the attitudes of the community members vary from area to area. Many people are keen to address the challenges they face, they just don’t know how. “They often don’t see a clear path out from their circumstances,” says Pellow-Jarman. For instance, one of the projects Lima is working on is in Fort Donald, a very rural place, in the Eastern Cape. Lima is building houses there and rather than using machines to do the work, community members have come on board to do the building themselves, using picks and shovels. He says that people were very happy to earn a fair wage for doing that manual work. He says, “This suggests that they’re not complacent. We even had eldery ladies getting involved. . One of the important things about this project was that it kept the money in the community. And we saw that as a success”.

Lima is also working in the pre-school education environment, creating capacity amongst 34

pre-schools and service providers. Most children in rural areas don’t have access to pre-

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school and if they do exist, these institutions are often under-serviced. “The conditions under which these little children spend their time at school are miserable,” says Pellow-Jarman, explaining why Lima is providing infrastructure and capacity such as sourcing teaching material, and training teachers etc. in this community. That is just one of the ways that the organisation steps in to improve these environments.

Working with government Lima has been in existence for over 26 years and it is difficult to pinpoint when the organisation’s relationship with government started. Pellow-Jarman speculates that either the organisation may have responded to an advertised tender or bid, or there was a negotiated arrangement, which usually happens when a department feels that an organisation is capable of implementing on their behalf, based on their track record.

Lima is a service provider that implements on behalf of government and private funders.

These services include, but are not limited to: the development and support of enterprise; conducting socio-economic research and surveys; managing both community workers and home-based caregivers; supporting and managing the land reform and post settlement process; and raising funds in order to implement goals on a community’s behalf. PellowJarman explains that the organisation responds to requests for proposals and tenders. They also write and submit proposals when they see an opportunity for something that may need work. They’ve had significant success securing work using this method.

Lima’s relationship with government is a formal one. The organisation has successfully partnered with government on a number of projects. Pellow-Jarman describes it as conducive for the ends that they are trying to meet. He says that there isn’t much tension when the organisation engages the government, with many examples of positive fruitful partnerships. That said, “There is an element of people who act as gatekeepers to the community. And in order for us to get the support and assistance that the organisation needs they often have to work using the structures government has implemented,” he says.

What CSOs should keep in mind Pellow-Jarman says that it’s important to be proactive when working with government because that’s the kind of attitude that they trust to make things happen. He shares some more advice with CSOs wanting to establish their own relationships with the state:

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•

CSOs should aim to assist government in meeting their mandate. So it’s important to put forward proposals and put yourself, as the CSO, in the space where you can be of assistance to the government.

•

Lima has been able to offer services to the government that they realised they needed. The CSO has assisted them in meeting their mandate a number of times; this was executed in an efficient and economic manner.

•

It is difficult to maintain relationships. There are some areas over the years where Pellow-Jarman admits that they could have worked harder, as Lima, to maintain some relationships. Those are lessons that they’ve learnt in hindsight. Lima’s relationship with certain government departments has improved. That said, they’ve also lost contact with others.

•

When it comes to approach and methodology, the organisation has adopted what works well. For instance it doesn’t advocate for change at government level. Instead it campaigns for it and tries to steer government in the right direction where they can.

They’ve adopted an approach that is not confrontational but constructive.

•

Lima’s access to government is often through an individual. When that person moves on it’s not unusual to find that their replacement has a different focus – which may not always serve the CSO. It is cyclical.

•

The level of government engagement during projects varies with different consequences. Often as a CSO trying to go about your work you’ll wish that government could stay out of the implementation stage of a project, but Lima recognises that they also have reports that they need to make and submission deadlines to meet.

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4.6 Women on Farms Project and power in women’s hands The Women on Farms Project (WFP) grew out of a 1992 initiative called Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR). According to the CSO’s website, this initiative was established with the intention of “meeting the specialised needs of women who live and work on farms (farmwomen)”. The member-based farmwomen’s movement was conceptualised that same year. WFP used to operate through a women’s rights group which was based on farms in the Western Province called the Vroue Regte Group (VRG). By fine-tuning the idea of a membership organisation of women, led by women, WFP was registered formally in 1996.

WFP has offices in Stellenbosch and satellite offices in the Northern Cape. Carmen Louw, Program Co-ordinator, explains the organisation’s structure: We have 12 permanent employees in the Western Cape and two in the Northern Cape. There is a continuous influx of foreign interns coming into the organisation for three-to-six months, although sometimes they opt to stay on for up to a year. There are also a lot of community-based members who are trained by the organisation.

They deal with a lot of the case work because they work within the community.

When asked about the fact that all the organisation’s permanent staff are female, Louw responds, “We hire women only as part of our feminist approach. Sometimes we’ll get the odd request from a male intern but that’s very rare. Males being part of the team is needs based – according to a specific project; if there’s a need for technical skills which we can’t source elsewhere, for instance”.

The work Louw says that the organisation’s target group is women who live and work on commercial farms. There is a focus to enhance their leadership ability in an attempt to help them become more independent and autonomous, so that they can to do things for themselves and take control of their lives. Ideally this then results in their claiming their rights and establishing their own agency.

According to their website, WFP envisions “an engendered society that treats women who live and work on farms with dignity and respect in accordance with the constitutional rights guaranteed to all South African citizens... an alternative South African rural landscape in

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which women play active leadership roles within family, community, labour, economic and government structures”.

WFP encourages women to organise themselves and take up the community’s issues on their own. The organisation wants them to find their own voice. Louw says that the women the organisation works with aren’t necessarily complacent – it’s more fear than complacency.

Louw says: They are fearful and that keeps them silent. They are completely dependent on their male partners and on the farmer for their economic wellbeing and security. They fear that if they challenge their situation it may result in their losing their accommodation and the little financial security that they do have. This keeps them from challenging their situation. So getting to a point where they can actually articulate their situation, and to higher governmental officials at that, that’s a big deal.

Poli ti cs of t he comm uni t y’ s space WFP works with farming communities across the Cape Winelands. The women that the organisation assists are often desperate and live in difficult conditions. A lot of them earn a very low minimum wage of R120 per day, which is too little to live on. Another problem is that employment in the agricultural sector is seasonal, so most women only get to work for three to six months at a time. Most of the work is also given to the men. These women are then forced to be reliant on the child support grant as a source of income; this is especially the case during the off season where they are without work for months at a time. This situation makes women vulnerable and more susceptible to forms of abuse, such as domestic violence. Many of them, for example, remain in bad relationships ‘in exchange’ for the security that male workers can offer.

These women live in rural communities which are especially patriarchal. You often find that the farmer’s voice is law – he makes the final decisions and women feel powerless against him. Even the farmer’s wife doesn’t seem to be consulted in the decision-making process.

This entrenched patriarchy is also evident in that the higher paid positions on the farms are only awarded to males. These communities are also very religious which often reinforces patriarchy.

When WFP initially intervenes, it is often dealing with a community of women who have low literacy levels resulting in a lack of access to information, opportunities and often low self confidence. However, once they feel comfortable enough to open up and start talking, there 39

is a large amount of wisdom, insight and resourcefulness expressed. Women on farms are also often very subservient to their men, and substance dependency is a big issue because of the inherited ‘dop system’6. This was eventually outlawed but left a widespread legacy in the farming communities of the Western Cape where it was common practice. The ‘dop system’ led to alcoholism, Foetal Alcohol Syndrome and it also perpetuated poverty.

According to the online article Ramifications of South Africa’s Dop System (Larkin, 2015) it “created a generation of disadvantaged youths and abused women due to the alcohol dependency”. WFP also works with the youth trying to break the cycle of violence, poverty and patriarchal power.

It is in this context that WFP steps in to offer ‘Training for Transformation’. This is a methodology that allows women to identify their own challenges and speak for themselves.

They are the ones who get to decide what they’re going to do about their situation. The CSO assists women by ensuring that they can articulate their own issues. Decision-making and power lie at their feet.

Working with government WFP is often invited to government spaces to engage with the issues they present. Their legitimacy comes from strong community ownership and participation. The organisation gets the community members to go along to these government meetings so that they can speak about their own issues and represent their own communities. Some of the women the organisation has been working with for a while also sit on its board. WFP has an annual reflection and planning meeting where they develop the following year’s work plan for the program. Community members are present and partake in the decision-making process.

“We encourage these women to make decisions at a number of different levels,” says Louw.

The question of farm worker evictions is currently high on government’s agenda, as well as the ruling party. Farmers don’t want farm workers living on their farms anymore. The farm workers get illegally or ‘legally’ evicted and this has resulted in the mushrooming of informal settlements. There is also a lot of uncertainty when it comes to land reform and the new legislation. The Western Cape has the highest rate of land evictions in the country.

Louw recalls an incident from about five years ago when someone bought a farm in Wellington. They didn’t want to re-employ the 23 families which meant that they could no longer live on the farm. In this instance, the municipality has a legal obligation to find 6

During apartheid farmers used to pay their labourers with cheap wine or dop. ‘Dop’ is the Afrikaans word for ‘drink’.

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appropriate alternative accommodation for the families. Instead what the municipality did was to give the families a vacant plot of land to relocate to with no structures or anything on it. Louw explains, Often you’ll find that these evictions aren’t legal. Farmers will strong arm tenants into leaving often with the support of police officers who should know better...There are so many loopholes in the Acts that put the farm workers at a disadvantage. There are no resources to provide alternative housing. There is no available land because it’s owned by the farmers. So we’ve asked for a moratorium to stop eviction[s] and to give people land and RDP housing instead of formalising squatter camps which is the solution government has now implemented.

Louw says that it’s disappointing that government is legalising informal settlements as alternative accommodation as a solution to this very real problem. She says that government has been too slow in expropriating land – in doing something about the land reform issue.

A lot of the women that the organisation works with feel that government isn’t doing enough to raise their standard of living, especially the tenant situation. As far as they can see, things aren’t going to change because many of them have been in this situation for so long and still things remain the same. Sometimes the government doesn’t deliver. In one instance, someone from the provincial government pursued working with WFP because of their work.

They even did a site visit to the community, but when it came to delivery still nothing came from it. Yet the community remains optimistic even while facing these odds. That’s why they celebrate the small victories. In Rawsonville, for instance, the community advocated for toilets and running water and they were successful to some extent. Communities and CSOs need to persist – even (or especially) with basic services.

One of the important things that WFP wants government to understand is that women are more vulnerable than men. For instance, seasonal housing contracts are signed only under one name – the man’s. So if he decides to take on another woman, if he loses his job, or if he dies, his partner will effectively lose her home. Louw explains, The government doesn’t seem to recognise how problematic this is. This is why we got together at the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA – an alliance of national rural women’s movements) to try and implement the ‘One woman, one hectare!’ campaign so that each woman can have her own house and be able to plant there. This way

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they won’t be so dependent on men, feeling obligated to stay when they are abused or find themselves without work.

WFP is in talks with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform about the campaign. The organisation interacts with government often and is sometimes asked to present on behalf of the women’s position. Louw believes that the government doesn’t have a comprehensive strategy on how to tackle this problem. Only recently have they started communication about a way forward for women, children, the elderly and people living with disabilities.

One of WFP’s overall aims is to create a more secure space for women to work in. “We don’t want these women to be farm workers for the rest of their lives. We want them to own their own land,” says Louw.

What CSOs should keep in mind As WFP’s Program Co-ordinator, Louw has determined some insights in her time working with the organisation. Some of these observations she has employed, on behalf of the CSO, in her interactions with government. They are: •

Maintaining a good working relationship with government is difficult which is why some of WFP’s partners don’t want to interact with government anymore. But there is value in these interactions, in being a part of government spaces. It allows the organisation to have firsthand knowledge on policies. They can analyse and critique these from a gender perspective.

•

Many times, government isn’t interested in looking at women in particular and making special and necessary provisions for them. This is why the organisation brings the farm workers into that space. Not only does it emphasise the community’s challenges even more, but it also allows women to gain confidence by interacting with these important officials, which is part of the WFP’s vision.

•

WFP gets away with speaking out and challenging government more because it’s a women-led organisation. It comes across as less threatening when they occupy spaces.

•

Their approach is also continuous, determined and repetitive – which is beneficial as it’s often difficult to get through to government. WFP has submitted a lot of petitions and handed in many memorandums to government. The CSO always insists on a meeting to discuss its proposals so that their cause is not ignored, or added to pile of documents and forgotten.

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•

As an organisation, they also try to be creative in their strategies. An example of this is an awareness-raising strategy where they put up washing lines between robots and hung some clothing on them to symbolise that many women have no homes and so no place to hang their washing.

•

The government does take time out to listen when CSOs approach them in numbers. So if you can get other partners to rally behind your cause, the effort will likely be more worthwhile. WFP has partnered with Trust Community Outreach and Education (TCOE) and Surplus People’s Project (SPP) when tackling the issue of land and housing in different geographic spaces. They partner with unions when it comes to working on labour issues, and they also have different networks they engage with on issues of gender-based violence and HIV.

•

It’s important to be well-informed not only about the issue at hand, but the broader issues that speak to your context. In WFP’s case, this refers to developments and

news about agriculture. It’s with this knowledge that they can go about to try and influence policy change.

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5. Conclusion We have seen that CSOs and government can establish a symbiotic understanding where both parties communicate effectively and remain on the same page. There are various strategies that Oxfam partner organisations have been using to engage with government, and these have had various successes and challenges. This collection of case studies has attempted to shed light on some of these strategies, challenges and successes as a way to unpack some of the complexities of CSO-government relations and share the lessons.

The organisations profiled here work in different regions and have different focus areas, making it all the more interesting to highlight the common threads and lessons on how they see, and interact with, government. In conclusion, from this multiplicity of experiences, a few pieces of wisdom warrant re-emphasis.

There is some benefit to establishing a good working relationship with government, but CSOs should nonetheless retain their autonomy and hold on to their own voice. That is why establishing a clear and firm sense of identity and having a good understanding of the organisation’s purpose is of utmost importance. This will keep the organisation from being side-tracked and ensure that it remains true to its mission and values.

Working with government is work. CSOs and communities wanting to pursue a reciprocal relationship with government must be willing to put in the time and energy in establishing and maintain a good working relationship. Doing this successfully requires care, persistence and dedication.

It is important to understand the parameters under which the government operates, when engaging it about one’s own agenda. It is also critical to remember that working with government is often strongest when engagements are both formal and informal. Some of the formal interactions from these partner organisations include participating in committees and working groups, establishing working agreements, and funding contracts. It is also equally essential to remember that government is made up of people and it is important to also forge personal relationships with government officials and politicians in an effort to raise awareness, create spaces for meaningful dialogue and to work towards mutual understanding. This may also reduce contestation and criticism, which can often irreparably damage tense and fragile relationships, and help develop more constructive contestation that drives change and growth processes.

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Giving strategic thought to the role of CSOs in any given process with government and community, while allowing that role to be dynamic as the process unfolds, is very important.

It means that there is a need to ‘unpack’ who/what ‘government’ you are working with before you engage and then reflecting back continually on this throughout these engagements. For an organisation to attempt to secure a good working relationship, it needs to work at developing a strategy that clearly outlines their wants and needs as well as the gain that the partnership will have for government.

Working with government is complicated and critical in South Africa as elsewhere. Different CSOs have varying relationships with, and ways of engaging, government, and these things often ebb and flow within one CSO-government relationship itself. Around a particular issue, it is common for a CSO and communities they support to co-operate with government processes, as well as resist, put pressure and hold government to account within those same processes. From the experiences and reflections of these six civil society organisations, we have glimpsed some of the richness and nuance of these interactions.

Indeed, it is a complex dance which requires constant reflection, work and of course, persistence, persistence, persistence!

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6. References Business Day Live. (2015). Disabled people plan mass action to advance their rights, [online].

Available at: http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2015/11/02/disabled-people-plan-mass-action-toadvance-their-rights [Accessed Nov. 2015].

BusinessTech. (2015). South Africa’s poor living on R7 a day, [online]. Available at: http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/101560/south-africas-poor-living-on-r7-a-day/ [Accessed Nov. 2015].

Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CORMSA). (2009). Hate Crimes in South Africa: A background paper for the Hate Crimes Working Group. Available at: http://www.cormsa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/hate-crimes-working-group-backgroundpaper.pdf [Accessed Jan. 2016].

CREATE. (2014). Disability Inclusion: Possibilities and Progress, Oxfam Australia.

CREATE. (2014). Annual Report 2013/14.

Cullinan, K. (2014). AIDS still extracting a deadly price, but SA is making progress. Available at: https://www.health-e.org.za/2014/07/23/aids-still-extracting-deadly-price-sa-making-progress [Accessed Jan. 2016].

Department of Justice and Constitutional Development. (2014). Terms of Reference for National Task Team on Gender and Sexual Orientation-Based Violence Perpetrated Against LGBTI Persons.

Available at: http://www.nationallgbtitaskteam.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NTT_TOR.pdf [Accessed Sep. 2015].

Department of Provincial and Government (DPLG now CoGTA). (2009). Disability Framework for Local Government 2009 -2014, Available at: http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/dplg_disability_framework_07042009.pdf [Accessed Jan. 2016].

Education and Training Unit (ETU). (no date). Integrated Development Planning for Local Government. Available at: http://www.etu.org.za/toolbox/docs/localgov/webidp.html [Accessed Jan. 2016].

Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). (2014). State of poverty and its manifestations in the nine province of South Africa. Available at: http://www.nda.org.za/docs/Research%20Report%20%20State%20of%20poverty%20in%209%20provinces%20of%20SA.PDF [Accessed Sep. 2015].

Larkin, A. (2015). Ramifications of South Africa’s Dop System, Available at: http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/ramifications-south-africa%E2%80%99s-dop-system-alexandralarkin [Accessed Nov. 2015].

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Office of the Presidency. (1997). Integrated National Disability Strategy - White Paper, [online].

Available at: http://www.independentliving.org/docs5/SANatlDisStrat.html [Accessed Sep. 2015].

Camay, P. (2013). The State of Civil Society South Africa, The South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS), Available at: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1831 [Accessed Sep. 2015].

Ranchod, K. (2007). State-Civil Society Relations in South Africa: Some Lessons from Engagement.

Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies, 2-6, 8.

Save the Children. (2015). Save the Children South Africa – Vision 2020. Available at: https://www.savethechildren.org.za/sites/savethechildren.org.za/files/resources/Save%20the%20Chil dren%20South%20Africa_Vision%202020_0.pdf [Accessed Nov. 2015].

Stats SA. (2014). Profile of persons with disabilities in South Africa, Available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report-03-01-59/Report-03-01-592011.pdf [Accessed Mar. 2016].

Stellenbosch University. (no date). Supporting the Women on Farms Project: Welgevallen Community Psychology Clinic’s involvement with the Women on Farms Project. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University. Available at: http://www.sun.ac.za/english/entities/welgevallen-communitypsychology-clinic/community-interaction/supporting-the-women-on-farms-project [Accessed Nov. 2015].

Wesley, T. (2012). Classify ‘Corrective’ Rape as Hate Crime. Available at http://www.osisa.org/buwa/south-africa/classify-%E2%80%98corrective%E2%80%99-rape-hate-crime [Accessed Jan. 2016].

Woza Moya. (2014). Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). Available at: http://www.wozamoya.org.za/our-work/water-sanitation-and-hygiene-wash/ [Accessed Nov. 2015].

Partner Organisation Interview List •

Matthew Clayton, 15 October 2015, Triangle Project, Website: http://triangle.org.za

•

Sarah Rule, 19 October 2015, CREATE, Website: http://www.create-cbr.co.za

•

Michael Matanzima, 29 October 2015, Sophakama, Website: http://www.sophakama.org.za

•

Mari van der Merwe, 13 November 2015, Save the Children, Website: https://www.savethechildren.org.za

•

Grant Pellow-Jarman, 13 November 2015, Lima, Website: http://www.lima.org.za

•

Carmen Louw, 25 November 2015, Women on Farms Project, Website: http://www.wfp.org.za

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