Chris Louw
STRICTER government control of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is foreseen in the reconstruction and development programme (RDP) white paper, published this week.
Support of the NGOs will in future shift towards community and mass organisations. A form of accreditation for NGOs to monitor their accountability is in the pipeline. They will also be expected to establish a co-ordinating body, constituted mainly from the rationalisation of existing bodies.
Conflict recently surfaced between the RDP office in Pretoria and NGOs afraid of losing their international funding. The RDP office wished to establish some form of central control over NGOs to ensure that they abide by the directives of the RDP.
The white paper shows that the government is adamant in pushing for more control of NGO projects.
While recognising the important role NGOs played during the apartheid years in planning, education, policy development and support, the white paper states unambiguously that the government, ”especially at local and individual levels, must now carry out these functions as part of its normal operations”.
The ”normalisation of the development finance relations” is particularly identified as primarily an intra- governmental function.
Much of the work previously done by NGOs will now be transferred to a ”nation-wide network of institutions, including universities, technikons, technical and teacher-training colleges, private and public sector training facilities, the Public Service Training Institute and some NGOs”.
Further government support for NGOs will be based on their role in taking forward the RDP. This will be assisted and evaluated through ”some form of accreditation for all such NGOs which receive government funds”.
Although the government realises that it should not have a monopoly of resources, aid channelled through through NGOs must now be subjected to ”general guidelines”, including the rationalisation of service delivery to communities.
”In addition, community-based development organisations will receive more extensive financial and logistical support once representativeness, accountability and effectiveness are confirmed,” according to the white paper.