More than 500 representatives of South African NGOs convene in Pietersburg this weekend for a critical assessment of their role and the changing environment in which they operate.
With the introduction of the Non-Profit Organisations Act, the establishment of the National Development Agency next year and the pending hearings in Parliament on the Katz Commission’s proposals on tax reforms to benefit the NGO sector, civil society organisations will have to adapt.
“We need to look at the overall sustainability of the sector and locate discussions related to financial sustainability within this framework,” says Safoora Sadek, the outgoing executive director of the South African National Non-Governmental Organisations’ Alliance, which has organised the annual get-together of NGOs in Pietersburg.
But, she adds, the sustainability of the sector “must be based on the impact of its work and not on the number of NGOs in existence. We need to shift the debate on whether the role of NGOs is considered important from using the number of NGOs as a measurement”.
The conference this weekend is meeting under the title Building People’s Power for Poverty Eradication: Processes and Partnerships. The objectives are to develop a common understanding in the sector about eradicating poverty and examining ways of developing partnerships with government, civil society and business.
“The partnerships with civil society are an integral part of poverty eradication, and underpin all aspects of development,” says Sadek.
The mandate from the poor was “to build houses, improve education and access to education, ensure access to health care, create the conditions necessary and conducive for long-term sustainable job creation”.
However, she adds, “we are all aware that delivery took place in a fragmented and unco-ordinated manner. It focussed more on the [numbers game] or quantity [for example, number of houses, number of people receiving clean drinking water] than the qualitative integrated, sustainable people-centred, people-driven strategy proposed by the reconstruction and development programme [RDP].”
Integrated development as reflected in the RDP had been the battle cry of the NGO sector over the past five years, Sadek says.