David Macfarlane
Divisions and infighting in the NGO sector have deepened with the recent break-up of the Non-Profit Partnership (NPP), which was established only three years ago to strengthen non-profit organisations. And the World Conference Against Racism, to be held in August in Durban, has been touched by the fallout.
Mismanagement, weak leadership and internal strife are the main charges levelled at the country’s NGO umbrella body, the South African National NGO Coalition (Sangoco), which is organising the conference. NGO leaders express exasperation and anger at Sangoco’s failure to deliver, and foreign donors express misgivings about the coalition’s financial and other management.
About 22-million South Africans more than half the population live in poverty, struggling to survive on an average of R144 a person a month. Of these, 94% are African and more than 70% live in rural areas. NGO programmes in all fields cater for poor people in particular. But NGOs say they have been receiving minimal- to-zero assistance from Sangoco.
The NPP intends now to register as a Section 21 company, and will remain “committed to strengthening its delivery of services to NGOs” but without Sangoco, says NPP director Eugene Saldanha.
Sangoco president Mercia Andrews says: “As of now I don’t know that these ties have been dissolved. I’m under the impression we’re still discussing it. Saldanha can’t do this.”
The timing of this development could hardly be worse for Sangoco, as government and public attention increasingly focuses on August’s racism conference. The conference arrangements have suffered from internal strife at Sangoco, the Mail & Guardian has been told: Sangoco staffers wrote to the organisation’s national executive committee (NEC) in May requesting that Sangoco director Abie Ditlhake have nothing further to do with arrangements for the conference.
Andrews denies receiving any such letter and Ditlhake denies that any such request was made. Andrews admits to “difficulties … There has been stepping on toes,” though she declined to be more specific.
The NPP’s members were Sangoco, the Southern African Grantmakers’ Association and the United Kingdom’s Charities Aid Foundation.
The partnership was formed to offer a provident fund for NGOs, high-interest bank accounts, medical aid, fund-raising assistance, advice on tax and legislative matters, and loan services for NGOs in financial difficulties.
Sangoco’s own formation in 1994 was meant to counter the dire situation in which NGOs increasingly found themselves after 1990, when anti-apartheid funding started drying up. Its aim is “to promote civil society by uniting and strengthening the NGO sector to enable it to influence development policy and advocate for programmes that meet the needs of the poor”.
But NGOs say Sangoco has simply failed to serve the interests of NGOs and has remained silent on pressing broader issues such as poverty and HIV/Aids. “Let’s get rid of Sangoco,” says the director of a KwaZulu-Natal NGO, “it must disappear. If it weren’t for the NPP, God knows where we [NGOs] would be.”
“Sangoco should have been a powerful uniting force,” says another NGO representative, “after all the changes wrought in the sector during the 1990s. But it has simply been absent.”
Criticism focuses especially on Ditlhake, who was appointed in March last year, and on weak leadership from Sangoco’s NEC. Ditlhake “has no management ability”, says one provincial Sangoco representative. “He personalises complaints … His sour relationship [with former partners in the NPP] is the reason why NPP ties with Sangoco have been dissolved.”
“There are people who don’t like what we’re doing,” says Ditlhake, “but they’re not in a position to tell us. Why [don’t they] come to us directly? Is it political differences? Or something else?”
Provinces complain bitterly about the lack of support from Sangoco’s national office in Johannesburg. “You say you want meetings with the national office, you write, you phone and nobody comes back to you,” says a provincial coordinator. “Lots of us comrades are complaining. We want to strengthen Sangoco in the provinces, and to recruit but how? We have no resources.”
Ditlhake acknowledges that “provinces have struggled for resources in the past”, mainly because Sangoco previously required that provinces remain autonomous in their programmes and fund-raising. “But we are now working on joint fund-raising with the provinces, and by this time next year the whole process of making the provinces integrally part of Sangoco will be in place.”
Andrews confirms that only three provincial offices the Eastern Cape, the Northern Province and KwaZulu-Natal have full-time personnel. “And that’s just not viable for building Sangoco,” she says.
Ditlhake says he is not aware of widespread unhappiness and dissatisfaction with Sangoco among NGOs.
Exactly how many members Sangoco has is a bone of contention. More than 4 000, the coalition has repeatedly claimed; fewer than 1 000, claim NGOs. This has ramifications for the degree of representativeness Sangoco can boast, and for the basis on which Sangoco has raised funds overseas.
A foreign donor says: “Any organisation now funding Sangoco is concerned. I do doubt the claim of 4 000 members … Sangoco doesn’t appear to have an effective system in place for capturing its membership on a database.”
Ditlhake says “collated membership figures from provincial and national databases currently stand at 3 262 members”.
Even so, “the specificity of membership numbers … remains a concern for Sangoco, and one of the major exercises for the coming year is the establishment of a rigorous database and membership tracking system, in order that specific numbers may be provided.”
Other donor concerns centre on financial management: “Sangoco still has no financial manager. It’s a crisis,” says a donor.
Ditlhake concedes that Sangoco has been facing “challenges and difficulties … My immediate task is to rebuild the organisation,” he says.