Glenda Daniels and David Macfarlane
With just six months before Johannesburg hosts the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the civil society process is in tatters and its leadership a source of confusion.
A new forum to lead South African civil society’s input at the summit has been set up by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Council of Churches (SACC). But the secretariat that has been directing that input says it does not recognise the new body.
Cosatu and the SACC last month walked out of the Civil Society Indaba established by the secretariat to represent civil society at the summit. They alleged that the secretariat had been mishandling finances and objected to an over-representation of NGOs in the Indaba.
The new body, the Broad Political Forum, was organised at a meeting at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac). Cosatu deputy general secretary Bheki Ntshalinshali and the SACC’s Dr Molefe Tsele said the new body was recognised by all and the impasse was over.
But a few days later the civil society secretariat said the forum was merely a proposal for a new management committee and the secretariat would meet to respond to it.
The secretariat charges that the proposed new structure is “even less representative than our present make-up”, says Muzi Khumalo, media liaison manager.
A Mail & Guardian source agrees that the forum is not representative enough, as first people (that is, indigenous people such as the San and Khoi) and urban and rural communities have been “tossed out”.
She says labour has effectively taken over leadership of the new forum and “feels threatened by these three groupings. In view of the marginalisation suffered by first people (even now the Botswana government is forcibly removing people from the Kgalagadi transfrontier park) this latest move is quite beyond the pale.”
The new forum consists of women, youth, civics, communities of faith, labour, NGOs and people with disabilities.
Cosatu senior official Neva Makgetla says: “We did not want rural and urban communities, as constituted [by the secretariat], because they included NGOs who should be represented through the NGO sector rather than civics.
“We did not want first people because, after all these years of fighting against divisions based on ethnicity, we think it inappropriate to revive them. The concept may make sense in other countries, but not in South Africa. Indeed, in other countries it usually means everyone who still maintains pre-industrial values which applies not only to the presumed descendants of the San,” she says.
Cosatu also denies that it is running the show now. Another source says that, in fact, the SACC is wielding the most power.
In the meanwhile, funders have backed off and the National Development Agency is conducting a forensic audit into the financial affairs of the secretariat. An audit done in December by the South African National NGO Coalition (Sangoco) uncovered no serious problems, yet the coalition is throwing its weight behind the new forum.
Zakes Hlatshwayo, Sangoco president, says the secretariat cannot oppose the decision taken at Nedlac to establish the new structure, as the secretariat is “simply an implementing and facilitating body, appointed as such by Sangoco. It doesn’t decide policy.”
Sangoco, he says, proposed the Broad Political Forum to break the impasse and that decision was backed by all, including labour. “The secretariat can’t even meet to discuss the decision in principle, except to decide how it will now perform its facilitating role.”
As for the first people, Hlatshwayo says: “We feel they will be sufficiently accommodated within the NGO representation on the Broad Political Forum.”