/ 22 March 2002

Civil society geared for battle

The civil society sector has recently been bogged down by politics. But what are the issues facing it?

Glenda Daniels

The biggest issue for South Africa, says Lloyd Mdakane, executive head of the civil society process for South Africa, “is the demand for clean, drinkable water. This is emerging over and over again. And even if you get access to land, what do you do if you don’t have access to water for productive use?”

Beyond on-the-ground, day-to-day needs, the varied civil society groups (women, youth, labour, civics, communities of faith, NGOs and people with disability) intend to tackle the government’s politics of the day head on.

Civil society discussion documents say that lack of and limited access to resources have to be blamed on the privatisation policies of the government. They cite Soweto electricity cut-offs as an example.

The arguments from the groups come squarely from a left-wing perspective, in which organisations blame the move from the socially conscious reconstruction and development programme (RDP) to the economically conservative growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) policies. Gear will be slammed for “negating the gains of the struggle”, says one discussion document, adding that job losses, health crises, the disempowerment of the youth and women are but a few symptoms of the failure [of Gear]”.

The complicated debate of privatisation, especially where it is applied to essential services, inadequate social spending, especially on public health and education, social welfare and unresolved issues of debt relief will be some of the issues to be debated from South African civil society’s side.

All the civil society groups seem to agree that on the table for discussion will be globalisation and its effects on the poor unemployment, landlessness and finance for development will inform their input. The groups are united in their agenda to fight for an alternative social development programme.

While a Southern African Development Community (SADC) document, SADC Key Priorities for the World Summit, says that peace, stability and security should go hand in hand with a focus on poverty, it also highlights the seriousness of the HIV/Aids pandemic.

The SADC says the developing world is “straining under the burden of communicable diseases which are disabling our economies”, adding that the international community should invest in efforts to ensure access to affordable, preventative and curative health care towards HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.

In preparation for the summit the United Nations’s Economic and Social Council report to the UN secretary general (February 2002) is harder hitting: “HIV/Aids has had a devastating impact on life expectancies in some countries, reducing it to pre-1980 levels. During the 1990s life expectancy declined by 6,3 years in the nine countries hardest hit by HIV/Aids. It is the fastest-growing health threat to development today. About 36-million adults and children are now living with HIV/Aids, 95% of them in developing countries, and 25-million in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 12-million Africans have died of Aids (more than two million in a single year), and 13,2-million children have been orphaned.”

In addition, the report says, world demographics have changed the world population reached six billion in 2000 up from 2,5-billion in 1950, and the world population is expected to grow to about eight billion in 2025.

Overall, poverty in developing countries is based on an income poverty line of one dollar a household a day, which declined from 29% in 1990 to 23% in 1998.

The report adds: “At least 1,1-billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water and about 2,4-billion people lack adequate sanitation. More than 8% of children in developing countries die before the age of eight, and there are more than 113-million primary school-age children not in schools, of whom 60% are girls.”

The UN says 15% of the world’s population in the higher-income countries account for 56% of total consumption, while the poorest 40%, in low-income countries, account for only 11% of total consumption. “While most people have experienced some growth in consumption in recent years, the consumption expenditure of the average African household is 20% less than it was 25 years ago,” the report says.

These are some of the disparities of development, some of the contradictions and issues that will fire heated debate at the World Summit.

NGO Earthlife Africa summarises some of the critical worldwide issues the summit has to discuss:

The question for governments, the private sector and civil society as a whole is sustainable development addressing poverty in all its forms, a lack of livelihoods, limited access to health care, education and debilitating debt. The summit is expected to address issues of global equity, poverty and consumption, while looking to protect future generations.

Side by side with these issues lies environmental degradation, for example, the world water cycle is unable to cope with demand, air pollution is at crisis point in major cities and global warming is a serious threat.