Give us African money!
President Thabo Mbeki recently questioned the integrity of NGOs on the strength of their foreign funding, suggesting they were not African and reflected alien agendas. This is grossly unjust. I doubt any of us choose to go foreign — we have no alternative.
Our NGO, based in northern Limpopo, comprises 28 paid staffers and 35 volunteers, each on a stipend. All are African-born and bred, and only one could have voted before 1994. Our board has a similar profile, with members representing a cross–section of stakeholders — including the police and the social development, education and justice departments.
In four years we have taken the ”break the silence on violence” message to more than 300 000 people, all African. Our mandate is to ensure that people in even remote Limpopo know their constitutional rights and how to access them.
We run one-stop trauma centres for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence at two understaffed and under-resourced hospitals. To date, we have provided emotional and practical support to 2 105 rape survivors — 1 220 of them children — and 3 301 victims of domestic violence. Every one was an African.
Although the government is constitutionally obliged to provide support services for victims of violence, less than 2% of our budget has come from the state. This is not for want of trying: countless weeks have been devoted to completing documents requesting government funding, to no avail.
Our municipality and many state departments have abdicated all responsibility for victims of gender and child violence. They clearly feel no shame in demanding that foreign donors fund everything. Our donors even have to pay the municipality full rental for a venue where our women, who have been beaten by our men, can learn about laws that protect them in our country.
The dearth of state services for rural crime victims, in violation of government policy, is a daily scandal. Despite horrendous child-rape statistics, hospitals are not equipped to examine child victims, doctors are not trained, there are no forensic nurses and no social services after hours — our busiest period. Police seriously need training and supervision, and in a municipality of 1,2-million, one state social worker is qualified to counsel the dozens of children raped every month.
Continuous service provision would be impossible if we relied on funding from the National Development Agency (NDA) and National Lotteries Board. Perhaps, Mr Mbeki, you are not aware that Lotto proposals are only invited once a year, and that it takes another year to get a response? Or that the NDA has denied Thulamela funding because we ”got enough in previous years”!
How can NGOs survive in such circumstances? We can’t charge for services, and ”volunteers” in rural South Africa are unemployed, -poverty-stricken people desperate for a chance to work — not financially secure citizens with a good heart and time on their hands.
Some of us are embarrassed to beg foreign donors for support. But we, and the community we serve, are grateful for the generosity of funders such as Danida, USAid and the European Union — without them neither we nor our services would exist.
The main condition of our foreign funding is that our activities ”must fully support the policies and initiatives of the South African government” (many of which are funded by those same foreign donors).
So, Mr Mbeki, if you truly believe local civil society is being subverted by foreign donors with hidden agendas, why don’t you make African money available to us? — Fiona Nicholson, programme director, Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme
Face up to township reality
In the 1930s the Stalinists falsely equated left criticism with the right wing (Trotskyism equals -fascism). Dominic Tweedie (Letters, September 23) attempts a similar trick. For him, left criticism of the African National Congress equals anarchism equals neo-liberalism. Referring to an earlier letter of mine, he writes: ”Legassick hates fixed institutions in the same way that Margaret Thatcher hated ‘society’ and Ronald Reagan hated ‘big government’.”
I was not making an abstract philosophical point about ”fixed institutions” but drawing attention to a political reality — mass protest against supposedly democratic ”forums”, ”ward committees” and the like, which are seen as vehicles of corrupt councillors. Tweedie broadens this into a ”hatred of fixed institutions”.
The ”forums” and ”ward committees”, presented as state agencies, are agencies of the ANC. Political parties’ entitlement to be ”fixed institutions” depends on their electoral support. Regarding these forums as ”fixed” is like claiming ANC rule has the divine right asserted by old-time kings.
Tweedie then takes issue with the idea that the Communist Party and Cosatu should break with the BEE-fat-cat-dominated ANC. It would mean ”starting all over again”, he asserts.
Not at all. The (relatively) ”fixed institutions” of Cosatu and the SACP, linked with the emerging social movements and with a left programme, could win a majority in the country and realise the Freedom Charter’s demands.
Tweedie hypothesises that the result would be a ”whole lot of new institutions”. Indeed. And whether they deserved criticism would depend on how they measured up to satisfying ordinary people’s needs.
Tweedie should take his head out of the clouds, go to the townships, and experience what life is like with the ”bucket system”, four taps for 300 people and shacks that get flooded. This is the reality for increasing, not decreasing, numbers of South Africans. — Martin Legassick, Mowbray
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A shame, not an honour
If editor Ferial Haffajee had bothered to read the Ministry of Health’s statement in response to the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s Zwelinzima Vavi, she would have noticed that the word ”mouthpiece” does not feature (September 30). Such mistakes happen when writers lift from other newspapers.
Our concern was that an objective assessment cannot be based on subjective information provided by the Treatment Action Campaign — a lobby focused on one element of the government’s multi-pronged Comprehensive Plan for Management, Care and Treatment of HIV and Aids.
We pleaded for an opportunity to present to the Cosatu rank-and-file, to allow workers to decide whether the government they elected is responding appropriately to the Aids challenge.
We can now provide Aids-related treatment in all districts and are extending to all municipalities — rural and urban — because of progress in improving the fragmented health system, reducing medicine prices and increasing social investment.
We note that you term someone who supports the nutrition component of the comprehensive plan, which includes vitamin supplementation, a ”salesman” and ”pimp”, while promoters of anti-retroviral drugs are said to ”deserve heralding and mimicking”.
Fortunately, our struggle was about asserting our right to access information, reach our own conclusions and speak our own minds. In the progressive movement, mimicking remains a shame, not an honour. — Sibani Mngadi, Health Ministry
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Struggle has been perverted
Looking at the picture of the not-so-young African National Congress Youth League members carrying Brett Kebble’s coffin in their expensive suits, one cannot help but see how far we have diverged from our struggle against apartheid.
The struggle was about equality, democracy and sharing of resources. Fast-forward to today, and we see rampant materialism, elitism, principles discarded and stupid statements by politicians-turned-businessmen — especially in the youth league — to justify their German sedans and cellphones. — George Makola
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Mbalula speaks for himself
Week after week we see people to whom we entrusted our voice making a noise only when it suits them. So it is with African National Congress Youth League president Fikile Mbalula.
Mbalula complains about the Scorpions’ raid on Jacob Zuma, but has said nothing about other raids. It is only when the unit stings -certain leaders that it is considered too harsh.
I agree Zuma deserves a fair trial. But certain people’s attempts to protect him at all costs and justify everything he does are just creating problems. Some are even prepared to do away with the justice system to ensure his case is not heard.
After 10 years of democracy, it is a disgrace to hear claims that the Scorpions are led by apartheid spies who have turned the institution into a private army fighting the democratic government. When apartheid spies infiltrated it, where was everyone — asleep? How could the government entrust such an important job to spies of the former regime? The allegations imply every-one busted by the Scorpions in the past was innocent and that their guilty verdicts should be reversed.
The youth league should concern itself with South Africa’s real problems: HIV/Aids, unemployment, a society lacking in morals, and women and child abuse. Let the law run its course, and rather mobilise the bored youth to do something positive towards nation-building.
The Scorpions might have made mistakes, but in our corrupt society we need a watchdog that is not afraid to bite even its own masters. — Phumla Khanyile, Soshanguve
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The frenzy around the proposed incorporation of the Scorpions into the police is misplaced. The discussion should be widened to include all law enforcement and security structures, including the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the National Prosecuting Authority. How do these structures interrelate?
We need a centrally coordinated system to deal with security and law enforcement, to avoid the abuse or perceived abuse of power. The Khampepe commission is nothing but a theatre for political squabbles. — Nyiko Floyd Shivambu, Johannesburg
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The NIA should hang its head in shame for allowing itself to be used as a political vehicle. So many other issues call for the agency’s intervention, but it is nowhere to be found. — Tim Singiswa, Johannesburg
A neo-liberal marionette
For vice-chancellor Loyiso Nongxa to apologise on behalf of pre-1994 Wits is like Stalin apologising for Ivan the Terrible (”Ngxe!” September 30). Stalin’s crimes completely eclipse those of the first czar.
In the little time that Nongxa has been principal, there has been a vicious campaign to bar the poor from studying. The number of students who receive financial aid has been slashed — at least a thousand students who should receive financial assistance are now excluded.
In less than two years, he has achieved what the apartheid government could not do in 46: close the doors of learning to blacks.
Nongxa indicts the Old Wits for perpetuating an alienating learning environment for non-white students. He has added another, financial, dimension to this alienation. One’s academic potential is no longer the criterion for a place; wealth has become the determining factor.
During his reign, upfront payments students must make at registration have shot up by 120%. Last year he had the gall to justify 50% cuts in financial aid allocations. For the first time, students who had not paid fees were barred from the campus.
The idea is to make Wits globally competitive. But the opposite has happened — it has dropped from the world’s top hundred universities. Nongxa is nothing more than a marionette in the fiscal austerity campaign dictated by his neo-liberal masters in the Union Buildings. — Monwabisi Gebhuza and Nomzamo Mati, Wits University
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Gallant
I was shocked and saddened to learn that the police are investigating the Mail & Guardian over the Oilgate scandal. Meanwhile, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahap attacks the media for prejudging Brett Kebble.
The right to a free press is enshrined in our Constitution, and the function of the media is to protect the poor against the powerful. Why then does Pahad not condemn the police investigation?
The M&G’s investigative reporting deserves the support of civil society. I commend your reporters for being gallant, vigilant, outstanding and strong in their fearless reporting on corruption in the government and the business sector. — Parapara Makgahlela, Pretoria
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