How can South Africa promote citizenship and accountability? A conversation with some state planners

How can states best promote active citizenship, in particular to improve the quality and accountability of state services such as education? This was the topic of a great two hour brainstorm with half a dozen very bright sparks from the secretariat of South Africa’s National Planning Commission yesterday. The NPC, chaired by Trevor Manuel (who gave us a great plug for the South African edition of From Poverty to Power) recently brought out the National Development Plan 2030 (right), and the secretariat is involved with trying to turn it into reality.

I kicked off with some thoughts which should be familiar to regular readers of this blog: the importance of implementation gaps, the shift in working on accountability from supply side (seminars for state officials) to demand side (promote citizen watchdogs to hold the state to account) and the challenge from the ODI-led Africa Power and Politics Programme that accountability work needs to break free of such supply/demand thinking and pursue ‘collective problem-solving in fragmented societies hampered by low levels of trust’, which seems a pretty good description of South Africa, according to the NPC. I gave the example of the Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation Network as an example of how this can be done through ‘convening and brokering’.

Once I shut up, it got more interesting (funny how often that happens). Some of the most interesting questions (and responses from me and others)

Lots of ‘convening and brokering’ is little more than talking shops – when does it lead to concrete results?

• Depends who’s in the room – do they share a common interest in finding solutions or are they there to fight turf wars, defend ideological positions etc?
• Can you build forward momentum by identifying some quick wins that make people realize what is possible?
• Individuals matter – is there a charismatic leader (as in Tajikistan), who can bind the forum together and keep it moving forward?

How to move from dependency to agency? At least some people see a real problem of acquired dependency. Poor people in South Africa have become dependent on free housing, state welfare etc, and have lost their sense of agency. Instead they oscillate between passivity and protest. The government conducts large scale consultation set pieces to try and encourage participation, but what is lacking is the day to day accountability the allows citizens to get action when public services fail.

The civil servants in the room happily disagreed with each other – fascinating to see an internal debate like this – Oxfam colleagues also contributed, so what follows draws on the points raised by people from both organisations. Some saw this as a supply side problem: the lack of public sanction when teachers don’t show up; officials are corrupt etc undermines citizen action; the teachers’ union resist reforms; moreover, ‘politicians only listen when something burns’, turning violent protest into a sensible change strategy.

Others focussed on the demand side, pointing out the problem of time poverty – women in particular just don’t have time to take part in exhausting exercises in citizenship on top of all their other tasks. One of the effects of the fall of apartheid has been an exodus of aspiring socially-motivated black and coloured people both from the teaching profession, and from poor communities, aggravating the problem of sink schools that the middle class, whether black or white, can ignore (especially if they go private). Others questioned this and pointed out that there is actually a lot of protest on the state of public services, and plenty of accountability structures such as school governing bodies, although coverage is patchy.

Which led us to compare the lack of progress in improving the quality of education with the great strides made on tackling HIV and AIDS. Why have the social movements on HIV had so much more impact than in other areas such as education or landlessness?

Here people pointed to the importance of starting with long term awareness-raising, designed both to inform andempower, but also to shift social norms, in this case from seeing HIV as an individual shame to a collective responsibility. This kind of ‘conscientization’, in the language of Paulo Freire, seems ill-suited to state action, so who might be able to do it in the case of education, for example shifting attitudes to seeing poor school grades as a collective, as well as individual, challenge? Social movements? Faith organizations?

HIV was a cross-class, cross-race issue, touching everyone in South Africa, so the movement found it easier to overcome social divisions. By contrast, poor education is tied closely to class and race, so coalitions are harder to build. And of course HIV was also, literally, a life and death issue – motivation was not a problem. In contrast the ‘slow death’ of bad schooling doesn’t galvanize the citizenry to the same extent. How to change that?

Some final thoughts from me:

-          What about trying to shorten the accountability chain in education to make it possible for citizens to get quick action rather than become bogged down in interminable bureaucratic process? How about an education ombudsman with power to investigate complaints and impose sanctions?

-          One of the weaknesses of the National Development Plan is its approach to gender. The half a page on ‘Women and the Plan’ in the NDP Overview fails to mention two major obstacles to citizenship: women’s time poverty and the lack of support for their role in the care economy; and the need to change the role of men. I’m pretty sure that on average, women are more concerned about the state of education, but as free time remains a male concept, they will struggle to do much about it.

Great discussion. This is what makes trips such fun.

Are Grey Panthers the next big thing in campaigning?

It’s probably a sign of my advancing years, but I’ve been wondering whether NGOs are missing a trick by endlessly targeting young people to become their activists. Sure, they’re the leaders of tomorrow, but what about us wrinklies? This all came to a head when I went out for a beer with a friend of mine who recently turned 60. He has money, contacts in the music business and elsewhere, he’s an entrepreneur, and a progressive, with decades of history in the co-op movement. And now he’s retired with time on his hands. But all he ever gets from NGOs like Oxfam is appeals for money, never for his time or experience.

Think about it, the 60s generation now passing into retirement has money, skills, networks and time. Students have none of those. There are plenty of examples of  ‘old men (and women) in a hurry’ who are remarkably effective lobbyists, from retired CEOs to the formidable nuns I used to work with at CAFOD, with decades of activism under their belts. Why aren’t we harnessing them properly?

So what might a ‘Grey Panthers’ movement look like? It would have to be very different from your standard NGO campaign. GPs are too savvy and experienced to want to just send off standard emails, join demos or sign up for Facebook pages. Tactics would have to be more tailored to their experience. For example, here’s how an elite influencing GPs model could work:

1. Find a few champions – typically retired captains of industry who now want to give something back. Find an appropriate mission for them – if they were in the construction industry, set them loose on corruption in contracts; if they were civil servants, maybe a lobby of their former departments; if ex-bankers, the Robin Hood Tax beckons.

2. Ask them to pull together a group of like-minded GPs (maybe trawl your database for a few candidates to add to their own contacts) and draw up a two year strategy for lobbying and advocacy on the relevant issue.

3. Give them some kind of franchise to campaign on your behalf and use your brand, but as a semi-autonomous group. They would need to report back, and be accountable to the organization, but they would have a high degree of independence and initiative so they can use their experience to maximum effect.

The only example I’ve come across is the Amnesty International Business Group, which was founded by a classic

Sir Geoffrey (third from right) networking

old-man-in-a-hurry, Sir Geoffrey Chandler. A former senior manager at Royal Dutch/Shell, Sir Geoffrey was a force of nature, more than willing to march into boardrooms and unleash his cut glass accent to promote human rights in the private sector. And if there’s one thing such people understand, it’s how to get round internal obstacles to progress, and spot management excuses for inaction (whether in the lobby target or, indeed, the NGO).

The story of the AI Business Group also shows the difficulties (sorry, I mean ‘challenges’) that can go with working with a bunch of self-confident, assertive older people. It was wound up three years ago, partly because, as one insider told me ‘a semi-autonomous group of grey eminences that report back and consider themselves to be accountable was rather more than some of them were prepared to accept, especially when there were differences of strategy/approach with regard to business and human rights’. NGOs hosting GPs may have to manage a trade-off between effectiveness and the brand risk posed by a bunch of stroppy mavericks doing their own thing.

Some of this is happening already. At the global level, there are ‘the elders’ (they sound a bit like a bad sci-fi plot, but the intentions are clearly good); groups like HelpAge International organize older people to campaign on ‘their’ issues, like pensions. But it shouldn’t stop there. I’m not a campaigner these days, but it seems like the Grey Panthers are a huge, untapped resource that is only going to grow as our societies age. So why aren’t there more such groups? Over to you for ideas, suggestions or examples of GPs in action, and for would-be GPs to say what would work for them.

Also, in a flagrant steal from Simon Maxwell’s blog, I’m going to start running the odd online poll. First up, should NGO campaigning devote more resources to older activists? And no easy ‘both – and’ responses allowed: more time on grey panthers means less on students and youth. If the technology works, there should be a poll at the top-right of this post. Over to you.

Update: The comments have been very helpful in clarifying what NGOs are/aren’t already doing. They involve lots of older people in grassroots campaigns, but they do not seem to be using them in an ‘ambassadorial role’ as described in the post, a la Amnesty Business Group. That’s the bit I think we should reconsider.

Active citizenship in the North: how does Citizens UK compare with developing country versions?

The South in the North?
Citizens UK
Grill the next Prime Minister

On Monday I attended an exemplary demonstration of active citizenship: a rally of 2,500 community organizers in central London, gathered to hear and interrogate the three main party leaders in tomorrow’s UK general election. It was organized by Citizens UK, an extension of the better known London Citizens organization, which itself grew out of an East London community network called Telco. Landing David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown three days before a general election is testament to its pulling power.

The leaders were given 10 minutes each and asked to respond to a six point manifesto drawn up by a mass grassroots consultation process across the UK. The six points are:

1. Recognize ‘civil society’ as an equal partner with good government and competitive markets
2. Adopt the Living Wage in the public sector and champion it across the country
3. Create a 20% interest rate cap on loans and improve access to credit for poor communities
4. End the detention of children in immigration centres (this aroused the most passion among the people in the hall – the campaign wants to get rid of the tarnished word ‘asylum’ and ‘restore pride in the tradition of offering sanctuary’)
5. Promote affordable housing by giving public land to ‘community land trusts’
6. Recognize the presence of (and create a pathway to legal status for) the estimated 700,000 long-term ‘irregular population’ (wonderful to see migration celebrated for once – in UK elections, it’s nearly always portrayed as a ‘problem’)

The leaders were politely but firmly interrogated against the six points, extracting promises for action, working parties, meetings etc should they win on Thursday. The candidates were also required to listen to harrowing personal testimony illustrating the manifesto asks – the most moving being Tiari Sanchez (right), a 14 year old girl who burst into tears while describing the poverty of her mother and grandmother, both of whom work as cleaners in Gordon Brown’s former home at the Treasury.

All three leaders appeared to relish the resolutely non-partisan, optimistic and multicultural and multifaith nature of the rally – a ‘South in the North’ patchwork of modern urban Britain. Gordon Brown in particular gave what the Guardian called ‘one of the most extraordinary performances of his tenure’ (you can see it here, or watch highlights – sorry, couldn’t find the full speeches – of Nick Clegg and David Cameron). The event itself, like Citizens UK, was well organized, and heavily influenced by both American-style community organizing (it draws on the ideas of Saul Alinsky, the US guru behind Barack Obama’s early community organizing experience in Chicago) and Christian, Muslim and Jewish churches, which dominate its membership, provide a lot of its leaders, and shaped the tone of the event (lots of singing, and a distinctly revivalist feel).

The manifesto campaign already has several wins under its belt. According to its website ‘As a result of Citizens UK campaigns, the Labour Party committed to the Living Wage in their Manifesto, as [Conservative London Mayor] Boris Johnson did in 2008; both Labour and the Liberal-Democrats have pledged to curb excess interest rates and the Liberal-Democrats agreed in 2007 to a plan to regularise long-term undocumented migrants.’ All 3 candidates were obliged to promise to meet Citizens UK on a regular basis, whoever emerges victorious on Thursday. Smart work.

To my shame, I have seen much more of community organization in Latin America and other developing world regions than in my own backyard, so how does this homegrown version compare? It is church-based, like many Latin American social movements, but the churches are different. Whereas the Latin American movement traditionally draws mainly on the radical wing of the Catholic Church, in the UK, protestant churches (both traditional and evangelical) + Muslim and Jewish communities are central. That’s a source of strength – surveys show that churches are the institutions most trusted by poor people everywhere, but it risks excluding potential secular allies, whether individuals or organizations – there were no signs of trade unions on the platform.

Another similarity is the combination of what the Latin Americans call ‘revindicaciones’ – demands on the state – combined with bottom up empowerment (Citizens UK’s speciality is training community organisers, and it does local awareness raising and organizing on issues like street crime).

But one big issue jumped out at me. This felt like an authentically bottom-up organization, identifying and responding to the immediate needs of some of the poorest communities in the UK. That means essentially redistribution of power and wealth, backed by social and economic rights. But it does not seem to stretch to a critique of the system itself (apart from social exclusion). No mention of the big challenges posed by climate change or the environmental constraints on the current growth model, the argument for a ‘new consumerism’ or the need to shrink the size of the financial sector.

In Latin America, intellectuals sometimes bemoan the inability of social movements to move from protesta (protest) to propuesta (a proposal or overall programme), but in countries such as Brazil and Bolivia, social movements have founded new parties that have then come to power. For all its wonderful diversity, Citizens UK seems essentially to be working within the current political and economic system, at least for now. It will be fascinating to see how it evolves. What do you think? Is Citizens UK just a ‘South in the North’ version of social movements across the developing world, or is it breaking new ground?

Chronic Poverty Report, published 8 July

This is the second report by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, a consortium of universities and thinktanks led by the Overseas Development Institute. It builds on many of the themes in the first (2004-5) report, but adds some important new issues and twists. Not an easy read, but there is real meat in here and a genuine effort to match rigorous analysis of the problem with both the politics and the policies required to address it. I’d say it was pretty cutting edge. Read More …