Date: 25/08/2004
Source: Eastern Cape Provincial Government
Title: N Moerane-Mamase: NGO conference
SPEECH PRESENTED BY MEC FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, MRS N MOERANE-MAMASE AT THE NGO CONFERENCE, East London, 25 August 2004
As we celebrate 10 years of our democracy it is befitting to salute the role played by our NGO's, in providing:
1. the leadership in shaping this democracy,
2. capacity in fashioning the principles and policies that we embrace today,
3. with quest to align themselves with the previously disadvantaged, to advance the cause of the poor and to better the lives of the majority of South Africans.
It was the realisation that "United we win and divided we fall that led to the birth of the Eastern Cape NGO Coalition, to pool the thinking of NGO's so as to make an impact in engaging and strategising for the regime and to make South Africa a better place for all.
As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our democracy, as NGO's operating in different contexts rural, peri-urban and urban and focusing on different social problems let us look back and examine our achievements or successes, failures or weaknesses. Let us also examine the wider challenges that face or posed by:
1. Poverty
2. Poverty and under-development
As we would recall - the NGOs that we are /you are today are from an era where government was not friendly and had disregard for equity in development (90%), and yes there were those few that benefited fro the previous government (10%). The weakness if not the failure of the previous system compelled NGOs to displaying varying type of responsibilities and attitudes towards solving the wider societal challenges. It is unfortunate that some of these tendencies lasted. It is time to review them.
As the South African Society we have evolved around and matured to be where we are. This was not a natural evolution. We have had a change in our
I. Political system
II. Legal system
Which necessitated changes in our Institutions which was coupled with leadership changes and which required new information, to address the challenges.
The information who for factor analysis for social, economic and development indicators. It then became imperative that statistics are not left to tacticians but to:
1. Strengthen those statistics all of us had to agree
2. We had to agree on elements of monitoring and evaluation that is why as government we welcome these types of Indaba's.
* It is in these types of Indaba's that compliance issues and why compliance is discussed
* It is in these types of Indaba's that we put the agenda of the "poor and the vulnerable in the centre for all to argue for and against
* It is in these types of Indaba's that we agree and disagree on what the agenda of the NGOs should be and should not be during the transformation era.
ROLE OF NGOS
Ladies and Gentleman, it is my submission to you today that - I still find the role of NGOs relevant in addressing the challenges and social problems of our society even to date.
Research reveals that in any new democracy high in the agenda is usually the provision of social services in the form of:
1. Education
2. Health
3. Welfare/Social services as it is believed that together they lay the foundations of the long term economic growth and stability but in the short term their interventions are difficult to qualify. Efficiency in which the budgeted amounts are spent is important as some may affect the performance of the economy e.g. Grants. On the other hand we should bear in mind that the socio-economic rights of the people should not be limited due to the unavailability of finances.
GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITIES
It then becomes the role of government to establish a framework to establish a balance between social services and economic growth.
* It is the formula that can have an impact on rural-urban brain drain, within a province and between provinces and ultimately to overseas countries
* It is that formula that can assist to enhance us in global competitiveness.
As the government struggles to find the right balance, there is a need to provide incentives to avoid the massive migration from rural areas to urban areas. It is unfortunate that we do not have any other incentive at this stage to sustain rural economy other than the provision of Social infrastructure, it is this level that the NGO's become becomes important.
The challenges that we face today are about the provision of basic services as foundations for a stable economy. We are therefore compelled as members of civil society/NGOs to examine what constitutes the core of the budget of our local government especially what characterises their capital infrastructural budget. The plight of rural development depends on government intervention and provision of leadership to circumvent the migration and to prepare them for urban dwelling. We are reliably informed that in the communist China Matse Tung introduced policies that were the equivalent of section 10 in the South African context in order to develop the rural economy. In his policies the peri-urban areas were for light industries and the metropolitan mere for the heavy industry.
As we are now faced with a situation where the rural youth is not willing to farm, the rural areas have little or no infrastructure. We are therefore compelled collectively, government and NGO's to rethink and review our strategy in order to better the lives of the majority and the rural poor. As a supplement to what both the Provincial Government and Local government in particular is providing as basic services - we are calling on you to assist in developing our rural areas to be better places for people to live and invest.
It is true that in our development as NGO's we concentrated in the urban areas and very few attempted to focus to the rural areas because of various reasons e.g. Communal Land Act, Customary Acts and non-availability of resources and for that reason the rural areas were marginalized. This does not suggest that all is well with the urban areas; we are still faced with a lot of problems ranging from:
* Violations of human rights by the very institutions that are suppose to espouse them. We read everyday of abuses in some of our institutions
* Some community institutions still disregard the nation building principles and still practise racism
* Some are still run as family entities discounting the fact that, the present regimes that we all established espouse the principles of community development, transparency and accountability.
You begin to wonder as to what happened to the NGO culture and principles of promoting:
1. Community participation
2. Accountability
3. And transparency, why is it that government alone has to be questioned about the above principles with the exclusion of the very formations that the above principles are suppose to be noted.
The role of NGO Coalition
NGO leadership programme director and delegates in this conference allow me to call on you to debate the role of the NGO coalition today in an attempt to pool all the diverse NGOs as they prevail in this changing environment. In that self-introspection you should be mindful that there are two types of NGO origin;
1. There were those that fought in the trenches and in the fight for a better SA
2. There were those, which provided the service in that turbulent environment.
The challenge is to harness the two unite them and develop a common purpose/vision. A vision that is aimed to enhance and embrace the principles of Batho Pele, Non racialism democratic principles. We need to give yourselves time frames or suffer the consequences of being an amorphous structure, which will be reactive.
Community monitoring
The performance of departments is too high level for communities, but the performance of local institutions is not too high, it occurs within their environment, within their context and is addressing their needs. It is "them" who can define the quality of service rendered; it is "them" who can quantify the level in terms of form and context.
This is a way - that we can provide and not punish the poor and vulnerable for the poor performance service providers.
If all of us would be robust and pool our resources - we would in all honesty better the lives of the poor and the majority. "I would like to end with a quote from an anonymous person,
"It takes more than counting the poor to make the poor count"
Issued by: Department of Social Development, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
25 August 2004
Source: Eastern Cape Provincial Government (http://www.ecprov.gov.za)
Source: Eastern Cape Provincial Government
Title: N Moerane-Mamase: NGO conference
SPEECH PRESENTED BY MEC FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, MRS N MOERANE-MAMASE AT THE NGO CONFERENCE, East London, 25 August 2004
As we celebrate 10 years of our democracy it is befitting to salute the role played by our NGO's, in providing:
1. the leadership in shaping this democracy,
2. capacity in fashioning the principles and policies that we embrace today,
3. with quest to align themselves with the previously disadvantaged, to advance the cause of the poor and to better the lives of the majority of South Africans.
It was the realisation that "United we win and divided we fall that led to the birth of the Eastern Cape NGO Coalition, to pool the thinking of NGO's so as to make an impact in engaging and strategising for the regime and to make South Africa a better place for all.
As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our democracy, as NGO's operating in different contexts rural, peri-urban and urban and focusing on different social problems let us look back and examine our achievements or successes, failures or weaknesses. Let us also examine the wider challenges that face or posed by:
1. Poverty
2. Poverty and under-development
As we would recall - the NGOs that we are /you are today are from an era where government was not friendly and had disregard for equity in development (90%), and yes there were those few that benefited fro the previous government (10%). The weakness if not the failure of the previous system compelled NGOs to displaying varying type of responsibilities and attitudes towards solving the wider societal challenges. It is unfortunate that some of these tendencies lasted. It is time to review them.
As the South African Society we have evolved around and matured to be where we are. This was not a natural evolution. We have had a change in our
I. Political system
II. Legal system
Which necessitated changes in our Institutions which was coupled with leadership changes and which required new information, to address the challenges.
The information who for factor analysis for social, economic and development indicators. It then became imperative that statistics are not left to tacticians but to:
1. Strengthen those statistics all of us had to agree
2. We had to agree on elements of monitoring and evaluation that is why as government we welcome these types of Indaba's.
* It is in these types of Indaba's that compliance issues and why compliance is discussed
* It is in these types of Indaba's that we put the agenda of the "poor and the vulnerable in the centre for all to argue for and against
* It is in these types of Indaba's that we agree and disagree on what the agenda of the NGOs should be and should not be during the transformation era.
ROLE OF NGOS
Ladies and Gentleman, it is my submission to you today that - I still find the role of NGOs relevant in addressing the challenges and social problems of our society even to date.
Research reveals that in any new democracy high in the agenda is usually the provision of social services in the form of:
1. Education
2. Health
3. Welfare/Social services as it is believed that together they lay the foundations of the long term economic growth and stability but in the short term their interventions are difficult to qualify. Efficiency in which the budgeted amounts are spent is important as some may affect the performance of the economy e.g. Grants. On the other hand we should bear in mind that the socio-economic rights of the people should not be limited due to the unavailability of finances.
GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITIES
It then becomes the role of government to establish a framework to establish a balance between social services and economic growth.
* It is the formula that can have an impact on rural-urban brain drain, within a province and between provinces and ultimately to overseas countries
* It is that formula that can assist to enhance us in global competitiveness.
As the government struggles to find the right balance, there is a need to provide incentives to avoid the massive migration from rural areas to urban areas. It is unfortunate that we do not have any other incentive at this stage to sustain rural economy other than the provision of Social infrastructure, it is this level that the NGO's become becomes important.
The challenges that we face today are about the provision of basic services as foundations for a stable economy. We are therefore compelled as members of civil society/NGOs to examine what constitutes the core of the budget of our local government especially what characterises their capital infrastructural budget. The plight of rural development depends on government intervention and provision of leadership to circumvent the migration and to prepare them for urban dwelling. We are reliably informed that in the communist China Matse Tung introduced policies that were the equivalent of section 10 in the South African context in order to develop the rural economy. In his policies the peri-urban areas were for light industries and the metropolitan mere for the heavy industry.
As we are now faced with a situation where the rural youth is not willing to farm, the rural areas have little or no infrastructure. We are therefore compelled collectively, government and NGO's to rethink and review our strategy in order to better the lives of the majority and the rural poor. As a supplement to what both the Provincial Government and Local government in particular is providing as basic services - we are calling on you to assist in developing our rural areas to be better places for people to live and invest.
It is true that in our development as NGO's we concentrated in the urban areas and very few attempted to focus to the rural areas because of various reasons e.g. Communal Land Act, Customary Acts and non-availability of resources and for that reason the rural areas were marginalized. This does not suggest that all is well with the urban areas; we are still faced with a lot of problems ranging from:
* Violations of human rights by the very institutions that are suppose to espouse them. We read everyday of abuses in some of our institutions
* Some community institutions still disregard the nation building principles and still practise racism
* Some are still run as family entities discounting the fact that, the present regimes that we all established espouse the principles of community development, transparency and accountability.
You begin to wonder as to what happened to the NGO culture and principles of promoting:
1. Community participation
2. Accountability
3. And transparency, why is it that government alone has to be questioned about the above principles with the exclusion of the very formations that the above principles are suppose to be noted.
The role of NGO Coalition
NGO leadership programme director and delegates in this conference allow me to call on you to debate the role of the NGO coalition today in an attempt to pool all the diverse NGOs as they prevail in this changing environment. In that self-introspection you should be mindful that there are two types of NGO origin;
1. There were those that fought in the trenches and in the fight for a better SA
2. There were those, which provided the service in that turbulent environment.
The challenge is to harness the two unite them and develop a common purpose/vision. A vision that is aimed to enhance and embrace the principles of Batho Pele, Non racialism democratic principles. We need to give yourselves time frames or suffer the consequences of being an amorphous structure, which will be reactive.
Community monitoring
The performance of departments is too high level for communities, but the performance of local institutions is not too high, it occurs within their environment, within their context and is addressing their needs. It is "them" who can define the quality of service rendered; it is "them" who can quantify the level in terms of form and context.
This is a way - that we can provide and not punish the poor and vulnerable for the poor performance service providers.
If all of us would be robust and pool our resources - we would in all honesty better the lives of the poor and the majority. "I would like to end with a quote from an anonymous person,
"It takes more than counting the poor to make the poor count"
Issued by: Department of Social Development, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
25 August 2004
Source: Eastern Cape Provincial Government (http://www.ecprov.gov.za)
Advertisement
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE SAVE THIS ARTICLE FEEDBACK
To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here
