11 MARCH 2003
Eric Molobi, Boardmember, Kagiso Trust
Development brings freedom, provided it is development of people. But people cannot be developed; they can only develop themselves. For while it is possible for an outsider to build a person’s house, an outsider cannot give the person pride and self-confidence in themselves as human beings …People develop themselves by joining in free discussion of a new venture, and participating in the subsequent decisions… Development of people can, in fact, only be effected by the people.
Julius K. Nyerere
Honourable Ministers, Chairperson, Members of Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, I am Eric Molobi. I am a former Executive Director of Kagiso Trust, and currently a member of the Board of Trustees. I am here this morning to talk about KT’s experiences in eradicating poverty and how improvements can be made in the relationship between civil society organisations and government in this regard, through the targeted use of Special Funds. I am also here to make a special case that professionally run civil society organisations can be of great help to government in fast-tracking the delivery and implementation of poverty eradication programmes.
First I will give an overview of Kagiso Trust, followed by a brief presentation of key constraints identified by KT, as hampering the successful collaboration of government and civil society organisations (CSOs). I will conclude the presentation with recommendations based on KT’s findings.
Overview of Kagiso Trust
Kagiso Trust (KT) was formed in 1986 as a non-governmental development organisation focussing on managing, financing, and facilitating development projects. Our mission has remained unchanged:
To work with people to achieve a society which will offer liberty, justice, and freedom from poverty.
KT is the largest black-led, national, independent development agency in South Africa. Our record of social proximity to the projects partnered is without parallel in South Africa. We have facilitated, managed and disbursed over R1.5 billion in poverty eradication development projects over the past 17 years: more than 5000 funding contracts were successfully managed and concluded, as well as higher education bursaries to over 20 000 students.
Figures below depict KT’s program management and disbursement history.
KT specialises in supporting community-based organisations in rural, peri-urban and informal settlement areas. We utilise a Programmatic Approach to fund management and development facilitation whenever possible. It is a method, which promotes integrated development, processes within a particular area and/or sector, to provide a more sustainable, positive impact than other methods of grant funded poverty eradication.
KT’s management of the Programmatic Approach involves significant relationship building in the targeted community, as well as facilitating relationships between the community and relevant government structures. Such an approach is possible because KT’s Programme Officer staff is based throughout the country, speaking the languages and sharing the history of the areas in which they work. They are skilled development professionals with a strong understanding of the complex dynamics involved in poverty eradication strategies. It is the quality and frequency of KT’s regular contact with disadvantaged communities that has given the Trust its outstanding reputation amongst many of the most marginalised communities in South African society.
Our operational emphasis is reflected in our methodology: building stakeholder relationships and cultivating sustainable partnerships for socio-economic change. Many donors and development facilitators shy away from this approach due to the sometimes tedious, usually very time consuming demands placed on programme staff.
KT has learned from experience that in severely deprived communities, it is the quality of the relationship between development stakeholders (including KT programme staff, community-based structures, and government), which can be the most significant determinant of the long-term viability of development processes. Ensuring that mutually reinforcing poverty eradication processes are designed and implemented with appropriate levels of capacity building support have produced outcomes, which have attracted grant funding from more traditional donor sources.
Ultimately however, the most enduring and least visible impact has been a change in perspective amongst programme participants: to re/gain a sense of control over one’s daily life permeates relationships from the household level through to democratic governance structures and institutions. We believe it is central to cultivating stable foundations on which to put transformation into practice; it is fundamentally key to deepening democracy in South Africa.
Eradicating poverty and the need for increased collaboration between government and civil society organisations
Development, liberation, and transformation are all aspects of the same process. Throughout our Constitution this is repeatedly recognised. The preamble commits us to, inter alia, "improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person." This cannot happen sustainably without government and civil society working together. These two sectors bring different skills, experiences, and resources (including social networks and different understandings of the poverty being lived every day) to each potential development initiative, and if managed properly, these capacities can be blended for maximum impact – specifically for the systematic eradication of poverty.
What has prevented this potentially high-octane collaboration from effectively occurring throughout the country to date? There are many geographical and site-specific reasons one would need to discuss in order to be comprehensive. For the purposes of this presentation, I will list some of the main constraints Kagiso Trust has identified in our 17 years of operation as challenges to effective civil society-democratic government co-operation in efforts to eradicate poverty. It is important for me to point out that much of what I am presenting today has been learned through trial and error. At KT we try to learn as much as possible from our mistakes, we try to continually improve our systems and processes, our staff capacities, in order to increase our ability to work effectively and accountably in poverty eradication processes.
Isolated project funding has tended not to produce sustainable results. KT has learned from experience that funding single development projects scattered across the country is far less sustainable than investing in a range of development projects in set number of poverty-stricken communities. With the latter approach, economies of scale can be achieved in terms of training and infrastructure development needs. In addition, the time spent getting to understand the various power dynamics and differential access to resources within a given community can be put to use across a wider range of poverty eradication initiatives, frequently in cross-complementary manners. This is a very important point: poverty eradication is not a conflict-free process. It must be managed sensitively, and inclusively as possible, in order to produce sustainable socio-economic impact that contributes to peace and reconciliation in South Africa. Historically entrenched inequalities must be redressed as part of this process –which requires a programmatic rather than freestanding project-based approach, as these entrenched inequalities are social and economic rather than merely political or ideological. Government should be commended for the nodal area approach that is being taken in some areas, as it tends to enable more effectively integrated development approaches to be taken in specific poverty-ridden areas.
Under-developed capacity building components of poverty eradication strategies can contribute to development contracts not being properly implemented, and funds being misapplied. A thorough understanding of the existing local level situation is required before poverty eradication planning and implementation occurs. KT recently hosted a Local Government and Development Finance conference where many delegates complained of not knowing enough about the internal workings of their constituencies to participate effectively in development planning meetings. Existing coping mechanisms, strengths, challenges, opportunities, all need to be understood before plans can be drawn which hope to produce a sustainable impact on poverty. Capacity building components are a vital part of any poverty eradication strategy, both for civil society organisations and for government structures directly involved in poverty eradication processes. Failure to acknowledge, plan, and adequately budget for the strengthening of local level skills and capacity to implement and sustain a poverty eradication processes, in KT’s experience, ultimately results in the failure of a poverty eradication initiative (and I include continued dependence on consultants by local government and/or a CSO as a symptom of a failed poverty eradication process).
Excessive use of consultants in poverty eradication processes tends to weaken the internal capacity of government and CSO role-players to effectively engage with development issues and processes, and often contributes to unsustainable poverty eradication initiatives being undertaken. This government has committed itself to people-centered development. A central tenant of people-centered development is accountability: continual information exchange, consultation, and joint decision-making. This cannot occur effectively when the key role-players have contracted their responsibilities out to highly paid consultants. The developmental relationship which needs to be cultivated between government, CSOs and targeted beneficiaries as an integral part of a poverty eradication process cannot occur when consultants, however well meaning, have been brought in to perform government’s role in the process. Development is an on-going process, and the job of consultants is by definition very limited: what purpose does it serve to develop relationships in a poverty eradication process with consultants who will soon be moving on to the next job? At the same time, there are staff members within government who should be performing the functions the consultants are performing. Where are they? Why are they not in the field doing their jobs? If capacity is lacking, it is certainly not going to be built up through contracting out work to consultants. This is a serious issue. If government is serious about poverty eradication, then it needs to send its own staff to engage in poverty eradication processes on its behalf, and stop sending highly paid consultants.
Opportunities for collaboration between development projects operating within the same sector and/or geographical area tend not to be thoroughly exploited. Similar to government, many CSOs do not share information with one another on issues of similar concern. This makes identifying of collaborative opportunities more difficult, as well as increasing the duplication of efforts in a particular area. Opportunities for increasing developmental impact through economies of scale are overlooked, as are the chances for increasing the working relationships between organisations and government departments involved in similar work in similar sectors and/or geographical areas. In the case of government in particular, KT has experienced numerous instances where local governments did not know what implementation activities provincial and national government departments were involved in within their municipal boundaries. KT has had the same experience at the provincial government level in terms of lack of knowledge of national departmental implementation activities within the province. This should not be the situation, particularly as government seeks to address poverty efficiently and urgently – there must be better information sharing between and within the various levels of government.
The poorest of the poor continue to be marginalised from poverty eradication activities as initiatives in working and middle-class areas are better positioned and resourced to take advantage of existing development funding opportunities with government (Johns Hopkins University Study 2002 The Size and Scope of the Non-profit Sector in South Africa, page viii). In KT’s experience, CSOs operating in the most severely poverty-stricken parts of South Africa tend not to be as knowledgeable in fundraising skills as their urban-based counter-parts. Even when they do obtain application forms, they are frequently daunted by the amount and types of information being requested. This does not mean that these organisations should be overlooked as partners in poverty eradication programmes. Assuming all other aspects of the organisation are fundamentally sound, the organisation should be given the opportunity to increase their skills where necessary in order to participate fully in a poverty eradication partnership process. Such organisations usually possess a level of insight into the functioning of a poverty-stricken community (and its dysfunctions) which would take a consultant months to grasp, and which are vital to the successful planning and implementation of a sustainable poverty eradication process. If we are serious about targeting the poorest of the poor, we have to be serious about building the capacity of rural community-based organisations in particular, in order for them to effectively participate as stakeholders/partners in a poverty eradication development process.
Functional longer-term relationship building between relevant government structures and other locally-based programme stakeholders tends to be excluded with an over-emphasis on short-term visible outputs – this impacts negatively on long-term sustainability of poverty eradication initiatives. Government, local government in particular, is mandated to perform many on-going functions that impact directly on poverty and the quality of life of our citizens. Poverty eradication programmes can produce visible outputs – in fact that is probably one of the easier components of eradicating poverty. However, without functional relationships between the beneficiaries of a poverty eradication programme and relevant government structures tasked with creating and sustaining an environment in which enables people to take more control over their daily lives, poverty eradication programmes are not sustainable. I have already addressed the point of why government cannot hand this role off to consultants. It is task government is mandated to perform, and must perform. It can be arduous, and it is time consuming. Yet it is absolutely vital to transforming the lives of the poor in South Africa.
The vast majority of poverty eradication processes are "managed" from heavily resourced city-based head offices, with comparatively little being invested in hands-on site-based skills transfer and problem solving with the targeted beneficiaries, aimed at strengthening local level implementation capacity. Again, the poorest of the poor are marginalised in this situation, as they tend to live further away from the cities, far from tarred roads, frequently in areas inhospitable for convenient day-trip visits from the urban-based office. Seemingly small problems can and do very easily snowball into crises that ultimately threaten the very viability of a poverty eradication initiative. There is an urgent need for poverty eradication facilitators who are based in the communities with which they work. KT has learned that the social proximity of its development facilitators to the targeted beneficiaries plays a large role in the sustained momentum of a poverty eradication process. The bulk of poverty eradication resources need to be spent at the local level, with minimal percentages being spent on management and administrative functions at the national and provincial level. At the moment, this equation tends to be upside down: the bulk of the funds are being spent on running costs at the national and provincial levels and the smallest amounts on actual implementation activities at the local level.
Monitoring and evaluation functions have tended to under-emphasise the development of relationships necessary for sustainability of change efforts at the local level, ultimately contributing to ineffective and cost-inefficient poverty eradication efforts that disempower more than generate viable locally-based change initiatives. Our measurement indicators need to reflect our values, more specifically they need to reflect the values of people-centered development, which this government has committed itself to. We need to expand technicist approaches to measuring poverty eradication to encompass qualitative indicators of social and economic change. At KT we have seen that a poverty eradication programme’s monthly balance sheet can be fine, while on the ground it is actually in turmoil. By the time the turmoil is reflected in the balance sheet, it is too late: the programme has collapsed. Participation and communication between stakeholders is key to sustainable relationship building for poverty eradication, yet this is rarely reflected in monitoring and evaluation indicators. Many people only perform according to what they will be measured on – we therefore need to ensure that our poverty eradication indicators encompass both qualitative and quantitative measurements of social and economic change. Monitoring needs to be systematically implemented and annual evaluations need to be performed not as a punitive procedure, but as part of an overall learning process. It is far more effective to take corrective measures in increments as a programme proceeds than to wait until the end of programme and assign blame for a failed poverty eradication initiative. This assumes that multiple-year budgeting for poverty eradication processes are occurring in practise. If it is not, we need to ask why not, as sustainable poverty eradication processes take more than a twelve-month period to achieve.
There is a significant lack of coherent process management strategies to ensure that poverty eradication processes promote equity and actively address issues of inequality within historically disadvantaged communities. This point is relates closely to the previous one of measurement indicators. We cannot assume that issues of inequality will be magically addressed through poverty eradication processes unless we deliberately build this into the process. Development with social justice can take place only when we are clear where injustice is taking place. KT has learned at least two key lessons in this regard: 1) development facilitators must have a comprehensive understanding of the social, economic, political, historical and environmental contexts within which they are working in a given community in relation to a proposed poverty eradication process and 2) we must be explicit in measuring progress in the eradication of inequality in the poverty eradication process, in order to enable sustainable peace and reconciliation through social and economic development processes. It is KT’s view that there are sufficient institutions in existence to perform this function, and that setting up new institutions actually compounds the challenges being faced within the development sector in South Africa at the moment.
There is a vital need for stakeholder participation (including government) to occur coupled with a clear definition of roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders involved in the process. This is particularly important with regards to the extent to which organisations, government structures, and/or individuals have a role and responsibility for decision-making, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, resource allocation, and so forth. The ultimate aim is to have a better understanding, through negotiation, of the interests, ability and commitment of stakeholders who participate in an initiative. The result is an improved working relationship amongst partners and transparency of decision-making. In KT’s experience, community-based organisations are brought to the planning table with the best intentions. Given the frequently top-down nature of planning, however, little responsibility and decision-making authority is given to them, thereby limiting their interest and support of the planning and implementation process. In KT’s experience, without sufficient sense of ownership of a poverty eradication initiative amongst the targeted beneficiaries, the initiative is unlikely to succeed and will remain government or donor-owned (rather than community-owned).
When seeking to work in collaboration or in partnership with civil society organisations, government needs to be creative in how it manages the tensions around different demands and competing agendas that will present themselves in the development process. "Top down" approaches to development have been widely discredited internationally and locally: they are a waste of resources and time, they are not sustainable, and they frequently result in conflict in the very communities that were meant to be beneficiaries. Participatory processes are time consuming, but when managed properly, they produce cost-effective, sustainable results. Government will need to provide enabling leadership, sometimes in a context where it is impartial, other times where it has a very clear agenda and thus has to negotiate in a constructive manner to arrive at an outcome which stakeholders in a specific poverty eradication process can agree upon. Civil society is not homogenous. Government will inevitably get caught in the middle of conflicts between, for example, community-based organisations and non-governmental organisations. This is part of the development process. It requires enabling leadership to navigate, negotiate, and ultimately arrive at decisions with which all stakeholders can amicably agree.
Recommendations
For poverty eradication to be sustainable, it cannot be divorced from empowerment building: increasing one’s capacity to take more control over one’s daily life. Macro and sectoral policies affect livelihood options available to poverty-stricken communities and individuals. They must be considered in conjunction with an understanding of how men and women prioritise their needs, use resources and perceive solutions to pressing problems. Just as many civil society organisations operate without a full understanding of the government policies in their field, many government structures and departments are operating without an understanding of the civil society organisations working in their fields and/or targeted geographical areas. The opportunities for significant change aimed at poverty eradication involving the collaboration of government and civil society are wide and varied. I have attempted to highlight some of the key constraints Kagiso Trust has identified over the years when attempting to facilitate CSO-government collaborations aimed at poverty eradication. In this section I shall briefly list some recommendations, which Kagiso Trust believes should be taken under consideration by the participants and those, interested in the proceedings of today’s Portfolio Committee meeting.
Civil society organisations and government can make a much more sustainable impact on poverty when combining the local level knowledge of men and women living in poverty provided by CSOs and targeted beneficiaries with the services and technical expertise and support offered by government departments and structures. Local people must be involved in the design and implementation of poverty eradication processes as subjects, not as objects.
Poverty eradication initiatives should seek to target specific geographical areas for and/or sectors for integrated development rather than operate on an isolated project-by-project basis. Government should be commended for adopting the nodal area approach and these should be increased.
Capacity building needs of those stakeholders directly involved in the implementation of the poverty eradication initiative must be realistically planned and budgeted for, not simply contracted out to consultants with a promise of addressing skills development needs at a later date.
National government needs to establish a clearinghouse for information from all departments related to implementation activities at the local level. This information could be accessible to the public via phone, fax or e-mail, as well as through local papers, lekgotlas, information workshops and local community networks via local authorities. This should assist both CSOs and local government in particular in identifying which national and provincial departments are involved in which implementation activities with possible links to proposed poverty eradication initiatives.
Similarly, the Department of Social Development’s Non-Profit Organisation Directorate needs to establish a clearinghouse for information from CSOs related to various implementation activities at the local level. This information could be accessible to the public, including government departments, via phone, fax or e-mail, as well as local papers, sectoral newsletters, lekgotlas, information workshops and local community networks. This information should assist both CSOs and government in identifying CSOs already involved in specific areas and activities that may be under consideration for additional developmental intervention, thereby lessening the chances for duplication of services and increasing the opportunities for collaboration.
Existing poverty eradication strategies and processes need to be examined in terms of the extent to which they are "pro-poor." To what extent are the poorest of the poor being targeted? To what extent do existing processes enable the poor to incorporate their own ideas and experiences into the planning processes? If not, why not? What are the constraints?
Government needs to increase its investment and participation in the design processes of sustainable poverty eradication processes. This function must not be left to consultants if it is to produce sustainable results. A dialogue process involving government and CSOs – each being clear about their roles and responsibilities -- is compulsory if we are serious about eradicating poverty in South Africa.
Build local capacity and institutions to participate and support processes of localising poverty eradication programme design and management. Sustainable programmes cannot be managed even 50km from the site, and visited on an occasional basis. Receiving and reading reports at the head office is not a sustainable monitoring system for poverty eradication programmes. We need multi-skilled development officers who reside at the points of development. If national government has staff with the appropriate skills, why should they not be relocated for a set period of time?
Monitoring and evaluation indicators need to reflect the values of people-centered developed, through sensitively designed qualitative and quantitative indicators that can capture social and economic change. We must be particularly explicit in identifying and measuring progress in the eradication of inequality through the poverty eradication process. Monitoring must occur systematically and evaluative reviews of major programmes should occur annually, with the information from both processes being fed back into the learning cycle of the implementation process for maximum impact.
Government needs to be creative in how it manages the tensions around different demands and competing agendas that will present themselves in the development process.
Government and CSOs need to take joint responsibility for monitoring the implementation and management of poverty eradication processes, and use the lessons from the programme(s) to influence and advise government on policy development and practise.
It is critical for government to use organisations that have the experience, infrastructure, systems and skills in poverty eradication processes rather than seeking to establish yet another development institution.
Locally based development facilitators in rural areas in particular are becoming an urgent necessity. The President noted the need for and important role-played by community development workers in his speech when he opened Parliament this year. This need affects all aspects of poverty eradication strategy, design, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
In conclusion, I would like to draw attention to KT’s National Rural Development Education Programme. This is a programme into which KT has invested substantial time and resources (R6.5 million) over the past three years, researching (in South Africa, and countries in Southern African) a poverty eradication model centered on the use of multi-skilled community development facilitators. We have identified pilot areas in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo, and are in the first stages of establishing administrative infrastructure and systems. We are currently engaged in a major fundraising drive for the National Rural Development Education Programme.
Thank you for your time and attention.