Annual Report:
2000

Contents

Funding Support
Message from the Executive Director
Human Resources
Board of Directors
Staff List
Trauma Clinic
Education and Media Unit
Transition and Reconciliation Unit
Criminal Justice Policy Unit
Gender Unit
Youth Department
Violence and Transition Project
Farm Violence Project
Developing and Implementing Public Policy Project
Refugee Reproductive Health Project
SADC Crime and Violence Prevention Project
City Safety Project
Sustainability Project
Resource Centre
Financial Report
Talks & Presentations
Workshops
Publications
Public Seminars
Internal Seminars
Contact Addresses

Funding Support

The growth, achievments, expertise and creative energy of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation would not have been possible without the extraordinary generosity and commitment of our many partners and donors. The following is a list of those who provided such support for our work over the year. We once again take this opportunity to express our gratitude and appreciation for the confidence they have shown in our vision and in our work.

List of Donors 2000

Message from the Executive Director

2001: A Race Odyssey

As the year 2001 begins and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) enters its thirteenth year, it is clear that South Africa is still only part of the way down the road to sustainable reconciliation.

The coming year begins a decade of action against racism in South Africa and it will also see the World Conference Against Racism being hosted in this country. Yet at a preparatory event hosted by the South African Human Rights Commission towards the end of 2000, President Mbeki gave the lie to any glib notion of a South African rainbow nation. He reiterated his two nations perspective on South Africa's race relations, speaking about the need to address both 'white fears' and 'black expectations' in tackling the legacy of race-based inequality in South Africa.

In some respects, this approach is refreshing for its honesty about the limited achievements of the 'nation-building' exercise that has become such a symbolic aspect of the popular South African discourse about reconciliation. Despite the achievements of the South African 'miracle' - of which we have cause to be very proud - there is a grave danger in claiming assumed victories in the reconciliation-building exercise, where this is based on a politically sanitised version of the past. In fact, negotiated settlement at the party political level and the formal establishment of a rules-based multi-party system of governance sometimes do more to disguise than they do to expose race and gender as analytical tools essential to understanding both past and current patterns of violence and conflict in our society. The removal of the political scaffolding of apartheid does not in itself bring down the structural racism or sexism in our society, which are still embedded in social practice, in everyday relationships and in sustained inequality.

However, whilst this establishes the appropriate primacy of the commitment to tackling residual racial and gender-based inequality directly, one also needs to be mindful of the fact that this endeavour and this approach are also subject to misinterpretation. The cry of racism is all too easily the defensive political strategy of those who resist accountability for their non-delivery, inefficiency, corruption or incompetence - whether they are black or white.

Even more important, however, is the danger of an engagement with racism that is conveniently suspended at an ideological level, falling shy of a substantive engagement with the issues of redress of historically embedded, racially based identity and inequality. It is unconvincing to trumpet the refrain of continental reawakening, whilst failing to honour the commitment to reparations for victims of apartheid's gross human rights violations, who testified before the TRC. It is hypocritical to flag a new patriotism whilst threatening to roll back the gains made by our new constitution in the name of the fight against crime. It is inadequate to speak of poverty alleviation for the black majority, in the face of an unwillingness to challenge either the entrenched privilege of an old elite or the self-enrichment priorities of some of the new political and economic heavyweights. In short, for reconciliation to be sustainable in South Africa, the ideological rhetoric of anti-racism must be matched by a practical commitment to redress in the reconstruction of our social fabric and our everyday relationships.

In these and in other respects, the indicators of success were not all good during the year under review in this Annual Report. During the past year, South Africans witnessed brutal racist behaviour when the SAPS Dog Unit's practice of 'live-baiting' black suspects was captured on national television. The prevailing experiences of xenophobia were also apparent. Race-based hate crimes reflected negatively on the limited penetration which the rhetoric of reconciliation appears to have had into the world of largely isolated rural towns - whether this was manifested in a young shop-lifting suspect being painted white, a black man being dragged to his death behind a pick-up truck, or the everyday violence on the farms, targeted at either white farmers or black farm-workers. Nowhere are our society's sustained racist predilections more apparent than in the apparent re-racialisation of social attitudes in response to high levels of violent crime and the fear of crime - perhaps the worst indictment on the limits, not only of our national reconciliation enterprise, but also of our commitments to a human rights dispensation. And then of course, there is the apparent reluctance of businesses that benefited from institutional racism to invest in any form of reparation to the victims of apartheid violence.

These are not observations of our society or criticisms that should be leveled at government alone, but are challenges that must be confronted by the organs of civil society in South Africa as well. Indeed, rather than reflecting the traditions of civic activism and high levels of civil society organisation for which South Africa has become renowned, the picture painted above suggests that South Africa is currently a rather uncivil society. Sustained patterns of prejudice, the enduring trends in racially-based hate crimes, continuing institutionalised racism in our institutions and in our everyday social relationships - all throw down the gauntlet to NGOs, community-based organisations, trade unions and religious organisations about how effective we are in the work we do in these spheres. And let it not be suggested that the commitment to institutional transformation that we demand in the state and in the wider society is any less necessary within many of these organs of civil society themselves.

In our own work during the past year, we have confronted many of these challenges. Daily in our Youth Department's work with a new generation of young South Africans, we confront embedded racial identities, shaped by the apartheid past of which these twelve and thirteen year olds have little or no direct experience. In the clients who pass through our Trauma Clinic we witness the racialised interpretation of experiences and patterns of criminal victimisation. In the work we have done on police brutality and on juvenile justice, we confront regularly the sustained patterns of violence and marginalisation that makes our societal transformation incomplete. In our work with survivors of apartheid's human rights abuses, we experience the frustration of non-delivery on promises of reparation and the enduring experiences of trauma that outlive the mandate of the TRC. Through our research into violence in transition we have confronted the changing patterns of conflict and violence, which make reference to South Africa as a post-conflict society seem inappropriate, and suggestions that we have achieved reconciliation seem wishful.

Like our society as a whole, the CSVR's work is far from done and the highlights of our successes or the lessons from our failures are too numerous to mention here. They are documented in the following pages of this report. The past year has seen CSVR break much new ground. We have become co-producers of Take 5, a daily educational television programme commissioned by the SABC and broadcast nationally to an audience of nearly three million young viewers a week. We have developed a new project to assist in confronting the plight of vulnerable and under-serviced refugees in South Africa. We have developed a Southern African regional programme that seeks to develop strategic partnerships to take our experience to, and enhance our learning in the SADC region, and we have been working in several countries even further afield. We have begun the process of building a national network of trauma service providers, we have become leading thinkers in the field of local government crime prevention strategies, we have established our expertise on school safety strategy and victim compensation schemes and much, much more.

Despite these and other achievements in the year under review, CSVR remains a reflective and self-critical learning organisation. In the course of the past year, we have recognised that we still have much to do. Not least of all, we need to better manage the research we do and the knowledge we have, so as to maximise their value and impact. We have to evaluate our programmes and our community interventions better and more regularly than we do. We need to tackle the racial politics of our country more centrally, more boldly and more directly - and we have begun tackling them inside our organisation too. We need to further define an agenda around reconciliation for South Africa that is resistant to narrow and limited perspectives of transition that do not genuinely aim for meaningful change.

At the time of writing this 12th Annual Report for the CSVR, it is clear that our work, our commitment and our organisational goals are as important to our country today as they were at the time of writing CSVR's first activity report at the end of the 1980s. We assert this not out of immodesty, but because it reflects the voices of the vulnerable groups and community stakeholders with whom we work and the outcomes of our innovative and professional research.

We also assert this need, because as reported in previous years, it is once again imperative that our need for sustainable core funding is recognised, preferably in the form of an endowment fund which can service this internationally acknowledged and unique organisation over the next decade or more. In the year ahead, this latter appeal will be made very directly to South African corporations who should recognise that they have an interest in becoming stakeholders in the South African reconciliation enterprise. We will also have to target those foreign donors who have so generously supported us over the years, and who may be willing to consider a creative exit strategy when withdrawing their transitional aid to the country.

Ultimately, this Annual Report reflects the achievements, lessons and insights of a diverse and dedicated staff, who retain a passion for justice, for respect of human rights, for victim empowerment and civil society activism. These people - and the work they do - are a unique national asset, recognised internationally and providing remarkable value for money to the donors and partners who so generously continue to support us. To them and to the partners who make their work possible, we once again owe a great debt of gratitude.

Human Resources

By the end of the year 2000, CSVR employed 58 full-time staff members as well as a number of part-time and sessional employees, interns and volunteers. The racial and gender composition of the full-time staff at the end of December 2000 was as follows:


 Black White

Female Male Female Male Total
Management 3 1 4 2 10*
Professional Staff 16 9 10 4 39
Administrative Staff 8 1 0 0 9
Total 27 11 14 6 58

* It should be noted that the 10 members of the management team are also mostly professionals, but they have been excluded from the figure for professional staff.

This multi-skilled and interdisciplinary talent pool is CSVR's greatest asset and it is therefore our organisation's obligation and goal to recognise and reward achievement, and to cultivate a stimulating work environment which harnesses and prizes its diversity and which promotes the principles of equity in all that we do.

In the past year, the realisation of these goals demanded that CSVR set the trend in the NGO sector for professional and organisationally appropriate management of its human resources. This has involved: the careful management of performance (and the further development of performance management systems to better achieve this); the expansion and strategic re-alignment of our staff-training and skills-development initiatives (despite severe budgetary limitations); the active fostering of internal racial and gender-based diversity programmes accompanied by employment equity planning at all levels of the organisation (going well beyond simple compliance with obligations contained in the Employment Equity Act); and the sustained commitment to creating a flexible and creative working environment that maximises the human potential of all our staff.

In the first half of 2000, the human resources function continued to prioritise the refinement of existing systems that were implemented in 1999 (such as the performance management system, the human resources information system and other administrative systems), as well as further developing CSVR's policy and procedures. Having largely achieved these goals, the CSVR's Human Resources Manager, Vicky Tlhabanelo left CSVR at the end of May 2000 after two years service. In September this position was contracted out for further specialist advice and intervention until the end of the year.

The CSVR recognises that the creation of an equitable working environment is an essential foundation for sustainable growth of the organisation. In such an environment the dignity of all individuals is respected, and the diversity of all employees valued. To this effect, during 2000 the Centre began developing an Employment Equity policy. This policy was designed to ensure the elimination of any prospectof unfair discrimination as well as to ensure appropriate representation by black persons, women, and persons with disabilities, in all occupational categories and levels within the CSVR.

To facilitate the organisation's commitment to the policy, an Employment Equity Forum was formed with representatives nominated by employees in order to conduct an equity audit, prepare and implement an equity plan and submit an annual report to the Department of Labour as required under the Employment Equity Act. CSVR submitted its first employment equity report to the Department of Labour in December 2000.

As a racially and culturally diverse organisation, CSVR actively engaged in a consultative process to promote understanding, appreciation and to also celebrate diversity within the organisation. The groundwork undertaken during 2000, including training workshops for all CSVR staff, ongoing discussion forums and issue-based dialogue sessions all pointed to the fact that a sustained programme will need to be continued in 2001.

In a similar vein, CSVR also took action in 2000 to mainstream gender issues within the organisation as well as in its external work. To this end, CSVR developed a system of 'gender guardians' within all of its programmes and departments. External consultants were brought in, a gender audit was undertaken and policy-making workshops were hosted. This has translated into a gender mainstreaming strategy and funding proposal which, it is hoped, will be supported and implemented in the course of 2001.

During 2000, CSVR actively sought to further evolve its staff development and training activities. To this end, CSVR registered with the Health and Welfare Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA), enabling us to assist in the design of the national skills development strategy that will ultimately inform our own circumstances at CSVR.

We also invested in a number of activities to train, develop and empower staff. In the course of the year, various CSVR staff attended as many as 75 training courses (of which 30 were registered courses). Various CSVR staff were thus exposed to training in: information technology and computer training, financial management, project management; forensic psychotherapy training, play therapy, to mention just a few. Other non-registered courses facilitated skills development related to such aspects as facilitation skills; volunteer trauma counselling; research ethics and gender mainstreaming training. Some of these were high-quality internal training courses offered to staff by other members of CSVR.

CSVR's income generating sustainability programme also created new opportunities for staff skills development through involvement in national and international contracts that demanded the development of new skills.

During the course of the year, it became clear that the issue of HIV/Aids was increasingly prevalent in the work that CSVR does, and was more likely to become a concern within the workplace as well. An HIV/Aids Committee was therefore established at CSVR to develop workplace policy, as well as to source training and support for staff dealing with sufferers of HIV/Aids, and their families.

CSVR's Human Resource function will continue to implement and design a skills development programme that promotes staff development, endeavours to retain key staff and that creates opportunities for succession planning and career pathing options within the organisation.

CSVR Board of Directors

CSVR Staff List 2000

Executive Director
Graeme Simpson

Personal Assistant to Director
Busisiwe Mahonstu

Human Resources
Tracy Jean-Pierre

Finance
Amber Mashiane - Manager
Zandile Nkabibde - Senior Bookkeeper
Nomdenni Nyembe - Accounts Clerk

Administration
Shamila Singh - Manager
Puleng Montsho - Receptionist
Pule Rampa - Messenger
Mosima Selemela - Office Assistant

Trauma Clinic
Mary Robertson - Manager
Sherbanu Sacoor - Training Coordinator
Frances Spencer - Psychiatric Nurse
Marivic Garcia - Social Worker
Boitumelo Kekana - Social Worker
Sophie Mulaudzi - Receptionist
Mpho Matlhakola - Administrator
Helen Hajiyiannis - Researcher
Gloria Hlope - Social Worker
Penny Ntshegang - Social Worker
Ntsiki Masilo - Psychologist
Nomfundo Mogapi - Community Liaison Officer

Truth and Reconciliation Unit
Brandon Hamber - Manager
Thloki Mofokeng - Project Manager
Hugo Van Der Merwe - Project Manager
Elias Maepa - Community Facilitator
Polly Dewhirst - Researcher
Carnita Ernest - Researcher
Mokomane Mekgoe - Researcher
Nomusa Nkambule - Junior Researcher
Serame Masitha - Researcher
Phumeza Mafani - Junior Researcher
Jeffrey Ndumo - Researcher
Sibusiso Ntuli - Researcher
Xoliswa Ntintili - Administrator

Violence and Transition Project
Piers Pigou - Senior Researcher
Goodwill Ditlhage - Researcher
Sasha Gear - Researcher
Bronwyn Harris - Researcher
Tebogo Mafokoane - Researcher
Nokuthula Skhosana - Researcher

Education and Media Unit Tracy Vienings - Manager
Lauren Segal - Senior Researcher and Producer
Karima Effendi - Educational Specialist
Yvette Geyer - Senior Educationalist
Caron Kgomo - Senior Administrator

Criminal Justice Policy Unit
Amanda Dissel - Manager
David Bruce - Senior Researcher
Gareth Newham - Researcher
Kindiza Ngubeni - Community Facilitator
Sibusiso Ntuli - Researcher
Sasha Gear - Researcher

Youth Department
Dorothy Mdhluli - Manager
Wandile Zwane - Project Manager
Mosely Lebeloane - Social Worker
Alice Kgotleng - Trainer
Muzi Ngwenya - Community Facilitator
Bheki Zulu - Researcher

Gender Unit
Lisa Vetten - Gender Specialist
Joy Dladla - Researcher
Collet Ngwane - Research Intern
Kailash Bhana - Researcher/Trainer
Asma Akhtar - Administrator

Resource Centre
Andie Miller - Resource Centre Officer
Rosey Seseng - Resource Centre Assistant

Sustainability Programme
Janine Rauch - Senior Consultant

City Safety Project
Mzi Memeza - Junior Researcher
Ingrid Palmary - Researcher

Special Projects
Jonny Steinberg - Senior Consultant (Farm Violence)
Noel Stott - Researcher (DIPP)

Interns
Cyril Adonis - TRU
Duncan McPherson - TRU
David Backer - TRU
Jochen Neumann - TRU
Bulelani Ntini - Youth Department
Nomgqibelo Msibi - Youth Department
Nhlanhla Ngidi (volunteer) - Youth Department
Mandy Davidson - Trauma Clinic

Trauma Clinic

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