Annual Report:
2001/2002CSVR aims to build sustainable reconciliation and consolidate embryonic democracy in societies in transition, through violence prevention interventions, the empowerment of victims and other vulnerable groups, relationship building and institutional transformation programmes, which contribute to redressing the injustices and damage to the social fabric (both material and psychological) rooted in a divided past.
Contents
Report from the Executive Director
"There are some challenges that presented themselves in the course of the past year that endangered the moral integrity of the very transition to democracy itself in South Africa."
Graeme Simpson, Executive Director
Reflecting on developments over the past year, it is true to say that democracy remains fragile in South Africa. Furthermore, reconciliation remains a noble but contested aspiration, embedded in the remarkable negotiated transition to democracy, rather than a lived experience rooted in everyday South African practice.There are several factors which have plagued and endangered this aspirant democracy, all of which continued to present themselves during the year under review: The immense challenges of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, sustained problems of pervasive violent crime, limited economic growth accompanied by net job losses and a depreciating currency, sustained racial and gender inequalities, an inadequate education system desperately trying to play catch-up and pervasive xenophobia and racial tensions which belie the rhetoric of African Renaissance. However, there are some challenges that presented themselves in the course of the past year that endangered the moral integrity of the very transition to democracy itself in South Africa.
The apparent limitations of the new democratic government in moving beyond the rhetoric of reconciliation by translating its visionary policy-making into effective redress of racial and gender-based inequalities and residual traumas, is one such concern. This concern is ironically exacerbated rather than alleviated by the Constitutional Court's bold finding on the State's responsibility to deliver on socio-economic rights - which can be read in the Court's judgement in the groundbreaking Witbooi case. Similarly, in challenging government to provide anti-retroviral treatment in its hospitals, the same Court has thrown down the gauntlet to government on the HIV/AIDs issue. With help from the CSVR through our appearance as an amicus curiae before the Court, the Constitutional Court has also recently asserted the rights of accused persons through amending the Criminal Procedure Act to limit the police's use of lethal force in respect of fleeing criminal suspects- a bold yet appropriate move considering resistant public opinion and prevailing governmental inclinations in a climate of high levels of criminal violence.
These robust interventions of the Constitutional Court speak powerfully of a seemingly vibrant democracy in South Africa. Combined with the leadership role of the Mbeki government on behalf of Africa within the international community, this frames much hope for the region and indeed the continent, as a beacon of commitment to the principles of African democracy. Yet, along with the international diplomatic forays on behalf of the African continent, this legal activism through the highest court in the land, in many respects flatters to deceive if it results in formal equality before the law, but not substantive change in the lives of ordinary people on the ground in South Africa. It suggests a dynamic in South Africa's democracy that may even be misleading. For unless government can translate the obligations imposed by the Constitutional Court into meaningful redress in society, then non-delivery on socio-economic rights, failure to grapple with the HIV/AIDS pandemic and sustained violent practice or pervasive corruption within the policing culture, all ring out as signals of danger and threat, rather than icons of constitutional achievement in this new democracy or within the region. Rather than empowering victims of Apartheid's past, all these Court decisions may in fact contribute to greater frustration and a more enduring sense of marginalisation, which has clearly survived the transition from Apartheid to formal democracy.
An even more striking threat to sustainable reconciliation in South Africa is presented by government's responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), despite all the foibles and flaws in the TRC's own practice (and particularly that of its Amnesty Committees) of which we must remain critical. Here, once again, the Constitutional Court had gone out on a limb in finding that amnesty for human rights abusers may be constitutionally defended because of its vital role in South Africa's negotiated transition to democracy (in the AZAPO Case, in which prominent survivors such as the Biko, Mxenge and Ribeiro families, challenged the amnesty provisions of the National Unity and Reconciliation Act). Most importantly, in a much quoted and vaunted judgement, the Constitutional Court held that such an amnesty was only constitutionally defensible because it was not unconditional, but rather was premised on amnesty being an exchange for full disclosure by the perpetrators on one hand, and the delivery of some meaningful form of reparation to the victims by the state on the other. In making this controversial finding, the Court clearly relied on an assumption that South Africa's new democratic government is committed to victims of past human rights violations, and has the political will and the actual capacity to deliver on these high expectations.
Yet government's comprehensive failure to act on its obligation to provide reparation, coupled with the dramatic and unconditional Presidential pardons of twenty two men who had previously been refused amnesty by the TRC as a consequence of their failure to disclose any political motive for their violent actions, suggest that government has reneged on this vital social contract. This is even more worrying considering the consistent rumblings about government's intentions to extend further amnesties or pardons to those who shunned the excessively generous opportunities offered by the TRC process. Government's positioning on these issues represents not only a challenge to the TRC (which, it must be remembered, was initiated by the government itself), but also a failure to honour the findings of the Constitutional Court, thus compromising the morality and conditionality that underpinned the very negotiated settlement for which this country's embryonic democracy has become famous. For the CSVR this was most symbolically demonstrated in October 2001, when the Minister of Justice at the last minute cancelled a commitment to meet with victims' groups seeking a discussion on the reparations issue, in favour of a high level meeting with the leader of the National Party, aimed at forging an unholy alliance designed to gain control of the government of the Western Cape.
In the face of (admittedly limited) public criticisms on these issues, both from within organised civil society and from within the ANC itself (not to mention the frequently expedient, self-promoting and occasionally hypocritical rumblings of opposition parties within parliament), government has appeared defensive and has sought to assert ever tighter control over the key organs of governance in an increasingly centralised fashion. This has been very evident in the manner in which government handled critical responses to its multi-billion Rand arms deal. But the point about the arms deal is not just that critical voices were marginalised (even within the oversight mechanisms in parliament), but that South Africa's new democratic government appeared willing to relinquish its moral authority through prioritising guns over socio-economic upliftment of its people. This is exacerbated by the increasingly controversial shape of black economic empowerment initiatives in which - premised on illusory notions of trickle-down benefits for the black majority - many black entrepreneurs more than match the white captains of industry in the disrespect they show for the principles of corporate governance, their propensity for extreme self-enrichment and their lack of commitment to corporate social spending.
If meaningful notions of sustainable reconciliation are to die on the sword of party political expediency, the exclusive enrichment of the new elite, or the xenophobic exclusion of "the other" from the rest of Africa, then the Mbeki government will have failed to realise its own important promises for addressing the fears and expectations associated with the reality of two nations in South Africa - and the huge disparities of wealth and power that still exist in this society that were referred to in this section of the CSVR's last Annual Report.
It is even arguable that all the promise of NEPAD and South Africa's powerful potential role in profiling and attending to Africa's dilemmas might lose its shine if the moral authority of its South African promoters is further tarnished at home or in the region. At a time when organisations such as the CSVR finally enjoy the potential for sharing our experiences and expertise through strategic civil society partnerships and reciprocal learning about peace and reconciliation building across the continent, we cannot afford to be silent on these issues, especially when the South African government is ineffective in protecting the human rights of our civil society partners in the region. Nor can we but identify with the important new voice of social movements in the form of the anti-gun lobby, the Treatment Action Campaign and the local communities demanding housing, electricity and water. Our failure to do so will make us seem complicit in translating the one-time promise of a South African rainbow nation into a much more exclusive kind of rainbow nationalism.
In the past year CSVR has broken new ground in our research into shifting patterns of violence in societies in transition. We have developed exciting new models for capacity building and training which integrate our experiences of working with trauma, youth violence-prevention strategies, the gendered character of social conflict, criminal justice transformation and reconciliation building. We have developed a capacity to work at the local level with local government institutions through our City Safety Project and we have begun to realise our dreams for expanding our work and our partnerships into Africa and other parts of the world. In all these respects, we have grasped the nettle, treating these challenges in our embryonic democracy as opportunities to grow, learn and share with both governmental and non-governmental partners.
From an organisational perspective, CSVR has also confronted the challenges of the past year with great commitment and enthusiasm, recognising that our commitment to transformation must apply to our own organisation as much as it does to the wider society. In part, this has been a year of cementing our commitment to critical partnership with government, rather than merely criticising from a distance. By the same token, it has meant sustaining our community level pilot interventions to ensure that we add to service delivery where we have the resources, whilst also guaranteeing that we act as a conduit for the voices of marginalised communities, rather than merely speaking on their behalf.
From a management and human resources perspective, the year under review has witnessed the restructuring of the CSVR's management team and the reshaping of our various programmes. By the end of the year, as a result of CSVR embarking on a number of new innovative projects, our staff complement has expanded from 58 to 64 full time staff members, as well as a number of sessional workers, volunteers and interns. At every level, one of our goals has been to ensure that the organisation is demographically representative in a manner that reaches beyond even the formal requirements of the Employment Equity Act. As a result, our management team is 64% black and 70% female and overall the organisation is 73% black and 70% female. Equally importantly, despite losing some of our longest serving management team members during the past year (Mary Robertson - Victim Empowerment; Brandon Hamber - Transition and Reconciliation; and Amber Mashiane - Finance) we have recruited extraordinary talent both internally and externally to fill these gaps (Naomi Hill - Victim Empowerment; Tlhoki Mofokeng - Transition and Reconciliation; Kholwane Mbambo - Finance; and Sherbanu Saccoor - Education and Training).
From a financial point of view, the past year has been successful in that we matched our previous year's income, raising over R18, 5-million from various sources. We spent according to budget and limited the increase in our spending to R15, 9-million when compared to the expenditure total of the previous year (R14, 7-million) across all our programmes. If there is still a danger that is unresolved for the CSVR, it is the enduring problem of securing Core funding. This is the one area of CSVR's work where spending significantly outstripped income, particularly because of the absence of adequate dedicated donor support to the internal systems vital to keeping this organisation well managed, fully accountable and at the cutting edge of NGO practice internationally. If CSVR does not make further progress in raising more sustainable Core funding through an endowment or alternative dedicated donor investment within the next two years, this will become a serious problem for the organisation. We simply cannot afford to further deplete our limited reserves through such non-project-specific expenditure.
For CSVR some of the dangers of the past year have been very literal. Several members of our staff have been direct victims of motor vehicle hi-jackings, muggings and assaults, including my own three year-old son and my wife, who was shot and injured during an armed assault at our home. These experiences are illustrative of the fact that we are not merely observers of our society, but actors in it. They are also symbolic reminders of the fact that our dedicated staff remains our most invaluable asset- their commitment un-shifted, their dedication unparalleled and their passion for what they do on behalf of marginalised groupings in our society un-compromised.
This has indeed been a year of living dangerously. But with the sustained support from our dedicated donor partners, we once again remain ready for whatever is thrown at us in the year ahead.
