European Union Democracy Aid: Supporting Civil Society in Post-Apartheid South Africa by Lorenzo Fioramonti

Author:Lorenzo Fioramonti [Fioramonti, Lorenzo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Democracy, Political Ideologies, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781136978708
Google: DSPGBQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17585566
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Advice organizations funded by the EU: an overall analysis

Foundation and location

As already mentioned in Chapter 4, advice CBOs were at the forefront of the community-based struggle against the government of apartheid. In the 1980s, most of them proliferated in townships and rural areas, often sponsored by larger NGOs receiving financial support from overseas donors. In the context of grassroots mobilization, advice CBOs mushroomed in those semi-urban townships leading the civil society’s struggle against apartheid. At the end of the 1980s, though, community advice offices were also spreading in rural areas, where the level of participation in the struggle had been much less intense due to overlapping allegiances (with the liberation movements, but also with tribal authorities) and a lack of the infrastructure needed to generate significant critical mass.

Within the context of the mass democratic movement, legal assistance had long been perceived as a powerful weapon against apartheid, especially as a response to the violation of human rights perpetrated by security forces against political activists and the youth. Until 1994, a growing number of activists strategically exploited legal mechanisms to challenge state institutions and strengthen international pressure for the demise of apartheid.

As reported in Table 6.1, more than one-fifth of EU-funded advice CBOs were founded during the apex of the fight against apartheid in the mid-1980s. From 1985 to 1990, the apartheid government declared a state of emergency, giving police and the military sweeping powers to crush local civil society groups and protests. While escalating the conflict within the country, the state of emergency further isolated the South African government from the international community, prompting numerous donors to increase their support for the liberation struggle.6 As discussed in Chapter 5, it was precisely the 1985 state of emergency that convinced European states to adopt the Special Programme for the Victims of Apartheid. During this period, not only did the apartheid apparatus increase its repression policies against any type of political dissent, leading to unlawful detention of political activists, but also the number of detainees committing ‘suicide’ while being held in prison reached its peak.

Most of the advice CBOs established in 1980s had a clear political connotation. They were founded by politically active groups, such as local civic organizations and youth political associations. This data confirms the general view holding that most community-based organizations created during the 1980s were born out of political activism (Landsberg 2000). Some EU-funded CBOs were also established by women’s groups, especially in those communities where women decided to get more involved in the struggle after their husbands or children had been arrested. In this context, paralegal advice seemed an appropriate means for female activists who intended to support their jailed companions or protect their children against police raids. Indeed, since 1976, when black pupils spearheaded a mass opposition to the introduction of an Afrikaans-based education system, youth movements had become a new vanguard in the liberation struggle. Finally, some advice CBOs were also promoted by church personalities, whose involvement in the struggle against apartheid was quite direct:

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