Since the dawn of democracy, South Africa has made significant inroads in the fight against poverty. As of 2023, around 18,2 million live in abject poverty, including chronic food poverty. This has resulted in impoverished and unemployed communities, often, with limited or no access to opportunities (inequality) – unchanged, leading to intergenerational patterns of poverty.
One of the inroads, is the establishment of the National Development Agency (NDA) – a public entity formed in 1998 as government’s response to the challenge of poverty and its causes in South Africa. The NDA in discharging its mandate, must empower and enhance the capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs), and by extension the sector. Therefore, the NDA helps to build more cohesive communities that can tackle the triple threats of poverty, unemployment and inequality through solutions driven poverty eradication programmes.
Worldwide, CSOs are critical for building, maintaining and strengthening a legitimate and efficient democracy through monitoring, advocacy and development service delivery – as the state cannot act alone. Loosely translated, these are organisations that are voluntary, organised, self-governing to an extent that they can generate income and become sustainable.
CSOs are vehicles that the NDA utilises to deliver its services – by virtue of their roots in communities, CSOs are in touch with the needs and response mechanisms needed to bring about change. The NDA therefore views, not only funding, but also capacity building as a crucial step to strengthen CSOs though training and skills development, either directly or through partnerships.
Over many years the NDA has supported CSOs nationally through granting of funds, providing capacity building and linkages to markets in the following key sectors: food security, textile manufacturing, early childhood development (education) in mostly poor, remote and rural settings. More recently, the NDA is focusing on community-owned enterprises (COEs) that are income generating to create jobs and sustainable livelihoods. These include sewing, bakeries and confectioneries, beauty care, brickmaking, furniture, food production (piggery, poultry, vegetables).
The Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 aims to promote fair, accessible and sustainable marketplace for consumer products and services, and for that purpose, establish national norms and standards relating to consumer protection. Another matter stated in the Act that impacts on CSOs is to prohibit certain unfair marketing and business practices.
Mrs Mapule Phora, NDA Gauteng Provincial Manager says, “CSOs need to be intentional about ensuring that products, particularly food products, are safe for consumption”. Recently in Gauteng, there were reports of alleged spikes in incidents and deaths of children consuming food items from spaza shops.
“There are health and safety standards that cannot be compromised – while the NDA does not have the resources to oversee standards, there are bodies that can lend a hand. Equally, it may be an opportunity for the sector to influence policies and take control of safety and quality of products from CSOs, and of course implement awareness safety campaigns to limit the associated hazards of unsafe practices. Lastly, CSOs can act as consumer protection groups to advocate and represent victims. We rely on CSOs to implement some of these functions that we entrust them with to develop communities. Additionally, CSOs also need to operate in ways that embed ethics in the way they operate to avoid and prevent fraud related to funds received from various funding bodies”.
“The importance of financially stable CSOs cannot be understated. Our experience is that CSOs struggle with funding, cash flow and especially the inability to save. Unlike other employment, this sector does not have benefits enjoyed by others. For instance, annual bonus payments, provident funds and so on – therefore we encourage the spirit of savings within CSOs as way of them keeping afloat, even in instances when there is no funding available. This will begin to eliminate the current welfarist development but rather move towards one that strives for self-sustainability within communities – saving mechanisms including stokvels can achieve this,” says Mrs Phora.
Within this Consumer Month, the NDA would like to challenge CSOs to immerse themselves to identify consumption patterns of their markets and deliver quality impactful products that make them competitive. Consumer trends indicate increases of online purchases – how are CSOs gearing their operations to meet this demand and utilising the digital space to promote their products? There is tremendous potential that lies within CSOs and the NDA would like to encourage the youth to participate in this sector and lend their qualifications. CSOs have the ability to change the face of consumer protection and resilience” says Mrs Phora.
