Civil Society and the Eradication of Poverty

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Civil Society and the Eradication of Poverty

• National Poverty Conference
• Partnerships for Development A Strategic
  Mechanism for Accelerated Progress towards the
  Eradication of Poverty in SA
• Edgar Pieterse
• 17 October 2006

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Outline of argument

• Problematise central ideas of today
• Shifting contexts on poverty debates
• Working definition of poverty
• Anti-poverty Policy Toolkit
• Some (political) imperatives of advancing a
  poverty eradication agenda
• Implications for thinking about partnerships for
  development and transformation

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Some questions

• Partnerships
• Poverty eradication

Key informants 1. Policy support on Poverty
Eradication for SANGOCO and the NDA in 2000 2.
Sedibeng Study (2002) into Capacity Building and
Poverty Reduction (Institutional framework for
partnerships) 3. Work on mainstreaming poverty
reduction at local levels, especially in
municipal planning (1998-2006) 4. Chronic Poverty
International Conference in April
2007 (available on www.isandla.org.za)
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Shifting poverty debates

• Global drive towards MDGs
• Emerging consensus unlikely to be realised tied
  into lack of progress on trade reform and
  development finance restructuring as well as the
  depoliticisation of development
• National shift towards Shared Growth
• Is this sufficient to address the structural
  drivers of poverty, and especially, economic
  inequality?

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Emphasis in development path
1996
RDP
2000
GEAR
2005
gt Basic Needs
Augmented GEAR
gt Structural adjustment austerity
2006
Post-GEAR
gt Expansionary stance ito social expenditure
gt Investment focus to raise growth rates and
align social investments
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Snapshot Development Shifts
Cold War
Shared Growth
Modernisation through industrialisation
SAPs
Basic Needs Focus
Pro-Poor Growth
MDGs
State-led developmentalism
Neo-liberal counter-point
Washington Consensus to Post-Washington Consensus
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Government Development Agenda
RDP
GEAR
Meeting Basic Needs
Social Safety Nets
Job Creation
HRD
Macro Econ. Stability
Strengthen Civil Society

• Pre- primary
• education
• Primary health
• Water sanitation
• Housing
• Electrification
• Phone connections
• ISRDP nodes
• URP nodes
• Breaking New Ground

• Old-age pension
• Child support
• Disability grants
• School feeding
• programmes

• Community-based
• public works programme
• Poverty Alleviation Fund (Treasury)
• Enabling measures for SMMEs
• Inward investment incentives
• Job summit programmes
• Land redistribution
• ASGISA

• Skills development
• Curriculum 2005
• Further education
• training policy
• NQF
• JIPSA

• Price stabilisation
• Increased investment

• NDA
• IDT
• Umsobomvu Youth Fund
• NPO Act
• Tax benefits for CSOs
• PPP policy framework

Cross-cutting dimensions include a medium-term
planning framework with an emphasis on
decentralised delivery through the integrated
development planning system
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Stubborn challenges despite concerted investments

• Cumulative impact of multiple investments
  un-realised poor coordination and alignment,
  linked to weak institutional capacity
• Rising unemployment despite job growth post 2000
• Faster rate of household formation than
  population growth
• Sluggish economic growth although better than
  pre-1994
• Deepening social pathologies (domestic violence,
  abuse, rising gang membership, increase drug
  usage, etc), especially in poor communities as
  economic exclusion deepens
• Growing inequality and social divisions
  reinforcing historically defined lines of
  division and exclusion

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Disagreements on the drivers

• Growth model?
• Mainly an institutional failure problem? (Either
  weak state and/or weak networks and partnerships
  to achieve shared objectives)
• Too weak to counter the impacts of globalisation
  forces?
• Insufficient redistribution to ensure greater
  equality?
• Lack of focus? Trying to do too many ambitious
  things at the same time?
• Simply too soon to see fruits of investments?
• Not getting markets to work for the poor?

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Towards a civil society agenda

• Working definition
• Differentiate the dimensions of poverty
  eradication
• Unpack the institutional implications of
  addressing particular dimensions and especially
  their articulation
• Work with credible data and analysis
• Pursue actions and interventions at
  simultaneously at multiple levels
• Keep policy responses grounded in a realistic and
  explicit conception of the political
• Learn through doing get on with it!

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Defining poverty

• Poverty exists when an individuals or a
  households access to income, jobs and/or
  infrastructure is inadequate or sufficiently
  unequal to prohibit full access to opportunities
  in society. The condition of poverty is caused by
  a combination of social, economic, spatial,
  environmental and political factors. Due to the
  multiplicity of causal factors and their spatial
  dynamics, individuals and households may move in
  and out of poverty depending on stages in
  life-cycle and shifting political economy
  patterns. Poverty is therefore much more than a
  lack of adequate income.

• Multi-dimensional causes and manifestations of
  poverty
• Distinction individual, household and community
  poverty recognition of power relations and
  distinct survival strategies
• Close correlation between race and class in South
  Africa
• Spatial manifestation of poverty is key
• Need micro macro strategies that mutually
  reinforce each other

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Definitional distinctions

• Poverty Alleviation refers public and private
  actions to address destitution in terms of a lack
  of food, access to safe portable water and
  shelter. By definition these interventions are
  fundamentally ameliorative and tend to be carried
  out in a welfarist mode. Nonetheless,
  ameliorative measures are obviously necessary to
  prevent starvation, ill-health and exposure to
  the elements.
• Poverty reduction refers to deliberate actions
  that reduce the depth of poverty that individuals
  and households experience as a result of income
  and physical asset transfers and/or the supply of
  education and employment/trading opportunities.
  Such measures can lead to a reduction in the
  absolute number of people that are poor but does
  not have to alter the structural conditions (at
  various scales) that reproduce poverty and
  inequality.
• Poverty eradication refers to institutional
  reforms that increase the political power of the
  poor to the extent thatthrough their social
  movementsthey determine the agenda for how the
  full gamut of poverty reduction measures are to
  be structured and sequenced in order to address
  the structural causes of poverty whilst
  simultaneously addressing chronic destitution. As
  a result poverty reduction actions are organised
  to ensure the political empowerment of poor
  citizens and their organisations.

Cooperation
Contestation
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Typology of poverty reduction measures

• Facilitating access to good quality employment
  and economic opportunities
• Increasing the physical asset-base of the poor
• land, housing, equipment for economic enterprise
• Facilitating access to basic services for the
  poor
• water sanitation, solid waste management,
  affordable and safe energy, transport, education,
  health, shelter
• Strengthening community management of own
  initiatives and external programmes and the
  ability to self-organise
• Enhancing democratic participation by the poor in
  public decision-making to ensure effective
  monitoring and influence over public resource
  allocations and service delivery
• Ensuring access of the poor to legal entitlements
  and security
• Ensuring access to safety nets to strengthen
  ability to manage shocks and stresses
• Natural disasters, violence, rapid economic
  decline

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Poverty Eradication Typology
Political Dimension
POLITICAL VOICE
Community Management Institutions
Legal Entitlements Protection
Access to basic needs services
Access to adequate safety nets
Increasing physical asset base
Access to employment
Material Dimension
Economic Dimension
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Key variables in mobilising a poverty agenda

• Clarity of focus
• Scales of intervention global, national,
  regional, local, neighbourhood
• Achieving synergy at a given geographic scale and
  between them
• Leadership that work multi-level and in complex
  institutional environments (networks and
  alliances)
• Institutional fitness for purpose
• Deepening citizenship and participatory political
  mediation of conflicting and competing interests

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Linking macro micro interventions
reform of the international order
institutional reforms for rights-based,
democratic governance
Macro reforms
reform of public service public policies
restructure the political economy
Socially just and sustainable economies with
accountable, inclusive systems of governance
demands
empowerment of communities and individuals
enables
mobilising and strengthening democratic civil
society
Micro reforms
strengthening local institutions
sustained improvements in physical well-being
adapted from Fowler (1997)
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E.g. local scale of interventions
Government and CSO anti-programmes tend to target
one of the following scales
Interventions raise complex questions about how
best to sequence, coordinate and integrate
discrete anti-poverty actions in a manner that
builds community and individual empowerment and
political autonomy
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Idealised model for community development towards
poverty reduction
(access to transfer, equipment, land, credit and
employment)
Increasing economic base of HH
Increase political leverage of collectives of
poor HHs/actors
Increase stocks of social capital through
participation in democratic organisations
Grow savings of poor HH
Increase HH access to (basic) social
development services
(housing, health, education, water and
sanitation, transport, etc.)
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5 Steps model for becoming an effective
anti-poverty organisation

• An understanding of the theoretical debates that
  underpin the issues that the organisation focuses
  on, an explicit view on the organisations
  position and agreement on the need to locate its
  work within a broader anti-poverty agenda
• A view on how the theoretical approach (paradigm)
  translates into specific types of actions to
  systematically address problems and achieve
  milestones to eventually overcome structural
  impediments
• An analysis of the actual (political) context
  within which the organisation operates and the
  types of interventions (and combinations)
  appropriate for each circumstance
• A view of itself as an organisation, based on an
  assessment of its actual capabilities to pursue
  its purpose and realise its objectives, located
  within explicit time-frames about what it can do
  in the short-term and what it needs to achieve in
  the medium- and long-term
• An analysis of the skills and capability
  deficiencies that undermine the organisations
  ability to fully express its purpose and realise
  its objectives, linked to a plan to address this
  capacity-gap

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Politics of poverty eradication
Top-down
Bottom-up
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Key savvy articulation across political domains
top-down
Neo-corporatist stakeholder forums at local,
provincial and national levels
Representative political forums and participatory
mechanisms
Political sphere
democratisation
Development practice at neighbourhood scale
Public sphere
Social mobilisation through direct action
Symbolic politics through discursive action
bottom-up
Rights-based democratic framework
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Implications

• Partnerships are not a panacea
• Partnerships presuppose consensus are therefore
  ill-suited for resistance politics (essential for
  agenda setting)
• Hence, partnerships make sense in a broader
  political institutional context comprised of
  plural actions ? partnerships, networks,
  alliances, coalitions autonomous actions the
  necessary stuff of democracy
• Partnerships in this setting demand an
  appreciation of new ways of engagement and
  learning that produce emergent answers and always
  new questions
• Partnerships work through weak power
  multi-directional networks of influence,
  persuasion and hegemony
• Effective partnerships are premised on explicit
  and clear objectives and mandates, which in turn
  arise from constituent organisations that are
  themselves clear about mission, strategy and
  theories of change

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Thank you

• www.isandla.org.za