Education for Liberation

The Khanya College ICTs and Community Empowerment Center

The last decade and a half has seen a major revolution in technology and in the power relationships that are underpinned by modern technology. The spread of the use of computers and associated IT applications has led to the widening of the “power-gap”: there has occurred a widening gap between those with access to power, and those who don’t. In its turn, this power gap has reinforced an already existing, and widening gap between the rich and the poor. Both these processes – the widening wealth-gap and the widening power-gap - have proved to be mutually reinforcing.

For the majority of the world’s poor, the revolutions in technology have in many instances reinforced their lack of access to resources, and have thus been a factor contributing to the growing poverty the world over. On the other hand, however, widening wealth and power gap has been met with resistance from many communities and movements from all over the world. In the course of these movements the new technologies have been used, not to disempower communities and movements, but as levers in the struggles for social justice. The new technologies have been useful as media of communication between communities and movements, as research tools, as tools to communicate between (collective) communities and those on power, and as tools to communicate between the movements and the public at large.

In the course of the use of these technologies for socially progressive purposes, it has become clear that a whole set of power relationships are embedded in the very nature of the technologies. In particular, it has become clear that the assumptions that lie at the base of the design of these technologies reinforce the wealth and power gaps. At a mundane level, the new technologies assume access to particular kinds of technical infrastructure (e.g. electricity), access to certain levels of income, and to specific discourses (computer literacy). Moreover, these assumptions and others like them are embedded in the nature of ICT applications developed by and for the rich and the powerful in society today.

Within Southern and South Africa the impact of these technologies is made worse by the legacy of apartheid. At all three levels – access to certain kinds of infrastructure, the levels of income, and the computer literacy – apartheid has produced a distribution of power that is unfavourable to the overwhelming majority of the population. As the use of the new technologies has become increasingly widespread within the emerging social movement, this legacy and its effect has become increasingly evident.

As an organisation dedicated to servicing and empowering the emerging social movements, Khanya College has seen at first hand the development of this wealth and power gap, not only as it has been expressed at the level of society as a whole, but also as it has been expressed in the development of the movements themselves. At a simple level, many activists whose organizations and movements have websites have not way of viewing these sites, let alone contribute to the development of these websites. This fact has led to the development of a “technological divide” within the movements themselves. For Khanya College it has become clear that ‘digital divide’ has to be addressed both at the level of society as a whole, as well as within the movements themselves.

The ICTs and Community Empowerment Center

Khanya College has set up a Center for ICTs and Community Empowerment as a response to the challenges thrown up by the new technologies. The Center encompasses three projects:

1. Provision of access to ICT resources through setting up an Internet Center,
2. Provision of capacity building in the use of ICTs for the constituencies that the college works with and services, and
3. The development of ICT applications that are useful and relevant for the building of social movements in South and Southern Africa.

The primary aims of the ICTs and Community Empowerment Center are:

1. To facilitate access to the internet by activists and social movements from poor and marginalized communities in South and Southern Africa.
2. To train activists in the use of the internet and ICTs in general as organizing and mobilizing tools.
3. To facilitate networking and solidarity among the various social movements through the use of ICTs.
4. To develop ICT applications that will be of use to the social movements in their struggle for social change.

The College is aware that there exist a number of organisations and institutions dealing with ICT issues like providing access to the internet for progressive non-governmental organizations. What the College will bring to this area of activity is its extensive links with social movements, and the large layers of activists that currently participate in its various training programmes.

The Activities of the Center

1. To set up and maintain an Internet Center
2. To run training workshops on information technologies and how they can be used to build social movements
3. To provide training facilities for media training in general
4. To assist communities in setting up all-purpose media centers in their localities. [This will be done in collaboration with other organizations, and in particular with the Khanya College’s Strategy Center for Social Movements].
5. To set up a forum of progressive ICT activists in order to facilitate discussion on how to utilise ICTs for social movement building. This will include hosting regular seminars on issues related to ICTs.
6. To engage in the development of ICT applications (software) that could be used by social movements and other (not-for-profit) civil society organizations.
7. To conduct on-going research on the ICT needs of social movements.
8. To produce publications on the technological aspects of globalisation, and how these technological developments impact on the poor and marginalized.
9. Together with other groups, the Khanya ICT programme will engage in lobbying, advocacy and campaigns aimed at ensuring that ICTs are accessible to the poor and marginalized.