Education for Liberation

The Strategy Center for Social Movements

The transition to democracy in South Africa took place in the context of the integration of South Africa into a neoliberal global economic order. The effects of these policies, adopted by the new government, have been the lack of service delivery, a growing gap between the rich and the poor, and growing impoverishment among the majority of the population. In response to these developments a number of social movements have emerged in both rural and urban areas. This can be seen through the numerous spontaneous struggles of angry communities against evictions and electricity and water cut offs. A number of new community based structures have emerged in an attempt to coordinate these largely spontaneous struggles. In some instances different community based structures have come together in broad Anti – Eviction or Anti-Privatisation Forums, and in the rural areas the Landless Peoples Movement is attempting to provide direction to the growing anger amongst landless people.

New forms of mobilisation and organisation

These movements have initiated a number of campaigns around the effects of neoliberalism and globalisation on their communities. The campaigns deal with a range of issues from environmental degradation, land and agrarian reform, service delivery, privatisation as well as other social, political and economic issues.

Through the largely spontaneous struggles new activists in these movements are beginning to experiment with different forms of mass mobilization. As the process of mass mobilization continues questions of what are appropriate organisational forms have emerged amongst the leading activists. It is some of these leading activists who have approached us and who are keen to explore how single-issue movements or these first mass eruptions can acquire greater depth through continuous processes of mobilization, conscientisation and organisation building.

The Strategy Center

It is in this context that Khanya College has been faced with a growing number of requests from a range of both rural and urban communities for assistance in building community based organisations and social movements. As an organisation concerned with activist training across a range of sectors, we have not been able to ignore these many requests and in the past three years we have spent many evenings and weekends attempting to meet the growing number of requests. Some of the requests have been for consultations around strategising and political education. Other requests have been for organisation building workshops. The requests have come from a range of different kinds of organisations e.g. youth organisations in Orange Farm, Sebokeng and Upington; rural organisations from all over the Country, urban based community organisations in Gauteng and more recently community structures in Mozambique. There have also been a number of requests for collaborative work with a range of NGO’s e.g. the National Land Committee (NLC) and the Rural Development Services Network (RDSN).

The College has set up the Strategy Center for Social Movements as a response to the challenges posed by the emergence of these new movements.

The aims of the Strategy Center

The primary aim of the Strategy Center is to assist activists in the rural and urban social movements in their struggle to build the movements through processes of continuous mobilisation, conscientisation and organisation building. The Strategy Center undertakes this task through theoretical training and awareness raising, media training, facilitating solidarity between the new movements in Southern Africa and beyond, and through research and publications.

In particular, the aims of the Strategy Center are:

1. Developing a broader layer of committed and skilled activists by consolidating the organisation building work the various social movements, community-based organisations and trade unions.
2. To develop the theoretical and analytical skills of activists in the social movements so that they can understand the context in which the movements are developing.
3. To provide support to the emerging movements’ campaigns, educational and organisational building activities.
4. To respond to requests for awareness raising activities, debates and discussions.
5. To provide activists with community media skills.
6. To facilitate solidarity work between the new movements in South Africa and emerging movements in other countries in the Southern African region and internationally.
7. To produce popular publications as part of consciousness raising amongst activists.
8. To provide a space for activists across the Southern African Region to debate topical issues and exchange experiences through the Winter School.

The activities of the Strategy Center

The work of the Strategy Center is organized into a number of projects. These are:

Leadership Training Project

This is an intensive organisation-building project focusing on the development of a layer of leadership. The ability to think and plan strategically, understand the difficulties and opportunities involved in undertaking campaigns and building organizations are some of the key objectives of this project.

Strengthening Campaigns Project

The new layer of activists in the social movements have had very little experience organizing campaigns. The Strengthening Campaigns Project will focus on assisting organisations with the skills to plan, organise and evaluate campaigns

Community Media Project

In the course of discussions with activists from a range of community organisations the absence of community media was identified as one of the obstacles in the way of building organisation. Activists felt that, firstly, their communities are isolated from mainstream media and that mainstream media does not really reflect the conditions and aspirations of the poorer sections of society. Secondly, communities are not able to communicate among themselves is a systematic manner and organisation building and mobilisation is weakened as a result.

A Strategy Centre with a media training component would aim to assist these layers of activists to engage with popular forms of media that will help with organisation building in the community. The media component would focus on the role of media, the development of community media activists, the production of print media e.g. pamphlets, posters, newsletters, banners etc., the use of electronic e.g. the internet, and the important role that community radio can play in organizing and mobilising.

The medium term goals of the media training component of the Strategy Center are firstly, the development of strategically located media centers that would cater for a group of communities. Secondly, the development of print media e.g. newspapers that could be used not only to organize in a particular community or social movement, but as an organizing tool for activists from a range of different communities and social movements.

Short Social Movement Building Courses

A key demand emerging from our discussions with organisations over the past year is the need for short organisation building courses. A number of proposals for short courses have been suggested:

1. A basic leadership skills course dealing with issues like chairing meetings, public speaking, writing reports etc.
2. An organizers course dealing with issues like analyzing your constituency, using possible legal spaces etc.
3. Short courses on how to organize different sectors in the community e.g. a course on “Organising Women” and “Organising Youth”.
4. A “How to run a Campaign” course dealing with the conceptualizing, planning and evaluation of campaigns
5. Two short Community Research Skills courses dealing with community needs analysis and strategic evaluation.
6. A Community Educators Course dealing with the use of popular education as an organizing and mobilizing tool.
7. A Community Media Course dealing with the basic media skills needed for organizing and mobilising.
8. A Gender Sensitisation Course.

Awareness Raising Courses

For the past 10 years Khanya College has consistently been called on to deliver educational activities dealing with a range of different issues e.g. the Government’s Land Reform process, the Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR) and more recently the New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD).

With the recent growth of a number of new social movements the call for Khanya to conduct awareness raising training has increased. As part of the task of building and consolidating the new layer of activists emerging from these social movements the Strategy Center will continue to meet this demand.

Popular Publications Project

Over the past few years Khanya College has produced a number of popular booklets e.g. Gear, Gear and Housing and a booklet tracing the history of the Land Reform process in South Africa. Activists from a range of different social movements are using these booklets for both educational as well as organisational activities. It would be important to continue the development of these short awareness raising booklets as a means of encouraging debate and discussion amongst a broad layer of activists. The Khanya Journal forms part of these publications, and the Strategy Center will use the journal as a space to encourage debate among activists in the social movements.

Another important aspect of the Popular Publications project would be the production of organisational Annual Reports and Newsletters. These Annual Reports and newsletters could be used as a means of reflecting on and sharing organisational experiences with members of specific communities and with emerging social movements more generally.

The Building Solidarity Project

Two key areas have been identified as part of this project, firstly the importance of building solidarity through exchange visits in South Africa and in the Southern African region more generally and, secondly, international exchange visits.

In 2001 activists from community based projects in Mozambique visited the Orange Farm Kganya Consortium. This visit was followed up by the attendance of four activists from Organizuco Amaimussamunhi and Organizacao Suica De Entre ajuda Operiaria in Mozambique to the 2002 Khanya College Winter School. A number of trade union activists from Mauritius, Botswana, Angola, Namibia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Mozambique also attended the Winter School.

Both the visits from the activists from Mozambique and the unionists from the other Southern African countries have highlighted the importance of activists in the region sharing experiences and working towards regional campaigns around e.g. food security and the privatization of water and electricity. Through joint educational activities, exchange visits and regular contact through print and electronic media the Strategy Center could play an important role in strengthening organisations and campaigns in the Southern African region.

Over the past 2 years the Khanya College Annual Winter School has organized visits with international activists from Australia and the Phillipines to both participate in the Winter School as well as meet with a range of organisations nationally. The purpose of these visits has been to exchange experiences of organizing under conditions of Globalisation. In the evaluation of these visits by local activists the general feeling is that international exchange visits play an invaluable role in assisting with understanding different strategies for organizing in this period. It would therefore be important that the Strategy Center organizes international exchange visits for local activists as part of the broader activist training work of the Center.

Khanya College Annual Winter School Project

Through the work of the Strategy Center Khanya College will engage with a number of different social movements from all over South and Southern Africa. The Khanya College Annual Winter School will provide a space for activists from these different organisations to exchange views and share experiences and for new organisations to build relations with already established organisations.

The Theorising of Social Movements Project

As Khanya College we have an important role to play in working together with the activists to both reflect on existing social movement theory as well as ensure consistent reflection on our practice as activists.

An important component of the work of the Strategy Center would be to continue the organised participatory and action research process we began in 1999. This process of theoretical exploration will play and important role in enhancing the work of the Strategy Center. The attempt to generalize these theoretical explorations will be done through consistent writing for the Khanya Journal, articles in other organisational publications and through the development of Popular Booklets that will be used by activists as organisation building tools.