Social Movements in Africa

From SOUL BEAT AFRICA - where communication and media are central to AFRICA's social and economic development

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This issue of The Soul Beat focuses on social movements. Panos defines social movements as "interactive networks of people who have shared beliefs and a sense of solidarity, and who come together to take part in collective action to challenge the status quo"..."[i]n terms of development theory, social movements have enabled people at the periphery of economic and social decision-making processes to create new centres of power and challenge previously closed spaces of decision-making"(from "We Are One But We Are Many: New Thinking on How Communication Can Support HIV Social Movements to Achieve Inclusive Social Change").

Communication processes are considered critical within a social movement - for example, to discuss and debate issues, to set agendas, to mobilise networks for collective action, and to engage with decision makers. This newsletter includes a selection of summaries from the Soul Beat Africa website which highlight how social movements use communication to mobilise around issues such as health and HIV/AIDS, gender, the environment, poverty, and education.

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MOVEMENTS FOR HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS

1. We Are One But We Are Many: New Thinking on How Communication Can Support HIV Social Movements to Achieve Inclusive Social Change
by Lucy Stackpool-Moore
This Panos document explores the theoretical foundations for a project on HIV and social movements by presenting recent research about social movements, public debate, and communication. The intent is to make the case for analysing social movements within communication and social change frameworks and to explore how the processes of communication motivate people to act. It describes the evolution of social movements from the organic and ad-hoc to the organisation that is representative, visible, and recognised as legitimate.

2. Rewarding Engagement? The Treatment Action Campaign and the Politics of HIV/AIDS
by Steven Friedman and Shauna Mottiar
This study was commissioned as part of a broader research project entitled Globalisation, Marginalisation & New Social Movements in post-Apartheid South Africa, a joint project between the Centre for Civil Society and the School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal. The paper examines the history, key characteristics, and strategies of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African-based organisation campaigning for treatment for people living with HIV and the reduction of new HIV infections, as a model for effective social activism. The report suggests that TAC’s strategies are useful models for mobilising for social change.

3. Evaluation of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood 1999-2007
by Claudia S. Morrissey and Linda Sanei
This evaluation report shares the work of an evaluation team tasked by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to examine the growth, influence, and results of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood (WRA) since its inception in 1999. The WRA is described as "a global grassroots movement for safe motherhood that builds alliances, strengthens capacity, influences policies, harnesses resources, and inspires action to save women's lives everywhere."

4. Watu Wa Watu (People Serve People) - Tanzania
This grassroots movement of hundreds of individuals and large communities works to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS by raising awareness in southern Tanzania. Watu Wa Watu shapes its communication strategies around principles such as unity, commitment (people serve people), participation (volunteering), transparency, relationship-building and mutual respect, and dignity and freedom. The project involves local tribes, local village leaders, schools, churches, hospitals, and other organisations and governmental structures to find effective ways to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic together and to respond in a more effective and coordinated way. The project does this by creating opportunities such as workshops, meetings, and festivals that facilitate networking, collaboration, and mobilisation.
Contact Moses J. Mwemi moses1@maaango.org OR watuwawatu1@maaango.org

5. Speaking Freely - Brazil, Namibia, South Africa
The Panos London AIDS and Oral Testimony (OT) Programmes joined together to undertake the Speaking Freely project. Speaking Freely aims to work with social movements to collect the voices and perspectives of people most affected by HIV/AIDS, and to help convey these to national and international media and policy professionals. It also aims to strengthen effective and inclusive communication within social movements by understanding how communication takes place within them, and enabling social movements to share ideas and best practice with each other. A pilot project took place in South Africa involving South African and Namibia participants discussing and recording their experiences about working in social movements.
Contact Desert Voices Oral Testimony Project otp@panos.org.uk

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Looking for news and information on social movements?
Click here for Pambazuka's Social Movement webpage.

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MOVEMENTS AROUND POVERTY, RIGHTS, AND EDUCATION

6. Stand Up Against Poverty. Stand Up for the MDGs - Global
STAND UP is a mobilisation initiative designed to coincide with global mobilisation around the International Day of Poverty Eradication and the White Band Day of the Global Call to Action against Poverty on October 17. Launched by the United Nations (UN)' Millennium Campaign in 2006, STAND UP is an annual global advocacy effort to set an official Guinness World Record - the greatest number of people ever to STAND UP Against Poverty. It relies fully on citizen participation in that it mobilises individuals to take part in local, communal/group events around the world in which people use their bodies (rather than their voices) as concrete symbols of MDG advocacy.
Contact UN Millennium Campaign mandy.kibel@undp.org OR info@millenniumcampaign.org AND Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)ciara_os@hotmail.com OR info@whiteband.org

7. HEARTLINES forgood - South Africa
Initiated by Heartlines, a South African-based non-governmental organisation working towards encouraging good values, forgood is a member-based social movement that uses cell phones and the internet to inspire, guide, and connect South Africans to take action to make "our neighbourhoods and our country safer, healthier, happier, greener, more informed and more compassionate". forgood focuses on 5 key areas: safety, education, the environment, HIV/AIDS, and xenophobia.
Contact forgood members@forgood.co.za OR Heartlines info@heartlines.org.za

8. HakiElimu Public Engagement Programme - Tanzania
This programme was designed to contribute to creating and sustaining a national movement for social and educational change by stimulating broad public engagement, information sharing, dialogue, membership development, and networking throughout Tanzania. The programme aimed to improve awareness and involvement of individuals and organisations throughout Tanzania in encouraging positive change in the education system. HakiElimu involved people in rural areas, the urban economically poor, women, and youth - partly by working closely with organised bodies that had close connections to these groups.
Contact HakiElimu info@hakielimu.org

9. Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shackdwellers Movement) - South Africa
This movement began in Durban, South Africa, in early 2005. According to organisers, although it is mainly located in and around the port city of Durban, it is, in terms of the numbers of people mobilised, "the largest organisation of the militant poor in post-apartheid South Africa". The movement originated from a road blockade organised from the Kennedy Road settlement in protest at the sale, to a local industrialist, of a piece of nearby land which had long been promised by the local municipal councillor to shack dwellers for housing. Since then it has grown to include communities from more than 30 settlements.
Click here to contact the organisation using the online contact form.

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GENDER-RELATED MOVEMENTS

10. JASS Southern Africa: Feminist Movement Building - Southern Africa
This is an international network of activists, scholars, and popular educators in more than 23 countries that work to strengthen the voice, visibility, and collective organising power of women to create a just world. The JASS Southern Africa chapter works with diverse women activists, including those who are living with and active in activities related to HIV/AIDS. Through face-to-face discussions, use of new technologies, and building organising and communication skills, the chapter hopes to nurture women’s leadership in the region.
Contact Annie Holmes eah@justassociates.org or info@justassociates.org

11. GROOTS Kenya
Published as part of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)'s Building Feminist Movements and Organisations (BFEMO) initiative, this 13-page paper describes Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood (GROOTS) Kenya, which is a member network of GROOTS International. This network of self-help groups works to strengthen the role of grassroots women in community development by serving as a platform for grassroots women's groups and individuals to: come together, to share their ideas/experiences, to network, and to find avenues to directly participate in decision making, planning, and implementation of issues that affect them. This case study provides a description of GROOTS Kenya, followed by an analysis of GROOTS Kenya based on ongoing theoretical and activist debates around feminist organisations and movements, and their functions.

12. Changing Their World: Concepts and Practices of Women's Movements
This report provides an umbrella of context and analysis for the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)'s Building Feminist Movements and Organisations (BFEMO) initiative. Launched by AWID as part of its 2006 strategic plan, BFEMO is an effort to advance the understanding of feminist movements in the current global context, and to apply that understanding to strengthening the capacity of women's organisations to better catalyse, support, and sustain movement building.

ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS

13. Connecting the Red, Brown and Green: The Environmental Justice Movement in South Africa
by Jacklyn Cock
This study examines the environmental movement in South Africa via two environmental case studies involving mass mobilisation: the Coalition Against Water Privatisation and the Steel Valley Crisis Committee. The paper argues that there is no single, collective actor that constitutes the environmental movement in South Africa and no master "frame" of environmentalism. According to the author, the environmental movement has no coherent centre and no tidy margins - "it is an inchoate sum of multiple, diverse, uncoordinated struggles and organisations." However, the paper further argues that a growing environmental justice movement is emerging which has the capacity for mass mobilisation.

14. Green Belt Movement Kenya - Kenya
This civil society organisation for women, based in Kenya, advocates for human rights and supports good governance and peaceful democratic change through the protection of the environment. The organisation's goal is to plant one billion trees worldwide and to create a society of people who consciously work for continued improvement of their environment and a greener, cleaner Kenya. Its mission is to mobilise community consciousness for self-determination, equity, improved livelihoods and security, as well as environmental conservation. GBM Kenya was started in 1977 by Dr. Wangari Maathai, the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.
Contact gbm@greenbeltmovement.org OR media@greenbeltmovement.org

15. Managing Mobilisation? Participatory Processes and Dam Building in South Africa, the Berg River Project
by Lisa Thompson
This research paper on water resource management focuses on the attempt by some countries to neutralise criticism of their water management policies by creating formal spaces for public consultation and participation. The study looks at the participatory processes (specifically, how local people were consulted and involved) in the building of the Berg River Dam, Berg Water Project (BWP), in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The author analyses the consultations that led to the approval of the dam and concludes that the creation of formal participatory spaces both subverted and neutralised resistance, on the part of the environmental movement, as well as civil society, to the building of the dam.

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