Four South African NGOs, namely Inyathelo - The South African Institute for Advancement, Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT), Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) and Rural Education Access Programme, have launched a survey into the funding practices of the National Lotteries Distribution Trust Fund (NLDTF) and the National Development Agency (NDA).
The survey is aimed at, amongst other things, documenting NGOs’ experiences with the NDA and NLDTF.
In my work supporting NGOs in media advocacy, there's one thing that comes up again and again in conversations, but it's almost never addressed in the several toolkits and handbooks one can find on engaging the media.
Everyone working on the ground acknowledges it's a problem, but nobody seems to have much advice about how to deal with it. I'm talking about the fact that in many countries, it's difficult to get into the news media without paying for coverage. I think it's high time that we had some serious discussion about this, and how to deal with it.
Sustainable Human Settlements and Integrated Urban Development
Most South African urban development NGOs have their roots in this country's anti-apartheid struggle when urban townships represented the battlefields of the physical resistance against the apartheid regime.
In many instances these struggles were organized around rent boycotts and a refusal to pay for (inadequate) basic services in an effort to pressure the apartheid regime to transform its oppressive policies.