Success at a Price: How NGO advocacy led to changes in South Africa’s People’s Housing Process

This brief report has been prepared by Susan Carey with the support of Planact and Rooftops Canada. It draws on the experiences of a group of South African NGOs involved in housing policy reform in order to inform future advocacy and policy processes. Valuable lessons are drawn out for NGOs, government and other stakeholders. We firmly believe that policy outcomes, program design and implementation benefit from transparency and sharing of information and experiences. This report demonstrates that not working this way has the opposite effect – desired outcomes are not achieved and there can be considerable delays along the way.

The focus of this report is the Peoples Housing Process (PHP) in South Africa. Over the past few years, this has been at the mercy of numerous institutional processes and political wranglings that have had the potential to wear out even the most hardened advocates. But, a number of urban development NGOs working in the sector, stuck together and stuck it out. The new PHP policy and the accompanying growth strategy approved by Housing MinMEC in July 2008 is evidence of this. It was however a long, expensive, and difficult process.

It is important to emphasise that this document is less about the details of the PHP and more about the advocacy and policy dialogue process so that others may benefit from this experience. It also acknowledges that the there is still a lot more work to do. Successful implementation of new policy requires a whole different set of resources, skills and support.

To download the full report, 'Success at a Price: How NGO Advocacy Led to Changes in South Africa’s People’s Housing Proces', click here.

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PHP Advocacy--lessons for NGOs.pdf