Civil Society Needs to Change its Narrative in Africa – Jay Naidoo , Pioneer General Secretary, COSATU

A Minister under South Africa’s former President Nelson Mandela and pioneer General Secretary of COSATU , Mr Jay Naidoo has admonished civil society activists in Africa to change their approach .Even on the global scale, he said civil society actually needs to “change its narrative” to be relevant now.
Speaking specifically on the South African experience during an interview , he said, “I think civil society found itself in a bit of dilemma post 1994, because what was our role? We had a democratic government whose role was to deliver services to society and so there was a moment in which we had to adjust ,because we are normalizing society and like I said, one of the mistakes we made is that we also, in our arrogance, including me ,in my role felt that we had a development state now, we do we need civil society, or NGOs ?And all of them disappeared.”
“And all of them went into silos delivering specific services to people rather than the broad political (approach) that we had in our fight for freedom .So post apartheid civil society was incredibly weak.We are seeing a reemergence today…..What happened was (that) new civil society,NGOs all of them became silo-approached on single issues -attacking HIV /AIDS,malaria .. or governance rather than what we had which (was ) broad political approach within which we had some specific campaigns on human rights,civic rights or whatever.”
Naidoo spoke in a chat in Abuja Thursday night after a dinner hosted by Comrade John Odah immediate past Secretary General of NLC .During the dinner ,he interacted with prominent activists like Dr Jibrin Ibrahim of CDD, Dr Kole Shettima of MacArthur Foundation, , ace journalist /columnist ,Adagbo Onoja and Comrade Uche Onyeagucha .Others include Danlami Nmodu ,publisher/editor in chief, Newsdiaryonline.com , Iduh Onah formerly with NLC as well as Mr Asuzu of ACE and Prof Sam Egwu.
Civil Society needs to change its narrative now ,Naidoo reiterated during the interview said .He observed that the current model in which activists are too busy chasing funds from donors rather than interacting with the people was not helpful. He cited the example of the Arab spring in Egypt which he said was not led by civil society or the trade unions ,but by the ordinary people who felt they had had enough.
Naidoo said there it is time for “reorientation”.He recalled that during the South African struggle, they didn’t have money or resources .They just knew what was justice and what was injustice and they were prepared to die for it.Today in civil society people just want to have jobs and all of that with no passion for social justice,he observed .
The struggle for social justice and social solidarity must become cardinal to civil society in order to bequeath a good legacy for the next generation ,Naidoo said.Otherwise many civil society organization may remain as some sort of outreach or outposts of philanthropic foundations of the world, he said.