Civil Society in South Africa

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This literature review will focus on civil society and its relation to the state in South Africa.

The first section will briefly summarize the emergence of civil society in South Africa. The next section will discuss transformations that occurred in civil society during South Africa’s transitional period from the Apartheid regime toward democracy in 1994. The third section will discuss some of the successes of civil society during and after the transitional period followed by the fourth section, which will discuss some challenges facing civil society as South Africa continues its path toward democracy. Finally, the last section contains analysis on the roles of civil society in relation to the state in the post-Apartheid regime.

1. Emergence of civil society in South Africa
Civil society organization have influenced and engaged the state and the success or failure of these actions. According to many scholar concepts, it is possible to define variety approaches of the civil society term link to the relationship of democracy. In general, we see civil society sharing similar values and goals by formal organization. The beginning of democracy brought about a deep transformation in civil society, not only from the structural point of view, but also the fundamental strategic option, policy goals, and relationship with the state. In South Africa, a mass civil society movement made up of civic associations, church-based organizations, students movement and trade unions until the election in 1994. South Africa was under a transition to democracy during 1980s and 1990s and adopted the development of states’ approach to macroeconomic policy with variety of achievement and failure result. In the 1990s, civil society was catapulted in cent...

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... service delivery arenas. A strong relationship between civil society and the state can be a way of ensuring the joint efforts at reconstruction, delivery, and transformational goals in the Constitution (Jagwath, 2003). For example, this opened up a whole newly wide road for NGOs to operate and fundamentally transformed the relations with the state.
Third, this sector was supported with an enable fiscal environment through passing legislation and establishing institutions aimed at facilitating a flow of resources when particularly foreign donors turned their financial assistance away from CSOs to the state or in some cases the government has often been unable to utilize foreign aid effectively without the assistance of NGOs, and many donor agencies provide funding only on the basis of a partnership arrangement between civil society structures and the government.

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