NDA, lottery highly inefficient in disbursing funds

LaMarche added: "This is not an acceptable or sustainable situation. That the lotteries and the NDA have been slow to disburse funds, even in the wake of a surplus, has led to the closure of valuable civil society groups."

He was speaking at the annual Inyathelo Philanthropy Awards in Cape Town last week and said that much of the Foundation's work has focused on leveraging resources of the state, from access to benefits to access to anti-retroviral drugs. He said this emphasis had to remain, even as the world financial crisis had started to impact South Africa's economy. Atlantic Philanthropies will spend its assets of just under R25-billion by 2016.

It was encouraging that NGOs in South Africa, including Inyathelo, had started research and advocacy to support changes in funding practices and an end to bottlenecks.

Foreign funding skittish

Turning to the role of South African civil society, which represents thousands of NGOs, LaMarche said there was a long history of the sector being over-dependent on foreign funding. This had diminished with the advent of democracy, the impact of the economic crisis on international donors, and a growing tendency among Western government development agencies to see South Africa as a middle-income country when aid had been reprioritised for the poorest states.

"These trends are particularly marked with respect to funding for human rights," LaMarche added. Many foundations had left the South African scene. "Honesty requires me to say that some foreign donors have been led to reconsider the scale and nature of their support because of the skittishness about trends and developments within South Africa itself.

"South Africa has made an unusual, and perhaps unprecedented, journey from human rights pariah to human rights beacon for the world. Yet there is also a growing feeling, across racial lines, that democracy has been imperilled by a failure to deal openly and honestly with issues of poverty, race and AIDS, and from a bizarrely protective stance toward the Mugabe regime that has made both Zimbabwe and South Africa worse off,” LaMarche said.

Caring government

There can be no meaningful social compact without a primary role for a caring, responsive government. The apparent end of AIDS denialism in the country was a relief to those inside and outside South Africa "by pushing against not only poverty and disease, but against a government that abandoned its moral responsibility and its scientific sense.

"It is also encouraging that, despite some concerning signals during his campaign, the early months of the Zuma administration have seen a restatement of commitment to democracy and constitutionalism, a number of very good appointments, and a willingness to listen and engage with others, including those who disagree."

Investment in strong civil society needed

Support for investment in social change in South Africa could not rely on the image of any past or present president. To deal with AIDS, poverty, human rights and migration, to reform education so that young South Africans are better prepared to take their leadership role in the challenges of the 21st century - all these things required investment in strong civil society organisations that will work to influence governments.

LaMarche said that a continuing challenge of the new South Africa was the gap between hope and delivery of jobs and services for those worst off.

"Every country which has enjoyed economic growth in recent years - certainly every one in which Atlantic works, such as the US and Ireland - has failed to address a growing gap between rich and poor. But in South Africa the historic transformation of 1994 and the hopes it raised makes this gap an even bitterer pill to swallow."

Atlantic had worked to support organisations fighting evictions of the rural poor and legal aid. Last year's "sickening wave of xenophobic violence,” which forced thousands to flee their homes, underscored the importance of a final Atlantic priority, protecting the rights of immigrants and refugees.