Country strategy

Disability situation in South Africa

The South African National and Provincial government and the politicians at different levels, in collaboration with the disability movement in the country, has clearly over the past ten years made a number of high-quality, significant strides in terms of the policy and adminis-trative framework affecting people with disabilities.  These strides include the development and adoption of the Integrated National Disability Strategy (1997), the establishment of the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons in the President’s Office and within the Provincial Governments with the responsibility of implementing that strategy, the election of disabled people as MP’s, as Provincial Representatives, and as members of key commissions, the inclu-sion of disability components in essential national policies, etc. 

Specifically, the activist history of those now in power has meant that the paradigm shift from a charity approach to a rights approach to disability is very advanced.  The government’s commitment to non-discrimination for clear historic reasons has worked to the favor of people with disabilities and nourished this shift.

DPOD's focus areas in South Africa

Based on the situation analysis the key focus areas of work for DPOD funded programme in South Africa are identified as:

1. Support the organizational capacity of local units, development of new branches, and effective grassroots participation in existing national organizations, potentially through “train the trainer” activities, workshops at local level, etc.
2. Support leadership and strategy development programmes, and human resource devel-opment programmes including motivation and confidence building,
3. Support ‘vertical’ information flows within the organizations from local to national level and vice versa, strengthening the existing leadership’s capacity to educate ‘downwards’, to facilitate participation, and to capture input from the local level,
4. Support ’horizontal’ information flows between organizations in South Africa and be-yond, for example through a brief monthly/weekly for the movement potentially pub-lished through the Federal Council.
5. Support the development of advocacy and lobbying capacity, building on ideas from the South African movement for the development of media strategies as well as training courses for activists,
6. Support efforts to reevaluate the coordination structures in South Africa, without creating new ones, and including actively sharing information about the Danish and other coordinating structure models,
7. Support policy flows, for example through the drafting of simple policy briefings and mini-action plans to translate policy such as the Employment Act into the local con-text, and through supporting workshops on understanding policies and their delivery,
8. Support research in the disability movement such as a disability studies programme, and research on potential careers for disabled people,
9. Support the development of capacity for financial strategy and fundraising, as well as the direct development of specific core funding strategies and tools, including mem-bership schemes, income-generating projects, and accessing the lottery, development of tax incentives for private sector funding, etc.
10. Support “for” organizations in service-user empowerment and participation and in dis-seminating information about the approach to, and progress with, this transformation,
11. Support DPSA in a process of revitalizing and strengthen its role as the ”disability rights movement” organization focused on activism, education, and mobilization in re-spect with the emerging new DPO structures in South Africa and in close relationship with the Federal Council.
    

Read more: South Africa country strategy and other relevant strategies