CSOs
Look Within Too
By Zarina Geloo
CIVIL SOCIETY should not wait
until it is under attack before it puts its house in
order, Kumi Naidoo chairperson of Civicus told a meeting
discussing legitimacy, accountability and transparency
in civil society on Thursday night.
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Naidoo said civic organizations were prone
to attacks from elected representatives in governments and
the private sector, because they were an unelected.
“But that should not mean that we should be operating
from a position of weakness or fear. Our mandate is to ensure
good governance and that peoples’ issues are put on
the agenda,” Naidoo said.
On the other hand however, while civic society attacked governments
for democratic deficits, it should ensure that it could be
held up to any scrutiny. “It is not enough to merely
say we are honest, we must be upfront and put our best practices
into the public domain so that we are seen to be honest.”
There should be public accounting to donors, and the people
in whose name resources were given, Naidoo said. He added
that civil society should also be accountable to each other,
“lest we duplicate work”.
Giving a brief background on how accountability became an
issue in South Africa, Naidoo said an anti apartheid advocate,
Bishop Allan Boesak who ran an NGO was in 1994 accused of
having misappropriated funds. Before he could appear in court,
other civic organizations decided to take the proactive step
of auditing their accounts and drawing up a code of conduct,
lest the incident tarnished all NGO’s.
This is why Naidoo said, it was important for countries to
develop a code of ethics to which all civic bodies would be
bound. Though it would appear to be a costly and time consuming
exercise, it would ensure that all organisations operating
under the same parameters and that abrogation could be dealt
with ‘in-house’.
“It only takes one NGO to do something wrong and the
entire fraternity is condemned ….a code of ethics would
also mean that we (civic bodies) would be seen to be regulating
themselves.”
Goodson Fwimbe from the Society for Social Workers in Nigeria
gave an example of this when he recounted how his association
had been in the doldrums for ten years because the previous
managers had stolen money and donors black listed the organization.
“ Our organization is only recently reviving after
a lot of lobbying. Donors are still very wary of NGOs in Nigeria
and even public perception is still suspicious, not only of
our organization but of civic bodies in general.”
On a more temperate note, Jagadananda from the Indian NGO
CYSD said civic organizations were already legitimate from
being result orientated and their quality of work. Civic organisations
were also value based which was a strong reference point for
legitimacy.
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