Local civil society organisations face funding vacuum on all fronts
Fighting corruption and protecting our civil liberties costs money
SA’s civil society organisations, which have been at the heart of the fightback against public corruption, mismanagement and patronage and delivering public services where the state fails, are facing a funding crisis, which may herald the collapse of many of these valiant organisations. Many South African civil society organisations depend heavily on industrialised country international development aid organisations and industrialised country philanthropic foundations for funding. However, funding from the developed world has plunged. The EU and the US — the largest development aid contributors — have increasingly repositioned their development policy to favour free trade, shifting their emphasis from development aid to trade support. The EU has also focused more on channeling its development funding to Eastern Europe. Following the 2007-08 global and eurozone financial crises, many traditional foreign donors reduced their funding or cut it even more. More recently, many industrial ...
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