State, civil society, and food insecurity in post-apartheid Johannesburg

2011-07-06In contrast to the burgeoning research field on South African civil society, little research has been conducted on the South African food security sector, particularly in urban areas. This is especially pressing given that urban food insecurity continues to persist in South African cities and NGO and CBOs have grown to become important players in the South African urban fabric. To fill this gap, this dissertation focuses on the role of civil society organizations in the food security sector in Johannesburg. ❧ In particular, this dissertation focuses on two main research goals. First, this study identifies the institutional roles that the South African state, civil society, and private sector play in procuring food security in Johannesburg. Although it is well-known that each sector of South African society provides food security services in some capacity, little research has been completed which actually delineates the size, scope, and geography of the food security sector in Johannesburg. ❧ Second, this research delineates the key processes transforming the South African state’s relationship with food security and hunger focused NGOs and CBOs in Johannesburg, including increased governmental and private sector presence in service provisioning, profound resources crisis for civil society organizations, and introduction of American food banking models into South Africa, in the form of FoodBank South Africa and its local subsidiary, FoodBank Johannesburg. It is expected that these key processes have transformed the food security sector in Johannesburg since the fall of Apartheid in 1994; yet, it is unknown how, if at all, these powerful forces have affected food security organizations in Johannesburg. To achieve these research goals, multiple methods are used including surveys, in-depth interviews, seven month participant observation, quantitative data analysis, and GIS-based spatial analysis. ❧ Findings indicate that three global, regional, and local processes have combined to transform the South African state’s relationship with food security focused NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and CBOs (community based organizations) in post-Apartheid Johannesburg. These three multi-scalar processes include the financial and human resource crisis among post-Apartheid civil society, reemergence of the South African central state in food security programming, and introduction of American food banking models into South Africa. ❧ First, data analysis reveals that resources in the food security sector are unevenly available by geographic location. While survey data reveal that more organizations are located in inner city locations, wealthier White, suburban locations tend to have much larger, privately resourced organizations. In contrast, Black, inner city locations tend to have a mix of NGOs and CBOs with medium-sized budgets resourced from the private sector and other funding, not government funding. Also, Black, informal settlement and township locations tend to have smaller, governmentally resourced organizations with higher turnover rates. Moreover, there are significant gaps in human resource availability, as organizations in non-suburban areas often have few to no paid staff or volunteers. ❧ Second, the reconsolidation of South African central state power has shaped civil society’s access to funding, program priorities, and relations with government. This has been exacerbated by the central state’s uncoordinated approach to food security policy, lack of attention to urban food security, and disconnectedness from “on the ground realities.” ❧ Third, the globalization of the American food banking model into South Africa has transformed NGOs and CBOs through processes of inclusion and exclusion and legitimized a top-down approach towards food security which privileges particular food security interventions over others. While FoodBank Johannesburg has streamlined food donation processes, increased the amount of food delivered, and reduced waste, it has the potential to depoliticize hunger, create new bureaucracies, and allow government to shirk responsibilities towards the food insecure. ❧ In addition, the underdevelopment of “right to food” social movements in Johannesburg has limited the politicization of NGO and CBO service delivery and therefore minimized the potential for more progressive state policies to develop in South Africa. Even though South Africa has one of the most politically active civil societies in the world, no substantial food security and hunger focused social movements currently exist in Johannesburg due to limited financial and human resource capacity, lack of a consistent political rallying point, and focus on building social service structures. ❧ While some scholars of urban development conceptualize the South African state-civil society problematic as one of limited civil society autonomy, others theorize these new relationships as an explicit co-optation of civil society organizations by the state and part of a broader political agenda to limit their activism and restrict their role to social service delivery. According to this latter approach, civil society inclusive of NGOs, CBOs, and social movements is assumed to work in opposition to the state, and hence the state’s need to curtail its autonomy. ❧ In the case of the food security sector in Johannesburg, I contend that civil society is not simply opposed to the central state; the landscape of relationships is far more complex, and includes NGOs working in collaboration with capital as well as CBOs and social movements that operate independently of capital or state partnerships. For some NGOs, institutional stability has been ensured by changing organizational mission, accessing private sector funding, or joining forces with FoodBank Johannesburg. Yet, for many NGOs and CBOs, resource unavailability, ineffective governmental policy, and new food bank bureaucracies portend an uncertain future

Civil Society and Urban Food Insecurity: Analyzing the Roles of Local Food Organizations in Johannesburg

Food security civil society organizations (FSCSOs) have emerged as important institutions in the battle against food insecurity in the Global South. However, little attention has so far been paid to their organizational structure, institutional roles, and governance configurations. To fill this gap, in this paper I used surveys, semi-structured interviews, and place-based case studies to analyze the landscape of Johannesburg’s FSCSOs. Results indicate that while they fulfill many important roles, an uneven distribution of resources, institutional instability, and underdevelopment of food security social movements nevertheless weakens their ability to be effective service providers and vehicles of broader social change. Thus, despite a growing literature on alternative food and food justice movements that heralds FSCSOs as a solution to urban food insecurity, this paper argues that their conceptualization has, so far, been poorly developed; and as a consequence, their transformative potential remains weakly theorized