South Africa NGO Sector

History of the Nonprofit Sector in South Africa

The nonprofit sector in South Africa has a long history. The beginnings of civil society arose during the colonial period with various religious, cultural, and welfarist community-based groups. In addition, the European colonial powers brought their own organizations with them from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries (Swilling and Russell 67). During the twentieth century, the nonprofit sector developed further through a corporatist pact between the British elite and Afrikaner middle class (Swilling and Russell 68). Large, formalized non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dealing with health and social services emerged for the exclusive care of the white community. At the same time, grassroots community-based organizations arose in the black community in order to provide basic services. These groups were often survivalist and stood in opposition to segregation and later Apartheid. For the most part, the white-run government tolerated these organizations, except during periods of active political repression like the 1960s.

In the early 1980s, anti-Apartheid civil society organizations grew as a result of President P.W. Botha’s liberalization of the political system. Nonetheless, his reform movement retained repressive elements, and the state-civil society relationship throughout the 1980s remained adversarial, with a hostile legal and financial environment for NGOs (Habib 675-77). Oppositional social movements spawned by community-based organizations were integral in bringing about the end of Apartheid in 1994.

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