Global And National Goals For Every Child: Progress And Disparities Among Children In South African Child Rights Context
Since the apartheid days, civil society organizations (CSOs) in South Africa has long played an important role in waging the anti-apartheid campaigns, fostering social cohesion, building social capital, provision of social services, advancing socio-economic as well as civil and political rights. South African CSOs were very influential in the trajectory of democratization towards the end of apartheid and in the first decade after 1994. Though more progressive than most of its neighbors, the South African government has tended to look at civil society either with suspicion or as a nuisance factor. For the most part, NGOs in South Africa are supported by foreign donors and are thus seen as non-progressive in some leftist spaces. Their most felt influence has been in the rights of marginalized workers; access to water and sanitation; women’s rights; youth and child rights; advocacy for universal care, treatment, and support. However, beyond the NGO sector, South Africa also has a robust organized labor sector as well as social movements drawn from various thematic strands. South Africa has often been dubbed the protest capital of the world.