THE INITIATION AND DEMISE OF A CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY FUNDED COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PROJECT IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA
S BRINK & N PETERSEN UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG Abstract
In a societally initiated development project within a rural informal settlement community, funded by a large corporate in South Africa, participation action learning and action research (PALAR) was employed as the overarching methodology. Among other community development initiatives, an early childhood development (ECD) centre was established. Despite significant gains made by the community over the six years of the project, in taking ownership of the ECD centre and driving development forward, upon the agreed exit of the development agents the project all but failed. This article proposes that underlying social and political contexts are often not overcome, but only temporarily displaced by development processes and thus, often overlooked as a reason for the failure of development efforts by large corporations to effect long-term change. Instead of scrutinizing the situation in terms of how closely and to what depth societal initiated community development efforts are aligned to participatory methodologies, more attention should be paid to the influence of socio-political dynamics within the environment on a community’s efforts to continue their development trajectory.
Key words: PALAR, development research, corporate social responsibility, rural context.
1. INTRODUCTION
This article reports on the demise of a community development project in which participatory action learning and research (PALAR) was utilised to engage a rural informal settlement community in South Africa in a process where the community could take ownership. The authors first describe the initiation and implementation of a corporate social investment funded ECD project and then reflect on how the political ennui that existed prior to the initiative was not completely overcome and that, despite employing PALAR principles and methods to drive community ownership and transfer of knowledge between members, ten years later, the project has all but collapsed. In the case of this study, we conclude that insufficient attention to the context of a highly politicised environment on a community’s efforts to continue their development trajectory may lead to unforeseen challenges and a loss of multinational corporate donor funding. In combination, these challenges may be the reason why a promising community project dissolved (Marks & Erwin, 2016). We argue that in the interests of the production of knowledge and creating sustainable development at a local level, more attention should be paid to the intersect of such factors.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: CULTURAL HISTORICAL ACTIVITY THEORY
In combination with the tenets of PALAR, we used cultural historical and activity theory (CHAT) as theoretical frame (Engeström, 1999). CHAT served as heuristic (the first three phases reported on in Van der Vyver, 2012), allowing us to gain a better understanding of tensions that lead to the demise of the project. To elucidate the tenets of CHAT, and to show the relationship between the different elements that influence interaction within a situation, we refer to Figure 1.
Figure 1. Relationship between elements of Engeström’s (1987) cultural historical activity theory
In CHAT, six elements play a role in the functioning of an activity system. First, there is a subject – the group whose actions are being studied – acting towards an envisaged objective or outcome(s) – the object. In this movement, the subject makes use of tools (and signs), such as language or a curriculum, for example. In an activity system, people can never conduct any action separately from those around them - they are always impacted upon by other role players within their situation – the community of the action. The designation of tasks within the community - who does what – and how its populace is stratified in terms of power and status is referred to as the division of labour. This allocation of tasks within a hierarchy of power is closely related to the rules within the activity: these are the conventions and regulations and beliefs that hold sway within the community and affect the actions of the subject, the tools that it chooses to utilize, and how it adheres to the directives of the division of labour.
It is also important to note that an activity system itself is not described in isolation but has to be viewed as part of a broader social system with a history (Beatty & Feldman, 2009). One activity system thus interacts with other activity systems. The findings of the initial study showed that the community, with the help of the development practitioners (DPs), had indeed, through PALAR processes, come to own the intervention. An organic fit-to-context curriculum was successfully developed, and towards the end of the project, teachers were positively engaged in their own processes of professional development. However, despite the subject and the object remaining essentially the same, in the period following the exit of the DPs, this objective became near impossible to achieve. Our gaze now falls on how the re-configuration of ‘nodes’ of the activity changed (after the DPs left and the funding from the CSR ended), all of which sheds light on the derailment of the ECD project.
2.1. Corporate social investment and community development
In contextualising this study within the literature on community development, we were drawn to studies on the value and disadvantages of corporate social investment (CSI) in this space. Worldwide, there is strong criticism of the development efforts of corporations, university researchers and donor organisations in addressing the problems of resource-poor communities (Bryson & Mowbray, 1981;
Kretzman & McKnight, 1993; Chollett, 2011; Meade, Shaw & Banks, 2016). Some, like Akpan (2006), believe that corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts fail to contribute to community development and can even cause conflict within and between communities. In developing countries however, a scarcity and/or misappropriation of state funding often prevents the support of education and development projects and corporations often become ‘surrogates’ for this purpose (Ite, 2004; Shaw,
Tools and signs
Subject: (Teachers, parents, community leadership)
Object: young children learning in a functional preschool
Rules Division of labour
Community
2008). In contexts such as these, Idemudia (2011) suggests that CSR activities can effectively mask the inefficacy of government agencies to address the development needs of communities especially with regard to the provision of necessary social infrastructure such as roads, housing, water and buildings. However, despite these critiques of CSR, it has been widely accepted as a vehicle of social development (Idemudia & Osayande, 2016).
The downside of CSR in developing countries may account for its misuse and inconsistent implementation. In contrast with developed countries such as the UK, where a minister of CSR is appointed to actively monitor and direct CSR efforts, many developing countries, particularly in Africa, lack clear CSR policies (Lindgreen, Swaen & Campbell, 2009). In South Africa, there is no formal government policy on corporate social responsibility and in the Companies Regulations (2011) of the Companies Act (2008) only oblique reference is made to the need for ‘corporate citizenship’ by businesses. However, since 1994, many large South African corporates fund CSR initiatives with the aim of promoting justice in communities (Bond, 2008). The critique extends to the work of development agents who act on behalf of large corporates (Kretzman & McKnight, 1993; Garvey &
Newell, 2005; Idemudia, 2011). One critique is the dominance, in CSR discourse, of a North-focused paradigm. This discourse is considered inappropriate for the realities of developing countries (Blowfield & Frynas, 2005).
However, worldwide there is increasing movement towards collaborative efforts in the CSR and community development field. Notable examples are the collaboration between large oil companies and communities in places such as Nigeria (Idemudia & Osayande, 2016). The role of external agents, such as project facilitators, are also explicated as a key factor in driving successful outcomes for community-based development (CBD) and community driven development (CDD) (Mansuri & Rao, 2003). In particular, participatory methodologies have gained traction in the approach and analysis of CSR – towards what McCrea, Meade and Shaw (2017) term ‘reflexive solidarity’. This approach includes the willingness to see societal involvement in community development as potentially problematic and not as an automatic ‘cure-all’ for communities’ issues. Many CSR projects, in working with a community’s future situation at the forefront of initiatives, expect that community issues or needs will direct development/education. However, there are a few key areas of research that are not sufficiently explored in existing publications. One is understanding how a lack of agency political marginalisation can limit the ability of communities to engage in dialogue with corporations on the focus and impact of their activities (Garvey & Newell, 2005). Other factors are how the impact of the political and social situation within which the development takes place can affect outcomes, and the reasons for failure to effect long term change (Idemudia, 2011; Lund, 2006). Our experience in a long- term community development project, and how these factors played out in it over time, are reflected in this paper. We were guided by the following research question:
What are the factors that led to the demise of a corporate social responsibility funded community engagement project in rural South Africa 10 years after its initiation?
3. METHODOLOGY: PARTICIPATION TOWARDS SELF-DIRECTED DEVELOPMENT
The overarching methodology for this five-year project from January 2008 to November 2012 used participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) (Zuber-Skerritt, 2015). PALAR fits within the broader set of research methods associated with action research (see Woods, 2012). The literature abounds with various forms and approaches to action research, including participatory action research (McIntyre, 2008), living theory (Whitehead, 2008), community based action research (Stringer, 2007) and critical action research (Davis, 2008) often with prominent race (Torre, 2009), and gender (Varcoe, 2006) foci. Despite the range of approaches, action research as overarching methodology, is guided by a similar worldview and consideration of how knowledge is produced.
Underlying the methodology are the value of respect for the autonomy of multiple voices, especially of the most marginalised, a commitment to democratic processes of working, recognition of how context shapes knowledge production and a strong emphasis on practical outcomes in addition to knowledge outcomes (Zuber-Skerrit & Wood, 2019). Having successfully employed action research, practitioner research and participatory action research, the authors’ choice of PALAR were in line with their focus on cooperative and collaborative learning which is participant-centred and directed, aiming for experiential learning opportunities for stakeholders. At the same time, we were keen on producing useable knowledge (Snow, Griffin & Burns, 2005) as a product of the process of collaborative development in impoverished South African communities (see also Kolb,1984). In this research, much
like where PALAR has been used in other contexts, where a shift to 'eclectic approaches’ beyond the predominant rational-analytic model (McEvoy, Brady & Munck, 2016), the focus is on real life problems with a strong emphasis on social justice and equality (Brydon-Miller & Damons, 2019).
Thus, although initiatives are often programme based, the process of learning and of knowledge production remains anchored in contemporary cultural contexts (Zuber-Skerritt, 2015). Such participatory methodologies aim at addressing problems by enhancing the dialogical and relational aspects of communities, engaging representatives of as many diverse viewpoints as might exist within a situation (Foster-Fisman et al., 2001). They also help researchers and the participants they work with to confront the many challenges and conflicting viewpoints which might arise during this process (Kearney, Wood & Zuber-Skerritt, 2013).
In the implementation of an early childhood education project, which featured as part of larger community development in a rural settlement community, the processes associated with PALAR were thus of immense value in helping us address both the practical and theoretical contributions we hoped to make. In particular, together with the theoretical framework of CHAT as heuristic, we could identify the tensions present at the beginning of the development focus, how this played out during the project, and how we believe it contributed substantially to the eventual collapse of both the project and the other development initiatives.
We used participatory methods (Freire, 1970; Summers, 1986; Swanepoel, 1997) to generate the data in the research project. These included transect walks (Binns, Hill & Nel, 1997), dialogue through informal and formal group discussions (Foster-Fisman et al., 2001) and the exploration of events as they were described by the members of the community (Binns et al., 1997) to assess the needs of the community from their point of view. We also conducted interviews with community members at various points in the project. And, in keeping with the first author’s position as development practitioner, she compiled a logbook of interactions and key developments over time. These were analysed for content (Strauss & Corbin, 1999) to construct a timeline of events with emerging themes and tensions at the end of each cycle of the project (Van der Vyver, 2012). We describe these in the next section/s.
3.1. Using PALAR in the rural settlement community, Mogwase
Mogwase1, the site of the study, is an informal rural settlement situated on the border between two provinces in South Africa and is situated equidistantly from two small towns 15 km away2. The land for the settlement was secured with the help of local, municipal government, by 55 community members in 2001; they thus own the land and the settlement is governed, at community level, by a steering committee, and on a larger scale, by the local municipal council (see Figure 1 for different levels of governance related to the settlement). A councillor for the region, appointed by the governing political party, serves as link between the community steering committee and regional government.
1Names of people and places have been changed for ethical reasons.
2This location bears relevance to the settlements’ falling under the municipal administration of first the one and then the other of these towns.
Figure 2: Levels of governance relative to the community
When the first author as education development practitioner (working in conjunction with a social worker), first engaged with the settlement community in 2008, she was confronted with development
‘fatigue’ (Cornwall, 2008). The DPs was acting on behalf of a corporate donor funder, who wanted to initiate an early childhood development programme accompanied by investment of considerable financial support. She, and the social worker, took note of the community’s descriptions of a long history of failed development projects originating from government agencies at municipal and national level (Van der Vyver, 2012). This is not an uncommon occurrence in social development. Government agents often act with agendas which are not clear to recipient communities (Mendes, 2017; Fung, 2003; Wampler & Avritzer, 2004) and when projects fail, communities often become disillusioned with development activities. The community members were understandably sceptical about the presence of the DPs and what they perceived as “more empty promises” (Van der Vyver, 2012). To us, this was a prime example of how instability in local community governance negatively impacts on the ability of corporations to implement development projects (Hamann et al., 2005).
Given the situation in the community, and their commitment to participatory methods, the development practitioners (DPs) made a principled decision to work with a community determination of needs and approval of the roll out of projects. Consequently, they asked the corporate funder to allow them the latitude to address the expressed community needs before introducing the idea of early childhood development. The corporate donor funder was willing to adapt their processes in order to build a relationship of trust, aimed at establishing ‘deep’ participation (Bebbington &
Farrington, 1993) and prioritisation of the community’s needs. They were also keen for members of the community, across groups and affiliations, to be part of the conversations. One of the first challenges the DPs faced was with respect to community leadership, where they had to balance working with two factions, each of which was vying for dominance. It took the DPs nearly a year to establish sufficient lines of communication and to forge relationships with different role players in order for them to gain some understanding of the community’s most urgent expressed needs (Werner
& Bower, 1983).
One of the first issues was potable water. Mogwase was reliant on water delivery by a municipal water truck. Delivery was sporadic due to the poor state of the access road. Despite repeated pleas to local government, the situation was not adequately addressed, which meant that the people had to get water from a nearby stream – the unsanitary nature of the water meant that community members were often ill. The poor condition of the road also impacted access to medical care. For instance, the mobile clinic, which was supposed to visit once a month, could often not traverse the muddy road, nor could an ambulance, in case of medical emergencies.
Another major grievance was the state of the government installed outside latrines, where septic tanks were to be emptied every six months. These had not been serviced for more than two years. In
National Government Provincial Government Municipal Government
Community Steering Committee
attempting to resolve this, in PALAR mode, the DPs served as mediators between the newly appointed Councillor Paul and the community. In heated debate with clear scepticism about government’s ability to deliver services, a list of the community’s development priorities was compiled, and the councillor pledged his commitment. The emerging stakeholder team also jointly decided on monthly community meetings with the DPs and the councillor in attendance to take stock of progress/challenges and reflect on new strategies and actions in order to work through the list of development priorities. Despite the best efforts of the local councillor it took government a further 22 months to empty the toilets. By November 2008, the community, frustrated by the slow pace of local government intervention requested the DPs to leverage corporate funding for access to clean water.
The funder agreed and a windmill was erected at a central point.
3.2. The establishment (and demise) of an early childhood development project
With the relative success of these early initiatives, and the goodwill brought on by the windmill providing access to clean water, the DPs believed that they had generated sufficient trust and social cohesion within the community to introduce an early childhood development (ECD) project in line with the focus of the corporate donor’s funding. We were convinced this was a good focus for the community development programme. There is recognition that ECD constitutes a critical period in the brain development of children (Cunha et al., 2006) and South African studies (Nkambule et al., 2011) have shown that within rural communities, the provisioning of quality early childhood development is woefully insufficient. As part of the initial investment, the corporate donor funder outfitted two customised shipping containers, converted into pre-school classrooms (colloquially called edutainers) with substantial funding for the establishment of a pre-school. The DPs then started an awareness campaign about the value of childhood development. This marked the start of four phases of a PALAR inquiry into a community-based ECD programme. The local councillor encouraged participation in the project and attended the official opening of the centre but did not offer any assistance, funding or training.
During the first PALAR phase, the first author, as DP for education and training, was trusted to provide direction. She stayed as close to the idea of ‘interactive participation’ by which local stakeholders and groups progressively take over more control of the development process by exercising their political will in making decisions (Pretty, 1995). In promoting the building of knowledge directly from ‘the ground’ in the community to care for and prepare young children from school (Biersteker & Dawes, 2008) she recommended that four young mothers from the community be employed as lay teachers3. Providing minimal direction, she argued that the young mothers would use their indigenous knowledge of childcare to design and develop a home grown, context-specific curriculum for the settlement’s children. After six months however, the naivety of this approach became very clear; the practitioners did not know enough about ECD to execute their tasks. They thought of their work primarily in terms of the physical safekeeping and well-being of the children and had no idea of how a preschool centre (colloquially called a crèche) should be run. The community had expectations that the children would be taught ‘to count and write their names’4 so that they would be school ready. The first of many tensions were becoming apparent when parents frequently commented on the lack of knowledge of early education of the ‘crèche teachers’5.
Another unforeseen issue arose shortly afterwards. The four mothers, who had previously enjoyed very little status and no independent income, were suddenly elevated to the status of ‘teachers’, with a monthly stipend of R 850-00 paid by the corporate donor funder. Although not much, even in South African terms, the status of ‘teacher’ and the accompanying ‘salary’ placed the young women in the category of top earners in the community. The older community members were incensed by this, and with the steering committee, they insisted on an older ‘matron’ supervising the lay practitioners6. This
‘matron’ happened to be one of the leaders in the community and her appointment, in fact, lead to even greater tension within the situation. The dissatisfaction and anger quickly escalated and led to physical attacks on the lay teachers by a community member. For the safety of all, the community steering committee closed the crèche for a period of two weeks7. This crisis pushed all the
3 Community meeting 4 November 2009
4 Crèche-parents meeting 19 May 2010
5 Social worker’s logbook January – February 2010
6 Community-crèche meeting 22 February 2010
7 Community-crèche meeting 22 February 2010
participants into the second cycle of PALAR. An urgent appraisal of the situation was required. The DPs, together with the steering committee, called for a series of conversations in which representatives of opposing views could voice their concerns, and engage in productive reflection of what had been learnt and what needed to change/ improve the situation8.
Motivated by the need to retain the funder’s investment, the DPs and the community steering committee resolved to address the lay teachers’ lack of knowledge by providing more structured ECD training. This was achieved through a training programme covering aspects such as early social, physical and cognitive development in weekly sessions of four hours over a period of 12 weeks. The training was however, deemed insufficient by the committee, and they demanded professional early childhood education and training9.
In phase 3, the services of an experienced ECD teacher were enlisted for six weeks. She worked closely with the lay teachers in a more structured day-to-day programme, integrating what they were learning with what they were experiencing in practice in the classes with the children. In reflection with the lay teachers, the community steering committee and the DP10 the group noted that the teachers reported ‘learning to be teachers’ through learning a lot about childhood development and education from the facilitator. At a subsequent meeting with parents11 the parents were of the view that their children were safe while the qualified crèche teacher was in charge. A collaborative decision was made to appoint a qualified teacher trainer on a full-time basis so that the lay teachers could continue their training without the parents worrying about the safety of the children.
During this phase, there was a noticeable change as the community began to take ownership of the ECD centre. The lay teachers began to use professional education discourse and express views on early childhood education about issues such as the language of instruction and teacher development (Van der Vyver, 2012). As they actively contributed to curriculum development, their sense of self- empowerment (Mashatini, 2005) expanded and they seemed to be developing as agents of early childhood development. Data from the community and the teachers also reveal a notable shift; from first being primarily concerned with the children’s physical care, the teachers began to include the development of children’s social skills and school preparation. There were also tangible changes to the pedagogies adopted by the teachers from child minding to more active classroom engagement (Van der Vyver, 2012).
A second important shift happened. Community members began regarding the crèche as a hub of development. Young people came to consult with the EDP and the teacher trainer on how they could further their education or employability through skills training12. Subsequently, the classrooms were used for adult education and training purposes in the afternoons and evenings, and a small library for everyone’s use was established13. In this phase of the project, the authors were of the view that real progress was evident in the ECD project where the teachers, parents and committee had begun to
‘own’ the project and talk about the children, the crèche and the teachers in terms of knowledge gained through the collaborative input of the different participants.
As the project was in its fourth phase and appeared to be well established, the community development practitioners and community jointly agreed that it was time for the DPs, as representatives of the corporate donor funder, to exit the project, with a 12 month exit strategy planned. Apart from the early childhood development programme which was, by now, completely in the hands of the community, a number of development issues had successfully been addressed - a large community hall and office, with flush latrines had been built near the ECD classrooms. Several other projects had been implemented and had reached a point where the input from the DPs was no longer required. These included a micro enterprise development programme, several life skills programmes, adult education and training programmes, skills development, school support, a women’s empowerment programme, HIV counseling, home-based care, and a nutrition programme.
These programmes were managed by various groups within the community, some of whom had been
8 Community- crèche meeting 22 February 2010
9 Community-crèche meeting 19 May 2010
10 Community-crèche meeting 14 July 2010
11 Crèche-parents’ meeting 15 October 2010
12 Crèche-parents’ meeting 15 October 2010
13 Development Project Documentation 2010
formalized through NPO registration with all reporting on progress to the steering committee once a month. A not-for-profit (NPO) organization, consisting of teachers and members of the steering committee had been formed to manage the crèche. The community steering committee had also formed a not-for-profit (NPO) so as to facilitate access to funding applications for other development projects. As part of the exit strategy, the DPs assisted the steering committee for the crèche in an application to register the crèche as pre-school education site with the national departments of education and social welfare14. Three of the teachers had attended National Development Plan (NDP) training and now complied with the South African regulatory environment so that they could receive a government stipend that is made available for pre-school teachers in registered ECD centres.
At a community meeting it was decided that funding would be supplemented by the parents’ contribu- tion of R130 per child per month to sustain the project.
4. DISCUSSION
In this section, we focus on two findings. The first and most important of these is the instability created by the precarious state of community and local government leadership. An interrelated finding is that the subsequent loss of community cohesion and its sense of collective agency seem to have paralyzed its ability to take action. Each of these appeared to have played a significant role in the demise of the development project/s.
4.1. Precarious local leadership and its contribution to the demise of the development project/s
In phase four of the project, a number of intersecting challenges ultimately contributed to its demise.
The findings of this study echo many development and capacity building projects in developing contexts with Ika and Donnelly (2019) arguing that structural, institutional and managerial conditions play a role. They also draw attention to their complex link with timing in a project, noting that some factors already exist, while others emerge later. In this project, a first factor was the change in municipal allocation of the community, and the concomitant appointment of a different municipal councilor. Although the new appointee, Councilor Katrina, pledged her commitment to the further development of both the ECD and other projects, she soon became the focus of a large scale dispute over alleged corruption within the municipality. Several public demonstrations and strikes were organized against her and her house was burnt down.
In the meanwhile, an official in charge of social services delayed the process of registration of the ECD centre. The community steering committee travelled to and from local government offices to Pretoria several times to get forms signed and processed only to be informed, after nearly two years, that the forms for the registration of the ECD centre had been lost, forcing the committee to restart the process. The registration process eventually took more than three years. During this time the community did not have money to keep the ECD teachers employed and eventually all of them left. In attempting to get access to their certificates of qualification the ECD teachers too travelled to Pretoria a number of times only to be informed that their certificates had been lost. The ECD teachers, despite participating in the NDP training, were never issued with certificates of qualification. This put both the registration of the centre and the stipend for the teachers in jeopardy and directly impacted the teachers’ ability to find alternative employment. In the meanwhile, at local government level, Councilor Katrina was removed from her position. The settlement was then reallocated to its previous municipal listing with a new person, Councilor Jakes, in charge. The community no longer had any relationship with local government and with the departure of the DPs, no longer had access to a n intermediary who could act on their behalf. This may have been due to their misunderstanding their role in the
‘capacity development’ component of the project, specifically the capacity of community to engage effectively with local government structures. Capacity development is itself a concept in development work that some authors argue is problematic because it is so imprecise and open to interpretation (Venner, 2015).
At the level of the community too, there were leadership struggles. This is an issue that frequently affects rural communities (see Ayers & Potter, 1989; Gray, Williams & Phillips, 2006) where tensions between power, social capital and local leadership can disrupt community development. In the leadership change, a populist was voted into the top management of the community committee.
14 At the time early childhood fell under the administration of these two government departments
As an administrator of the government’s community works programme (CWP) in the settlement she could decide who benefitted, and pleas by the steering committee to include the ECD teachers among the ranks of the workers in that programme went unheeded. Without payment, the ECD teachers left, and at the present time all but one15 of them is unemployed.
The new committee focused on securing funding for various ‘cooperative’ enterprise development projects – most of which came into the hands of the new leader and her allies. Some of the projects, which were allocated to groups within the community, such as a plant nursery cooperative, were vandalized and sabotaged until they too, were abandoned. Another project, a cooperative to plant several hectares of eggplant, was abandoned when the implementers left the project, leaving the members of this cooperative with fields full of rotting eggplant, which they did not have the physical or marketing infrastructure to get to the nearest market or town.
4.2. A stock-take 10 years later: A loss of community cohesion and collective agency?
In June 2018, some members of the old steering community asked the erstwhile EDP to conduct a walkabout and make suggestions about the way forward. Her logbook details the following:
One of the edutainers is empty with the library/reading corner books scattered on the floor. The second edutainer has had all its cupboards ripped from the walls, with the little that remained of the ECD equipment, piled in a heap in the middle. Most of the windows of both edutainers are broken. In the outside play area, the jungle gym is no longer functional with only the frame of the swings remaining.
The windmill which was erected in order to bring potable water to the community is not functioning and the community once again gets water from a municipal water truck as they first did, before the project started in 2008.
The community centre, once the hub of community discussions, training and entrepreneurship is abandoned with nearly all its windows broken. The toilets are not operational and the ceiling coming undone. There is no longer any furniture in the structure.
Two of the rainwater harvesting tanks have been abandoned and are standing off to one side, nowhere near a gutter and a third has no plug, rendering it inoperable.
The fence which used to be around the community centre and crèche area has been removed and the food gardens are much diminished.
No one from the community takes care of the young children in any structured way any longer. A pre-school facility at a nearby school, where it costs R50 per month per child in grade R16 accommodates fewer than 10 of the approximately 40 eligible children from the settlement. The rest of the children stay with family members or wander through the streets of the settlement in pairs and/or groups. As a result there is quite a bit of boredom and ill-discipline and bullying with the young children vandalizing community resources like the community vegetable tunnels.
In interviews with the previous community leader and the teachers there was growing concern that the young children are ‘not being well prepared for grade one’17. The previous community leader is now on the school governing body of the local primary school and has mobilized parents to demonstrate against alleged corruption and the ‘taking (of) money for the food for the children’ by the school principal18. However, in the community itself, divisions are again apparent. It appears as if the community has suffered a loss of cohesion and its sense of collective agency. Again, this is hinted at by Ika and Donnelly (2019), investigating projects in Ghana, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, who are of the view that high levels of multi-stakeholder commitment and collaboration are vital to the success of community development programmes in developing contexts. From the community’s comments, it appears as if they see external involvement as key to improving their situation. This includes interceding on their behalf with local government, as a key lever in access to fair and equitable assistance. The following comments are an indication hereof:
15 This young woman found employment as an agricultural worker on a farm in the area.
16 The reception year in South Africa
17 Focus group discussion with erstwhile community leader and members of the previous steering committee – 18 June 2018
18 Focus group discussion with erstwhile community leaders and members of the previous steering committee – 18 June 2018
“Since 2013 lots of people tried to bring changes but it didn’t last
We tried to have meetings with the councilor but they would never be there
In Mogwase people cannot work together – they always fight. The councilor comes here for meetings when only (some of the committee members’ names) are here and then, when we come back we find they have decided things and we could not say anything about it
If we can cooperate with the peoples who help us and (if we can) take things serious and respect what we have in our community we will achieve lot of things and take education first as favourite of our childrens we will have better future, better kids and proudly parents, but we need help
Our reflection of the stage of the project at this time indicates that the most significant tensions are traceable to changes in the organization of the community, the division of labour and the rules. During the project, the DPs formed part of the subject, striving together with the other community stakeholders, towards the object. However, upon their exit, local government agents and structures became a significant part of the community within the activity and as such exerted significant influence (not always positive) on the rules as well as the division of labour within the activity system. The change of leadership of the community steering committee shifted from being an integral part of the group acting towards the object, to a voice of dissent/ contention. The role of access to funding was one of the key factors in this shift, an issue touched on in other research in this area (Busse &
Gröning, 2009; Okada & Samreth, 2012) where the link between aid and quality of governance is explored.
At this stage, despite the state of the physical resources, some progress seems to have been made in terms of enterprise development, possibly indicative of the value of physical survival and income generation. There has been a shift in the focus of the objective; ECD has taken a backseat to economic survival. These projects however seem to benefit small pockets of people in the community.
The corporate donor is also no longer interested in investment in this community. Thus, while in the first three phases of this PALAR project, the tensions between the different aspects within the activity could be said to have worked (variably and organically) to the successful achievement of the object, the current tensions contributed significantly to the demise of the project. Both the departure of the development practitioners as ‘buffer’ between the community and local government, and changes in community leadership, led to tensions between the various nodes and these became so overwhelming that almost all activity collapsed under the strain. We found evidence of similar issues in other such projects internationally (Castro, Barrera & Martinez, 2004).
5. CONCLUSION
This article describes the impact of social and political dynamics at various stages of a CSR initiated community early education development project using PALAR in a rural settlement community. At the inception of the project, the presence of the DPs and the corporate donor helped ameliorate the influence of competing forces and accountability by local government; something that dissipated when they exited the project.
In trying to understand the inability of the community to engage productively with local government towards the end of the project, we turned to the work of Narayan et al. (2000, p.2) who suggests that the experience by the poor of deprivation is mainly one of powerlessness over the various aspects of their lives. He argues that people from such communities are often so entrenched in their experience of both physical and conceptual poverty that it permeates every aspect of their lives and (negatively) influences their ability to take action.
There were however some successes: the discourse of scarcity changed; tensions, when managed as part of the dynamic of change, stimulated dialogue about substantive issues and members began to view these as a catalyst for change; and the process of going through several ‘cycles’ of planning, acting, learning and reflection by all participants, created a ‘space’ in which the teachers could be trained and a pre-school curriculum fashioned. However, despite the initial sense of self-directed agency this proved ineffectual when the community had to engage in civil processes on their own and
without the backing of a large multinational corporation. After all, despite the development brought about by the project, the community was still poor. And, although they had actively engaged in participation in aspects of social development, their perceptions of government agencies as wielders of power continues to play a significant role in their inability to overcome the blockade to access to the necessary civil processes needed to proceed and advance the ECD programme. Ultimately we were humbled as scholars using participatory methods - despite our intentions to engage stakeholders from the community and from outside of it cross-sectorally, drawing upon the strengths of such collaboration (Jamali & Mirshak, 2007), we did not sufficiently consider the influence of the larger social context – at municipal, provincial and national level in South Africa, on the sustainability of the project. Although we understand that PALAR is by nature fraught with tensions that cause it to progress in often unexpected and haphazard ways (Cornwall, 2008), we were disappointed that our use of it had not led to the sense of agency and cohesion we had anticipated in the community of Mogwase.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to acknowledge Prof. Elizabeth Henning for her input and support of this article.
REFERENCES
Akpan, W. 2006. Between responsibility and rhetoric: some consequences of CSR practices in Nigeria’s oil province, Development Southern Africa, 23(2): 223–240.
Biersteker, L. & Dawes, A. 2008. Early childhood development. Human resources development review, 185-205.
Beatty, I. D., & Feldman, A. 2009. Illuminating teacher change and professional development with CHAT. In Proceedings of the NARST Annual Meeting, April (pp. 17-19).
Binns, T., Hill, T. & Nel, E. 1997. Learning from the people – Participatory Rural Appraisal, geography and rural development in the ‘new’ South Africa.
Bond, P. 2008. Social movements and corporate social responsibility in South Africa. Development and Change, 39(6): 1037-1052.
Bebbington, A. & Farrington, J. 1993. Governments, NGOs and agricultural development:
Perspectives on changing inter‐organizational relationships. The Journal of Development Studies, 29(2): 199-219.
Blowfield, M. & Frynas, J. G. 2005. Editorial Setting new agendas: critical perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility in the developing world. International affairs, 81(3): 499-513.
Brydon-Miller, M. & Damons, B., 2019. Action Research for Social Justice Advocacy. The Wiley Handbook of Action Research in Education, 371-92.
Bryson, L. & Mowbray, M. 1981. ‘Community’: The Spray‐on Solution, Australian journal of social issues, 16(4): 255-267.
Busse, M. & Gröning, S. 2009. Does foreign aid improve governance? Economics Letters, 104(2): 76– 78.
Castro, F.G., Barrera, M., & Martinez, C.R. 2004. The Cultural Adaptation of Prevention Interventions:Resolving Tensions Between Fidelity and Fit. Prevention Science, 5(10): 41-45.
Chollett, D. L. 2011. ‘Like an ox yoke’: Challenging the intrinsic virtuousness of a grassroots social movement. Critique of Anthropology, 31(4): 293-311.
Cornwall, A. 2008. Unpacking ‘Participation’: models, meanings and practices. Community development journal, 43(3), 269-283.
Cunha, F., Heckman, J. J., Lochner, L. & Masterov, D. V. 2006. Interpreting the evidence on life cycle skill formation. Handbook of the Economics of Education, 1: 697-812.
Davis, C. S. 2008. Critical action research. The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methods, 1: 139-142.
Engeström Y. Innovative learning in work teams: Analyzing cycles of knowledge creation in practice.
In Perspectives on activity theory. Edited by Engeström Y, Miettinen R, Punamäki RL. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999d: 377–406.
Foster-Fishman, P.G., Berkowitz, S.L. Lounsbury, D.W., Jacobson, S. & Allen, N.A. 2001. Building collaborative capacity in community coalitions: A review and integrative framework. American Journal of Psychology, 29(2): 241-261.
Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
Fung, A. 2003. Associations and democracy: between theories, hopes and realities, Annual Review of Sociology, 29: 515–539.
Garvey, N. & Newell, P. 2005.Corporate accountability to the poor? Assessing the effectiveness of community-based strategies. Development in Practice, 15(3).
Gray, I., Williams, R. & Phillips, E. 2005. Rural community and leadership in the management of natural resources: Tensions between theory and policy. Journal of Environmental Policy &
Planning, 7(2): 125-139.
Hamann, R., Kapelus, P., Sonnenberg, D., Mackenzie, A. & Hollesen, P. 2005. Local governance as a complex system: Lessons from mining in South Africa, Mali and Zambia. Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 18: 61-73.
Idemudia, U. 2011. Corporate social responsibility and developing countries: moving the critical CSR research agenda in Africa forward. Progress in Development Studies, 11(1): 1-18.
Idemudia, U. & Osayande, N. 2016. Assessing the effect of corporate social responsibility on community development in the Niger Delta: a corporate perspective. Community Development Journal, 53(1): 155-172.
Ika, L.A. & Donnelly, J. 2019. Under what circumstances does capacity building work? New York:
Springer.
Ite, U.E. 2004. Multinational and corporate social responsibility in developing countries: A case study of Nigeria. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 11: 1-11
Jamali, D., & Mirshak, R. 2007. Corporate social responsibility (CSR): Theory and practice in a developing country context. Journal of business ethics, 72(3): 243-262.
Kearney, J., Wood, L. & Zuber-Skerritt, O., 2013. Community-university partnerships: Using participatory action learning and action research (PALAR). Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 6: 113.
Kolb, D. 1984. Experiential Learning. Englewood cliffs: Ed.
Kretzmann, J. P. & McKnight, J. 1993. Building communities from the inside out, 2-10. Evanston, IL, for Urban Affairs.
Lindgreen, A., Swaen, V. & Campbell, T.T. 2009. Corporate Social Responsibility Practices in Developing and Transnational Countries: Botswana and Malawi. Journal of Business Ethics, 90: 429- 440.
Lund, C., 2006. Twilight institutions: public authority and local politics in Africa. Development and change, 37(4): 685-705.
Mansuri, G. & Rao, V. 2003. Evaluating community-based and community-driven development: A critical review of the evidence. Policy Research Working Paper, 3209.
Marks, M., & Erwin, K. 2016. Interfering politicians: the underbelly of local community development within a South African context. Community Development Journal, 53(1): 25-41.
Mashatini, N.F. 2005. Self-empowerment for teachers as an aspect of curriculum development.
Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
McCrea, N., Meade, R. R. & Shaw, M. 2017. Solidarity, organizing and tactics of resistance in the 21st century: social movements and community development praxis in dialogue. Community Development Journal, 52(3): 385-404.
McEvoy, P., Brady, M. & Munck, R. 2016. Capacity development through international projects: a complex adaptive systems perspective. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 9(3):
528-545.
McIntyre, A. 2008. Participatory Action Research. New York:Sage Publications.
Meade, R., Shaw, M., & Banks, S. 2016. Politics, power and community development: an introductory essay. Politics, power and community development, Policy Press, Bristol, 1-27.
Mendes, P. 2008. Teaching community development to social work students: A critical reflection. Community Development Journal, 44(2): 248-262.
Narayan, D., Chambers, R., Shah, M.K. & Petesch, P. 2000. Voices of the poor crying out for change.
New York, Oxford University Press.
Nkambule, T., Balfour, R. J., Pillay, G. & Moletsane, R. 2011. Rurality and rural education: Discourses underpinning rurality and rural education research in South African postgraduate education research 1994-2004. South African Journal of Higher Education, 25(2), 341-357.
Okada, K., & Samreth, S. 2012. The effect of foreign aid on corruption: A quantile regression approach. Economics Letters, 115(2): 240-243.
Pretty, J. 1995. Participatory learning for sustainable agriculture. World Development, 23(8): 1247- 1263.
Shaw, M. 2008. Shifting away binaries: the entanglement of insurgent urbanism, formal participation and state action, Community development and the politics of community, Community Development Journal, 43 (1): 24-36.
Snow, C. E., Griffin, P., & Burns, M. S. (Eds.). 2005. Knowledge to support the teaching of reading:
Preparing teachers for a changing world. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
South Africa, Department of Trade and Industry. 2011. Companies Regulations 2011, Companies Act 2008. Government Gazette (No. 34239).
Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. 1999. Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory.(2nd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Summers, G.F. 1986. Rural community development. Annual Review of Sociology, 12(1986): 347- 371. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2083207.
Swanepoel, H. 1997. Community development: Putting plans into action. (3rded.) Cape Town: Juta &
Co, Ltd.
Torre, M.E. Participatory action research and critical race theory. Fueling spaces for Nos-otras to research. The Urban Review, 41(1): 1060120.
Van der Vyver, S. 2012. An early childhood development programme in a rural settlement community.
Doctoral dissertation, University of Johannesburg.
Varcoe, C. 2006. Doing participatory action research in a racist world. Western Journal of Nursing research, 28(5): 525-540.
Venner, M. 2015. The concept of ‘capacity’ in development assistance: new paradigm or more of the same? Global Change, Peace & Security, 27(1): 85-96.
Wampler, B. & Avritzer, L. 2004. Participatory publics: civil society and new institutions in democratic Brazil. Comparative politics, 291-312.
Werner, D. & Bower, B. 1983. Helping Health Workers Learn. Palo Alto, CA: The Hesperian Foundation.
Wood, L. 2014. Action research for the 21st century: Exploring new educational pathways. South African Journal of Higher Education, 28(2): 660-672.
Whitehead, J. 2008. Using a living theory methodology in improving practice and generating educational knowledge in living theories. Educational Journal of Living Theories, 1(1): 103-126.
Zuber-Skerritt, O. 2015. Participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) for community engagement: A theoretical framework. Educational research for social change, 4(1): 5-25.
Zuber-Skerrit, O. & Wood, L. 2019. Action Learning and Action Research. United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing limited.
