ISS Home Page Search the site

CHAPTER 4

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL REGENERATION MOVEMENT: 2000 - 2004

Published in Monograph No 114, April 2005

Crime Prevention and Morality
The Campaign for Moral Regeneration in South Africa

Janine Rauch

 

 

After the 1999 election, with Thabo Mbeki in office as president and Jacob Zuma as deputy president, the moral regeneration initiative began to enjoy more formal attention from the Presidency (this may have pointed to increasing interest in the moral regeneration approach; or merely to a more efficient administrative system). In dividing up political and administrative tasks between the president and deputy president in the early days of their term, Zuma was allocated responsibility for this initiative. Staff in the Presidency describe this as a routine division of labour, with no great political significance. However, the subsequent allegations of corruption levelled against Deputy President Zuma led to various questions and criticisms of his role in the moral regeneration initiative; often implying a greater political significance in his association with the campaign. In fact, his role is that of political patron and ‘front man’, and he only participated in the behind-the-scenes work from time to time.
 
Even though the Deputy President’s Office has some responsibility for the political co-ordination of the moral regeneration work being done in government, this is a fairly arms-length relationship; especially since the establishment of the Moral Regeneration Movement (MRM) with its own offices in Johannesburg. Another senior government figure associated with the early moral regeneration initiative was Rev Smangaliso Mkatshwa (a key religious figure within the ANC, former deputy minister of education and subsequent mayor of Tshwane).
 
According to a report on the moral regeneration initiative, the president, the deputy president and the deputy minister of education met in February 2000 and expressed ‘deep concern about the worsening moral situation’. Not much had been done since the 1998 Moral Summit; and the government wanted to add impetus to the campaign, which seemed to have floundered. In early 2000 a Moral Regeneration Workshop was convened to renew interest and energy in the campaign. Some sources view the stagnation of the moral renewal campaign after 1998 as evidence that it should not be left in the hands of the religious leaders alone, for they failed to take it forward during that time.

Moral regeneration workshops

 

After a first moral regeneration workshop in February 2000, it was agreed that a second workshop would be beneficial, and this followed shortly in May of that year. There was considerable overlap between the two workshops, although the composition of participants in each was slightly different. Participants at both workshops were mainly drawn from government departments and religious institutions. The workshops were convened by the Department of Education under the auspices of the deputy president, with assistance from various religious and political organisations – but symbolically these were government-led events.
 
According to the official report on the workshops (published online at the government website), much time was devoted at the first workshop to the analysis of the moral problem. This was because it was felt that unless the workshop was able to clearly define that (morality) which needed to be revived, no effective intervention strategy could be devised. The workshop therefore focused on examining what was meant by morality and moral degeneration, as well as tracing the history of the problem.26
 
The second workshop was meant to focus on establishing a national framework for action towards moral regeneration. This would entail the identification of national priorities, actions to be taken and forming a Steering Committee to take the process forward. Conclusions at the second workshop included the need to involve all government departments, rebuild strong social support and family structures, turn schools into ‘moral environments’, draw the business sector into discussion, and for religious organisations to play a prominent role in moral regeneration.27 The workshop reports contain no references to the NCPS, or other initiatives then underway which may have been relevant to moral regeneration; and again the ‘campaign’ approach to moral regeneration emerged strongly:
The best way of taking the message to the rest of the nation was through a national campaign. In the past, campaigns have worked well because they sensitised the nation to critical issues facing it. … It was agreed that the campaign for moral regeneration will consist of the following:
This approach was similar to many other initiatives of its time, taking the methodology of the anti-apartheid organisations into a government-led initiative, with an emphasis on structures and process rather than on the content of the messages. What was envisaged was a mass mobilisation, harking back to the glory days of the liberation struggle, to a time when a large majority of people and organisations could be united against a common enemy. However, there were (and are) many debates about morality among the diverse groups that make up South African society, and no consensus on what constitutes morally degenerative behaviour - hence no easy basis for mobilising a united front against it.
 
The SABC (the public broadcaster) and the national Department of Education were mandated to lead the process. A steering committee was established, consisting of those two bodies with representatives from the South African Chapter of the African Renaissance movement and an un-named ‘expert’. The first phase of the proposed campaign was to focus on ‘rooting it in society’ through enrolling a large number of partners, raising public awareness about moral issues, and establishing ‘shared values’ among all South Africans. The media were (naively, perhaps) expected to ‘tackle the campaign with great enthusiasm’.29
 
Although the moral regeneration ‘campaign’ had been conceptualised as anever-expanding partnership between government and civil society organisations (especially faith-based organisations), there was little support from organised civil society after the workshops held in 2000. Indeed, there is little evidence that any of the actions proposed at the workshop (above) were initiated, except that a steering committee was established, as were some provincial structures. The steering committee was made up of people with other jobs and other commitments; and once again the moral regeneration initiative floundered, either because of lack of dedicated person power, or lack of clarity, or both.
 
By early 2001, the discourse around the moral regeneration initiative shifted to begin describing it as a ‘movement’ rather than the earlier formulation of ‘campaign’. This was perhaps an attractive reference, aimed at former activists and supporters, to the broad international ‘anti-apartheid movement’, or to the ‘liberation movement’. The idea was that the Moral Regeneration Movement (MRM) would be a broad coalition of individuals and organisations in civil society, engaged in campaigning and other activities that would rebuild the social fabric of society and improve the moral fibre of the nation.
Crime and corruption, hijacks and murder, abuse of women and children, racism and sexism, are all signs of a moral breakdown. It is important therefore to support efforts underway to build a national moral regeneration movement to be established in every sector of South African society, working through existing organisations. … This movement should be an assemblage of concerned citizens from government and civil society, seeking to reinvigorate morality in South Africa.30
This approach was promoted inside the ANC, perhaps because its officials—both in the party headquarters and in government—had grown weary of trying to manage the moral regeneration campaign, with its endless debates about what exactly the campaign should do.
 
The vision of moral regeneration developing into a ‘movement’ represented the attempt to extend interest in, and responsibility for, the campaign. This would spread the responsibility of leadership to a wider group of role players than just the government and the religious community, and would recruit a wider support base for the campaign than had been realised through political and religious organisations. The new formulation was, in some part at least, a response to the inertia of the period subsequent to the government-led workshops in mid-2000, in which the ‘campaign’ had been formulated.
 
Within the vision of a ‘movement’, there was a motivation for some sort of secretariat/base/organisation for the moral regeneration initiative. It had been decided that this should no longer rest within government, but in civil society. This was in part because the co-ordination of such a loose campaign was extremely difficult, especially in a bureaucratic government environment where the emphasis was increasingly on delivery; and where it was difficult to justify expenditure on campaign-type activities that could not demonstrate measurable impact. In addition, it was hoped that a dedicated institution and staff would add the required impetus to the campaign.
 
The proposal that the MRM should be based in civil society emerged at around the same time as the National Civil Society Conference in early 2001. This event provided an opportunity for dialogue and reflection on the state of civil society in South Africa, a decade after the unbanning of the liberation movement and the beginning of the transition to democracy. The starting points for the conversation included:
Despite the fact that South Africa has a progressive Constitution, a democratically-elected local government, and a slowly-improving state machinery, the task of transforming it into a peaceful and prosperous democracy cannot be delegated to government alone, or to the private sector. Every single citizen can and should be involved in this challenge. Organising this public and voluntary commitment to transformation is the responsibility and privilege of civil society.31
The formulation of the moral regeneration campaign as something in which every citizen, family and community should participate resonated strongly with memories of the heyday of (anti-apartheid) civil society activism. However, the architects of the moral regeneration campaign may have failed to recognise some of the profound changes that had affected civil society in post-apartheid South Africa. Some of the ANC-aligned speakers at the Civil Society conference were blunt in their assessment of civil society capacity at that time. The former head of the President’s Office, and respected academic, Jakes Gerwel, observed:
The conceptual challenge for a ‘liberation movement in government’ [like ours] is to identify, define and demarcate those areas of social life of its citizens that are largely outside of its sphere of responsibility and direct control, without thereby neglecting its historic obligation to fundamentally transform society. Conversely, citizenry have to identify, define and claim those areas where they take primary responsibility, being partners – though often critical partners – with the government. …If we were to comment on the state of civil society with reference specifically to sectors like education, religion, culture, sport, community development and community life, one will have to conclude that the role played by civil society has diminished since democratic change.”32
Jayendra Naidoo, former trade union leader and peace activist, then head of the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC), South Africa’s tripartite development forum, was even more frank about the state of civil society:
Following the 1994 elections … civil society has generally become muted and less effective. The level of participation of rank-and-file members on the ground has weakened. Today’s challenge to civil society organisations is to re-establish the credibility and influence they enjoyed in the pre-democracy period.33
These concerns about the viability of civil society appear not to have been heard by those in government and in the moral regeneration campaign, who were determined to remove it from the ambit of government.

Child rape brings new momentum

 

In late 2001, a moral panic in the media about levels of child rape and sexual violence in South Africa revived interest in issues of moral regeneration. A special debate was held in Parliament on the ‘alarming incidence of child rape and abuse’. Deputy President Zuma, as the political figurehead of the moral regeneration initiative, made the following observations during the debate:
The apartheid history of this country left behind a legacy of a serious breakdown of the moral infrastructure of our society. Apartheid brutalised all - its perpetrators, victims as well as its beneficiaries. Through the migrant labour system and homelands, apartheid sowed the seeds for the breakdown of the institution of the family. The breakdown of the moral fibre manifests itself in many ways and in all sectors of our society, the rich and poor, urban and rural, black and white, young and old. The molestation of children and infants is a symptom of this degeneration.34
In the same address35 to Parliament, Zuma announced that a Moral Summit would be convened in early 2002, with the intentions of taking ‘stock of the moral barometer of our country’ and ‘charting the way forward for a mass-based moral regeneration campaign’. This was undoubtedly also an attempt to reinvigorate the campaign, or, at least, to create the perception that it was still alive.
 
Shortly after the November parliamentary session a national consultative meeting of the Moral Regeneration Movement was called and a variety of intellectuals were asked to contribute inputs. The new approach was made clear—that the campaign should no longer be led by government or confined to the pre-existing partnership between government and the religious community:
The lack of respect for the sanctity of human life, for the next person, private property, disregard for the law of the land, lack of parental control over children, and the general blurring of the lines between right and wrong are continuing to plague our communities. That is the reason why we are gathered here today, to begin to chart the way forward. Indeed, the time has come to move forward together. Moral regeneration is not something which can be left to either the Government or to the religious community alone. We require the participation of all sectors in this campaign, all spheres of government, labour, women, men, youth, business, academics, tr aditi onal leaders, tr aditi onal healers, the media and professionals.36
After the November consultative meeting, the Moral Regeneration working committee was enlarged to include provincial representatives, political parties and other sectors of civil society. This was an attempt to expand leadership of the initiative beyond the early bilateral partnership between government and the faith-based organisations, and to insert new energy into the initiative. It was felt by some that it had been an error to put the campaign largely in the hands of the religious leaders, who appeared unable to agree on an appropriate strategic approach, or to turn the idea of the campaign into action.
 
The new working committee speedily made two key decisions. First, it decided to launch a Moral Regeneration Movement with a dedicated, independent base, outside of government. Secondly, it decided to establish a Section 21 (not-for-profit) company—an NGO—as this base, to house and lead the movement. One of the key reasons for this was to facilitate funding and expenditure—managing the finances of the envisaged coalition-type organisation for moral regeneration would be difficult within the administrative constraints of the government financial regulations. These decisions were presented by Deputy President Zuma to the year-end Cabinet lekgotla, and approved by Cabinet. This resulted in some speeding-up of the process—Cabinet requested that the launch should happen as early as possible in 2002, which was earlier than the committee had envisaged.

Establishment of the MRM

 

The high profile launch of the Moral Regeneration Movement (MRM) took place in April 2002 at an air force base in Pretoria (a venue that provoked some debate). Over a thousand people from government, parliament, provincial legislatures, political parties, religious organisations, tr aditi onal structures, and NGOs were present. In line with the argument that the initiative should be devolved to civil society, the MRM was constructed as a non-profit organisation with a small staff, to be based in the NGO heartland of Johannesburg. Its brochure describes it as ‘a movement and not an organisation’.37
 
In his opening address at the launch, Zuma quoted from various sections of the Constitution, and emphasised that the Constitution “is the cornerstone which lays out the values we [the moral regeneration campaign] uphold”.38 This point was made to emphasise the secular nature of the initiative, and to distance it from theological differences over ‘values’ between the various religious leaders.
 
The new MRM did not manage to be much more concise or clear about its content than the preceding initiatives.
The ultimate objective of the moral regeneration movement is to assist in the development of a caring society through the revival of the spirit of botho/ubuntu and the actualisation and realisation of the values and ideals enshrined in our constitution, using all available resources and harnessing all initiatives in government, business and civil society.39
The MRM also failed to focus or target its strategy, instead describing an extremely broad spectrum of efforts:
 
what are the focus areas of the movement’s work?
The purpose of the MRM was described at the launch as “to facilitate, encourage, and co-ordinate the programmes in every sector of society, in working towards restoring the moral fibre of our nation”. Again the nature of the MRM as a ‘broad-based dynamic movement, to mobilise communities across the country to drive the moral renewal process’ was emphasised, as was the handing of the moral regeneration baton to civil society:
There can be no moral regeneration if ordinary South Africans do not drive the process. What is unique about this ‘full partnership of all the people’ we envisage is that it must mobilise every man, woman and child, at every level of our country, around an initial four-year Programme of Action. … It is critical that all of us understand that the MRM is a movement of the people.41
The speakers at the launch did not provide any guidance on exactly how ‘the people’ could get actively involved in moral regeneration, and this continued to be a key problem with the campaign. At least in more orthodox crime prevention campaigns (or public health campaigns), leaders are able to give practical suggestions and examples of behaviours leading to the reduction of crime and victimisation. However, the grey area of morality did not lend itself easily to clear messaging; perhaps because of the religious and ideological connotations associated with the discourse of morality.
 
One of the most interesting aspects of this phase in the development of the moral regeneration initiative is that a dedicated NGO was established, with government funding, to take forward the campaign. This arrangement, with government as the sole funder, providing core running costs for an NGO, is quite extraordinary.
 
This arrangement commenced with government allocating R5m to cover the costs of the MRM launch in April 2002 and the first year of operation, and a further R2-3m per annum for running costs over each of the following three financial years.42 This allocation was made after the consultation process in late 2001, at which it was decided to launch the MRM. According to participants in the MR process at the time, Treasury approved the grant after Cabinet approved the plan to launch the MRM in a new form. Some sources say that Treasury made it clear that the MR initiative was not a financial priority for government (and that initial requests for over R30m were trimmed down); others say that Cabinet took the unusual step of approving the plans for the MRM and instructing Treasury and the Department of Arts and Culture to facilitate resources for the plan, precisely because it was such an important priority for government. Whichever version is correct, it is obvious that the active political support of the deputy president was a significant asset in the quest for resources.
 
The government grants to the MRM are administered through the Department of Arts and Culture, under the auspices of its Programme 2 for ‘Arts, Culture, Language and Society’, and the sub-programme ‘Promotion of Arts and Culture in South Africa’. The output is stated as ‘Annual (matching) grants to playhouses and certain orchestras, for arts development, to Business Arts South Africa (BASA), and to the MRM’.43

Building a movement

 

The months following the launch were described as ‘a period of structural development and networking at all levels’. The main development was the establishment of the MRM as a non-profit company, and recruitment of its staff. Also, MRM Committees were established in all provinces and in some municipalities as a follow-up to the national launch. At the end of 2002, Zuma told Parliament that this was evidence ‘that the MRM is taking root at every level’.44 Some of the events held around the country after the national launch were:
In September 2002 Zuma announced in Parliament that plans were underway for the development of a national ‘Moral Charter’. This was intended to represent a crystallisation of the central tenets of various documents, agreements and initiatives, ranging from the King Report on Corporate Governance to various codes of conduct in the public and private sector. The idea was that the Charter would be a ‘concise pledge’, which would contain “the essence of core good values and ethics we would all want to adhere to, and would be prepared to be judged against”.45
 
In the same speech, Zuma also re-emphasised that “the moral regeneration movement is multi-sectoral and not confined to the religious sector only”.46
 
By November 2002 the first staff appointments were made in the MRM. There are four full-time staff members; the Chief Executive Officer is Zandile Mdhladhla, formerly a member of management staff at the Durban Technikon in KwaZulu-Natal. Approximately a year was spent on setting up the organisation and generating a vision of its role, an extremely slow (and costly) process. Mdhladhla described as ‘time-consuming’ the process of ‘unpacking what moral regeneration is about’,47 and, indeed, the new organisation had to define its role carefully in relation to the earlier formulations of the moral regeneration campaign, particularly in relation to government and the religious sector.
 
On the MRM website, the ‘overall objectives’ of the MRM are now described as follows:
On its website the MRM attempts to make clear its three core messages. These messages are:
The phrasing of these core messages is far less concerned with spirituality or religion than the early formulations of the moral renewal initiative. The MRM had to overcome the perception that it was some sort of religious initiative, and shifted its focus instead towards constitutional values. Religion is described as one of the eight focus areas of the movement, but no longer dominates the moral regeneration agenda. There is also less explicit reference to crime than there was in some of the earlier formulations of the campaign. However, there is little explanation of what the ‘constitutional values’ are; and with fourteen ‘moral themes’ identified in the Constitution,50 the danger of lack of clarity continues to loom large.

MRM in government

 

The Department of Arts and Culture was tasked with the administration of moral regeneration issues within government, including administering the grants to the MRM, and co-ordinating government-wide activity that could be seen as relevant to the initiative; while the Deputy President’s Office remains the ‘political’ co-ordination hub for moral regeneration issues within government. Apart from Zuma’s ongoing public speaking about moral regeneration, little momentum was sustained around the initiative inside government departments in the period immediately after the MRM was launched.
 
Officials in the Department of Arts and Culture found “not much political support” for the campaign, and described the heads of national government departments as “not strongly on board” for quite some time after the MRM was launched in early 2002. This was perhaps a result of the perception that the MRM—configured now as an NGO—would be taking responsibility for the campaign, thus enabling government officials to take a back seat. National government became one sector, among many, that reported on its moral regeneration activities at the regular meetings of the Movement. In respect of national departments, the reports are co-ordinated through the Director of Special Programmes in the Deputy President’s Office, whereas provincial and local governments report through the provincial structures of the MRM.
 
According to some of the departmental participants interviewed for this research, the activities that they report on are often not activities that were conceived as morally regenerative. Instead, they often select from other, ongoing departmental programmes those things that might be most relevant to the moral regeneration initiative—most often these are related to families, women and children, or social crime prevention in its broadest sense—and report these as the department’s contribution to the campaign. For instance, a sector policing initiative in the West Rand, which has been successful in building positive police-community relations and facilitating various crime prevention partnerships, is identified by the MRM as a moral regeneration project. The MRM website describes the SAPS ‘Adopt-a-cop’ and ‘Captain Crime Stop’ projects under the heading MRM programmes, and describes these somewhat controversial efforts—which existed even prior to 1994 in the former South African Police (SAP) and whose crime prevention impact has never been scientifically evaluated—as “innovative programmes that provide life skills and educational programmes for young people”.51 The website also describes other ongoing government projects as part of the programmes of the MRM, including:

Key issues in this phase

A ‘civil society’ initiative with government support?

 

After the establishment of the MRM as a Section 21 company, the moral regeneration campaign was officially described as a ‘civil society initiative’ that has government support. However, the extent of civil society enthusiasm for the initiative is somewhat obscured by the extent of government support (both financial and political).
 
Concerns had been expressed about the state of civil society in South Africa. It was certainly ambitious to believethat a civil society ‘movement’ would develop around a moral campaign that had been initiated by political leaders, and had not originated organically from communities. It remains to be seen whether there will be sufficient grassroots momentum to sustain the campaign.
 
Another set of questions relating to the civil society status of the campaign concerns its origins and resources. The MRM—established as a small non-profit organisation, based in Johannesburg—could be described as a ‘QUANGO’ (a quasi-NGO), which is neither independent nor sustainable because of its financial dependence on government. Related to this are questions about exactly how government finances this NGO: whether it has to go through the same rigorous scrutiny that other NGOs face when tendering for government grants; and whether the procedure for allocating funds to this NGO is transparent and potentially replicable. The model of government establishing and funding a dedicated NGO to manage an important partnership campaign is one which is potentially of great interest to the crime prevention community—if government can set up and fund an NGO for one of its priority partnership projects, perhaps it could do the same for others?

The association with Zuma and corruption allegations

 

An issue that began to dog the moral regeneration initiative during this period was the increasing public discussion (both in media and in parliament) concerning allegations of corruption levelled at Deputy President Zuma, associated with the prosecution of Shabir Shaik, his financial advisor. The corruption allegations were often raised as a contrast or challenge to Zuma’s patronage of the moral regeneration campaign. As the trial of Shaik is currently underway, it remains to be seen whether any allegations will be sustained, and whether allegations will be sustained, and whether perceptions of corruption will adhere to Deputy President Zuma or, by association, to the MRM.

Slow progress


The NGO which was the later incarnation of the moral regeneration campaign (post 2002) had very little to show for its first two years of operation. Almost one full year was spent on ‘setting up’ the organisation and developing its initial vision. With only four full-time staff, the administrative and organisational development processes could perhaps have been concluded more speedily. It seems that the visioning for the new organisation—which had ostensibly been done by the MR working committee when establishing the independent NGO—was inadequate or inappropriate, requiring the new staff to replicate a lengthy strategic planning process. This could bring into question the fundamental appropriateness of the decision to establish a new NGO.

The role of government in the MRM


After the establishment of the MRM as an independent NGO in 2002, government participation in the campaign appears to have declined. With the
possible exceptions of the Department of Arts and Culture and the Deputy President’s Office, little original thinking or dedicated effort seem to have been directed at the moral regeneration initiative. When asked to report on their moral regeneration activities, most departments simply cited
programmes that they were doing anyway and which were in some way relevant to the campaign.

This lack of dedicated attention to the campaign is a problem which faced many other interdepartmental initiatives: in the absence of dedicated funding and staff, a new campaign or initiative is unlikely to receive any attention from line departments which have pre-existing strategic plans and budgets on which they need to deliver and be evaluated against. Contrasted with such firm and formal incentives, an extremely woolly notion like moral regeneration stands little chance of being adopted, especially when the three year Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) budget cycle means that there are little discretionary funds available for ad-hoc projects.