Shrinking Civic Space: Why protecting the right to organise matters

As the Centre for Environmental Rights hosts its annual Rights and Remedies School, bringing together activists from across South Africa, it is impossible to ignore the increasingly hostile environment into which they will return.

Across South Africa, individuals and community movements that organise, advocate and demand accountability are increasingly confronted by efforts to delegitimise their work. Through polarising political rhetoric, misinformation and attempts to cast civic action as a threat rather than a democratic necessity, activists are often portrayed as obstacles to development rather than defenders of constitutional rights. This narrowing of public discourse poses a profound challenge not only to environmental and social justice movements, but to democracy itself. For when those who speak out in defense of their communities are silenced, undermined or demonised, it is not only their rights that are under threat, but the very principles of participation, transparency and accountability on which our constitutional order depends.

The state of shrinking civic space and the impact this has on communities’ ability to build movements, organise and mobilise for sociopolitical and economic change, protecting democratic values, should be embedded within how movements envision their evolution. In the face of this reality, civil society needs to chart an alternative by employing a much more solid collective organising based on meaningful solidarity and push back against the weaponisation of the state for ulterior motives.

We are witnessing this within both the rise of authoritarian elements within our “democratic” government; where powerful actors, often driven by corporate and capitalistic intentions of governments aiming to maximise profit at the expense of citizens’ rights, take centre stage in defining what ought to be viewed as a narrative seeking to establish a situation de facto that perpetuates societal discord against civil society. A clear collusion between the state and private corporations’ interests at times manifest in a much more sophisticated use of lawfare.

In South Africa, the manifestations of these are led by the political and ruling elite punting narratives that project civil society as “antidevelopment”, “regime change agents”. In worst cases, as witnessed in some countries, the manifestation of this modus operandi takes the form of legal and administrative strategies. With governments actively and administratively imposing restrictions on the ability for communities, the broader citizenry and civil society’s ability to organise, protest and dissent. These can be viewed as an existential threat to human rights and the communities’ ability to actively participate in decision making processes that have a direct impact on their lives.

We see the key drivers and tactics that are often used include targeting foundation of public participation through:

Introduction of restrictive legislation (General Intelligence Amendment Bill)

Philanthropic protectionism that actively seeks to restrict foreign funding used as a pretext for the demonisation of civics.

Stigmatisation and smear campaigns, where politicians and policy makers polarise public opinion through labels referencing civil society as a threat to national security.

The use of lawfare through strategic litigation against public participation to silence critics through expensive long-term litigation as a deterrent and avoidance for demanding transparency and accountability.

Direct violence seen through arbitrary arrests, harassment and killing of human rights defenders and activists.

Uncritical fourth estate and the complicity of the media for not holding public representatives and private voices accountable for the inaccurate public utterances they make; seeking to negate and absolve themselves from taking responsibility for the decisions that they make that foster the status quo of inequality.

Active digital monitoring of activists.

Deliberate state infiltration of civil society organisations and social movements in general, with the sole intention of sowing divisions and weakening the ability to self-organise these movements.

Militarisation of law enforcement, state resources often being weaponised against communities that openly show dissent through numerous mass actions like protest.

We can't afford to submit our will to private and political interests to supersede the ability for communities to protect and enforce their rights. The only way, even in the face of repression, is for communities to continue to organise, mobilise and agitate for social change!

Thami Nkosi is an activist with the Support & Training Programme and coordinator for the Centre for Environmental Rights.