Social compacts and education in South Africa

• In Event: Poster session III
  In Poster Session: Poster session 3

Proposal

South Africa made a successful transition to democracy in 1994 using a range of social compacts in politics, the economy and society. Social compacts are being revitalised to deal with urgent social challenges - particularly in education - where the system has transformed but remains bedevilled by problems of quality, high cost and underperformance. The NECT, a collaborative initiative between government, civil society, business and labour uses a dialogue programme and local level social compacts (District Support Committees) to in effort to find alternatives ways of engaging communities and building consensus around education improvement. This presentation reflects on the evidence of 3 years of programmatic work and the extent to which lasting change is possible. In one education district in 2016, communities burnt their public schools in protest against government policies on local government causing damage in millions of dollars. The local District Support Committee was the only with enough legtimacy to address the grievances of the communities. Social compacts proved their value above a state bureaucracy and illustrated the uses of dialogue in conflict resolution. The same lessons can be drawn from the occurrence of widespread service delivery protests in South Africa when communities are unable to realise their aspirations through formal government channels.

Authors

• Dhianaraj Chetty, National Education Collaboration Trust (South Africa)

• Kabelo Mosate, National Education Collaboration Trust (South Africa)

• Sipumelele Lucwaba, National Education Collaboration Trust (South Africa)