The Panopticon, the State and Non-Profit Organisations in South Africa: A Systematic Review of Literature

Plamana, Pilisa

The Panopticon, the State and Non-Profit Organisations in South Africa: A Systematic Review of Literature

Thesis / Dissertation

2025

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Sociology

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

The role of civil society, including non-profit organisations (NPOs), in promoting and protecting democratic processes is one of the key global debates about democracy. One indicator of the development of an enabling democratic environment is the nature of the relations between NPOs – especially advocacy NPOs - and the state. Advocacy NPOs tend to play a “watchdog” role in society and are often critical of the state, which can lead to an antagonistic relationship and repression of state critics. Monitoring relations between advocacy NPOs and the state is critically important as a barometer of the health of any democracy. With the ushering in of democracy in 1994, the adoption the new constitution (based on the principles of liberal democracy), and constructive working relations between many NPOs and the state during the Mandela administration, there was a general perception that a healthy democracy was evolving. However, relations between advocacy NPOs and the ruling party in South Africa soon became strained and at times adversarial. Over the past 25 years various scholars have contributed to a growing body of literature (e.g. Swilling & Russell, 2002; Habib, 2005; De Wet, 2010 & 2012; Leonard, 2014: Duncan, 2016; Volmink & Van de Elst, 2017; Maboya & McKay, 2019) which has analysed the nature of relations between NPOs and state in post-apartheid South Africa. While these authors sometimes reference each other, no single literature review has emerged. For this reason, I have undertaken a systematic literature review of a substantial portion of the relevant literature published in the past 25 years. I focus on relations between the South African state and NPOs in the context of a bigger debate about how the nature of this relationship is a proxy for the health of democracy in the country. The analytical lens used in my literature review is informed by Foucault's panopticon metaphor. In this regard, I was interested in understanding how the state has used its power and surveillance apparatus to control NPOs - especially advocacy NPOs that play a pro-democracy social watchdog role and where necessary challenge the behaviour of organs of the state. Methodologically and procedurally, I employed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) protocol for this literature review. While there are some common patterns which emerge in the literature across the 25 years under review and covering the Mbeki, Zuma and Ramaphosa administrations, relations between NPOs (especially advocacy NPOs) and the state in post-apartheid South Africa have also changed somewhat over time and under different presidents. At times advocacy NPOs have experienced more state repression and at other times less. My findings show that across all three presidencies there are some overarching patterns that can be explained by Foucault's theory. These patterns reveal that the South African democratic state has adopted a disciplinary approach in its relations with NPOs. This disciplinary approach starts with the naming of some NPOs by Mbeki as “enemies of the party”, implying that others are “friends of the party” and by extension a third category, namely “frenemies”, has emerged. The introduction of such classificatory language during the Mbeki administration contributed to all NPOs experiencing varying kinds of control from incentives (e.g. state grants) to repression (e.g. surveillance and intimidation) depending where along the spectrum they fell. While during the Mbeki era, the state tended to rely more on incentivised cooperation with NPOs, the Zuma era was more crude in generously rewarding NPOs which cooperated with the state and severely punishing watchdog organisations critical of the state. However, more recently under the Ramaphosa's administration, the crude intimidatory and often illegal tactics used by the Zuma government to control NPOs are being replaced by more sophisticated systems of control. In particular, the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill has been recently introduced into the South African law making process in an attempt to legally institutionalise mass surveillance of civil society and the regulation of NPOs by state security agencies through a sophisticated legal apparatus which mainstreams and normalises the panoptic state. If this sophisticated legal approach by the state to control civil society becomes law then the South Africa state will take on more features of the panopticon with the infringement of the rights of citizens and NPOs, curtailment of their freedom to organise and their ability to criticise the state's abuses of power and ultimately undermine the country's constitutional democracy.

Keywords

Non-Profit Organisation

South Africa

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Masters

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