Crying for Freedom
NED and the Transition to Democracy in South Africa – Part 2
The Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA)
If NED’s small grant to Project South Africa served as a template for civil society engagement, an equally small grant to another initiative would prove to have much greater impact and grow into the single largest contribution of NED to South Africa’s emerging democracy: IDASA, the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa. As NED experimented in South Africa, it built relationships with two American institutions that served essentially as “pass-throughs,” administering grants to a variety of organizations in South Africa and elsewhere: Freedom House and the US-South Africa Leadership Exchange Program (USSALEP). USSALEP first channeled support to the Black Consumers Union ($29,366 FY86), and Lamla, a black-consciousness-oriented conflict resolution group in the Western Cape ($93,500 FY86). The former director of USSALEP, Steve McDonald, who would later head up the Africa-America Institute and the Wilson Center’s Africa program, was a key consultant to NED on South Africa. He had also been an American diplomat in South Africa, with a rich network of contacts. One of his favorite anecdotes he liked to recount was the time he smuggled Steve Biko out of the country in the trunk of his car.
But the South Africa program began to get especially interesting in 1987 when NED made its first grant of $25,000 through USSALEP to the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (IDASA) to hold a national conference on “A Democratic Alternative for South Africa,” held in May 1987. IDASA was founded by two former opposition MP’s, Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine, who had just abandoned the parliament as controversial “reforms” -- that would supposedly empower the “Coloured” and “Asian” representation, but further marginalize the black population by making them all citizens of ethnic “homelands,” -- discredited the institution. Protests against these reforms were the catalyst leading to formation of the UDF, of which Alex’s son, Andrew, was the only white member on the executive committee.[1] The founding conference was soon followed up by a celebrated and controversial initiative in July that brought together for the first time a group of 61 Afrikaner leaders and a big group of the ANC leadership on Goree Island in Dakar, Senegal. NED expressed willingness to support the Dakar meeting, but due to its sensitivity and the fact that NED’s transparency policy was to publish its grants, Gershman connected Slabbert and Boraine to George Soros’ Open Society
Foundation, which made a $75,000 grant to IDASA.[2] Soros had begun his career of grantmaking in 1979 with an educational exchange program for South African Blacks. The Dakar meeting was a breakthrough that arguably began the dialogue culminating in the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the 1994 elections that brought the ANC to power. Its “targeting of the Afrikaner intelligentsia, knowing that the state would infiltrate,” and its “critical mass, not just a couple people,” from both the Afrikaner elite and the ANC helped build a climate of respect and relationships that would bear much fruit. The Dakar meeting and other efforts by IDASA to introduce Afrikaners to the rest of Africa broke the myth that negotiations would lead South Africa to become another basket case, but quite the opposite, the continent held opportunities and would welcome them.8 NED provided support with a grant of $60,000 in 1994 to establish the Goree Institute headed by Andre Zaiman (Slabbert’s son-in-law), an IDASA initiative that grew out of the Goree meeting and became an important center of democracy activities, training and research on the continent.
With the passage of the CAAA, NED was allocated $2,726,866 by USAID to support a variety of democracy projects, including IDASA, which received an additional $100,000 of NED funds in 1987 through USSALEP for core infrastructure support as well as a national conference on educational reforms, a highly contentious issue in the context of South Africa’s history of “Bantu education.” IDASA did not focus on education, ceding that domain to other organizations working on the issue, but despite the ANC’s confidence at the time, education has remained a challenge in the democratic era. In 1988, NED shifted its support to IDASA from USSALEP to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (JCPES) with a $227,000 grant to support IDASA’s office in Natal Province, as well as a conference on “Youth and Democracy” and an international conference on conflict in Southern Africa. Eddie Williams, the president of JCPES, also served on the NED board of directors. IDASA continued to receive NED funding through JCPES of $230,000 in 1990 for the Natal office, a national conference in Port Elizabeth, and an international conference in Zimbabwe; and of $330,000 in 1991 for the Natal office, a series of conferences on the future of South Africa, and a study tour of four Central European countries, which were in the midst of their own transition at the time. CIPE made a grant of $60,000 separately to IDASA for a discussion forum and debate on the role of foreign investment in a post-apartheid South Africa. JCPES administered $300,000 in 1992 for the Natal office and the establishment of a new democracy training center in Johannesburg. In 1993, JCPES administered NED’s final grant of $330,000 to IDASA for the Natal office, the National Training Center, an international conference on civil society, and core administrative support.
IDASA received support from many other donors, but NED made a sizable contribution to its budget for the first seven critical years, totaling $1,272,000. During this period, as it did in Dakar, IDASA played a leading role in bringing the spectrum of political actors in South Africa together, engaging them in consequential policy discussions, humanizing them, and reducing the tensions among them. This was evident in the Natal Province program that was a particularly bloody battleground between Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha and the ANC. Paul Graham, a former lay minister, led the Natal IDASA office when it was supported by NED, and would eventually become the executive director of IDASA and a member of the World Movement for Democracy international steering committee.
IDASA’s Natal office was special. After Mandela’s release from Robben Island, most of South Africa breathed a sigh of relief, and despite some violence and difficulties, such as the assassination of Chris Hani and the banning of the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), which morphed from the UDF, which had also been banned, the country’s democratic trajectory could be discerned. In Natal, however, civil conflict between the ANC and Inkatha only intensified. “Everybody saved South Africa, and they’ve all written a book about it,” Paul jokes, but IDASA made a serious contribution in Natal. The IDASA Natal office did a lot of violence monitoring, putting out fires, and persuading people to keep on talking. Although the final peace accord between Inkatha and the ANC did not have IDASA’s name anywhere, “IDASA’s fingerprints were all over it.” Up until right before the 1994 elections, Buthelezi was not certain to participate, and although he became a conscientious MP and “never upset the apple cart,” he went to his grave years later still aggrieved that he was not given a more prominent role in the government. In contrast to today’s concerns about internet security, IDASA’s practice in those days was to do everything in person or via handwritten messages, avoiding even the phone for sensitive conversations. All but one copy of the minutes of executive meetings were destroyed. The fax machines purchased with the NED grant were relied on as a more secure means of communication. The IDASA Natal office was deliberately chosen because it was above a government office that would be unlikely to be blown up![3]
An important lesson of IDASA, often forgotten in this line of work, is the importance of institutional support as in the case of the Natal office – salaries, rent, equipment. The public work, the conferences, the media, the workshops – often provide visibility and establish the reputation. But it is the nonprogrammatic work, the conversations, the informal interventions, the work that doesn’t get into the news or the donor reports, that “leaves no fingerprints,” and that is enabled by the institutional support, that can’t be done without the institutional support, that may yet have the most long-lasting and profound impact. Another lesson of IDASA and many of NED’s early grants in South Africa and around the world, was the essential serendipity of it all. Despite all of AID’s voluminous strategy documents and evaluation frameworks, NED support to its partners was undoubtedly driven more by gut instinct than planning and analysis. Someone had a good reference, they’d pitch an interesting idea, and we’d run with it. Risk may have been calculated somewhat, but it was intrinsic, and due diligence was more impressionistic than scientific. In fact, Tim Bork once advised me that grantmaking was better thought of as an art. In those days, some donors were known for their “struggle funding,” giving out cash or checks to activists with street cred or a good story, but with little accountability expected. Neither AID nor NED went that far, but in the early days of democracy funding, almost everything seemed like an experiment, and sometimes we got lucky.
IDASA spawned many projects and initiatives, such as the Public Information Centre, directed by Mamphela Ramphele, a respected psychologist, academic, activist, and partner of Steve Biko, which sought to provide reliable information to the wider South African society. The Centre evolved into the Parliamentary Monitoring Group[4] which is now receiving NED support for work throughout Southern Africa. In South Africa, IDASA’s legacy is broad and deep, inspiring many successor organizations and nurturing a democratic culture. “It’s a running joke,” Paul says. “Everybody was employed by IDASA. Even people who were never paid considered themselves employees.” Sy Mamabolo, a former staff member of IDASA who subsequently worked his way up from a provincial electoral officer to become South Africa’s chief electoral officer, oversaw the May 2024 elections. “One year IDASA lost a big group of staff to the electoral commission,” Paul remembers. The integrity of South Africa’s electoral commission remains unchallenged to this day, just as South Africa’s other strong democratic institutions enshrined in the constitution have prevailed despite attempts to undermine them.
In a letter of support, Nelson Mandela put it well: “The work of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa in demystifying the ANC within the South African community is well known, dating from the first historic meeting in Dakar, Senegal, and a number of other projects since that time. I am grateful for their insistence over several years that liberation movements should be unbanned and that political prisoners should be released in order that genuine negotiations towards a non-racial democratic South Africa could begin. Their efforts to break down the walls of division and to build bridges of reconciliation will stand South Africa in good stead as we move towards this goal.”[5] After NED stopped funding IDASA’s South Africa work, it continued to support some of the Institute’s outreach across the continent. Meanwhile, IDASA continued to grow and contribute to South African politics until its demise in 2013. The organization’s pragmatic knack for getting the right people in the room at the right time demonstrated the power of ideas and conversation to nourish peaceful, constructive, democratic change. IDASA ultimately reached millions of South Africans through hundreds of programs ranging from grassroots workshops to high-level conferences and from policy papers to radio broadcasts. Scores of South African political leaders were influenced by IDASA’s vision of democracy and dialogue leaving an indelible imprint on the country’s political culture. Such institutions are rare and fragile, buffeted by all sides politically, by donor whimsy, by the stress of organizational exigencies, and perhaps simply by the zeitgeist. But 30 years after its heyday, any objective consideration would have to acknowledge the enormous legacy of that initial $25,000 NED grant.
[1] For the record, it is worth noting that Alex Boraine contacted PSA in June 1986 to discuss the establishment of IDASA, and was referred to NED (correspondence, June 16, 1986).
[2] Carl Gershman email to author, 6/16/2024.
8 Paul Graham interview, 3/28/2024.
[3] Paul Graham interview, 3/28/2024.
https://pmg.org.za.
[5] Nelson Mandela, signed on ANC letterhead in the author’s possession, dated Oct. 15, 1990.