"Governance" refers to exercising political, economic, social and administrative authority in the management of a country's affairs at all levels. It includes the complex mechanisms, processes and institutions through which people and groups articulate their interests, mediate their differences and exercise their legal rights and obligations. "Good governance" includes the state, private sector and civil society as all three sectors are critical for deepening democracy, realizing rights and eradicating poverty. (after "Governance and sustainable human development", United Nations Devt Prog, 1997).

CARE's programming under this theme focuses on strengthening civil society as a means to offer the poor a more coherent voice to realise rights, achieve equitable development and social change. Until recently there was a dearth of information on the size and scope of the civil society sector in South Africa. However, the recent Johns Hopkins survey (1999) of the non-profit sector in South Africa has revealed that it consists of 98 920 non-profit organisations. Fifty-three percent of these are less formalised, community-based organisations. The non profit sector employs 645 316 full-time workers (of which about 50% are volunteers). This sector represents 7.6% of the total non agricultural workforce in SA. This is a relatively larger sector than in most developed countries, which average 6.7% of the non agricultural workforce. In Lesotho, the same dearth of formal information on the sector exists. However, similar trends are noted - civil society in Lesotho largely consists of informal community based organisations, with a limited number of more formal, urban based NGOs.

In South Africa, resources, power and control are largely concentrated in the state sector - with considerable development responsibility devolved from national to local government level. Thus these sectors use opportunities provided through the SA Constitution and new municipal systems, structures and legislation to achieve social and economic transformation. Lesotho has a less developmental state, but evolving national strategies around poverty reduction (PRSP and Vision 2020) provide real opportunities for the voice of poor people to influence government priorities and allocations.

Both Lesotho and South Africa require a strong, diverse, representative and accountable civil society to build and defend democratic gains made in recent years - since 1994 in South Africa and since the successful elections in 2002 in Lesotho. Civil society is emerging as a vital means of ensuring that government heeds people's concerns and respects their rights. However, the key to the establishment of a responsive and accountable government lies in the capacity of civil society to participate in democratic politics and to build alliances wide enough to influence government. Based on these requirements, CARE's work centres on the following three strategies:

1. Strengthening non government organisation (NGO) and community based organisation (CBO) capacity
   
   

   CARE seeks to provide support for the establishment of a new form of civic competence in organisations so they are better able to articulate the voice of the people they represent; enable citizens to make real political choices, and enable a diversity of both representative and accountable organisations with a more significant impact.
   
   Civil society needs to develop new levels of maturity that enable self confident and credible advocacy and engagement, as well as to build new alliances and partnerships, within civil society, and with government and the private sector. These forms of engagement recognise that all sectors of society have a responsibility to seek to resolve issues of poverty or the denial of peoples' rights, as well as being accountable to each other and the people in the process.
   
   To this end, CARE focuses on working with organisations to build and strengthen their legitimacy in the communities/areas in which they work and enable them to effectively articulate the needs of these communities.
   
   

2. Enabling NGOs and CBOs, working in collaboration with government/private sector, to assist communities to exercise rights and access services
   
   

   A strong civil society is important to society, since it has often been able to compensate for government ineffectiveness in protecting democratic rights. It also means a strong democracy in which citizen participation is active and inclusive. This helps to ensure that official policy and programmes reflect people's preferences and that these policies and programmes are effectively and equitable implemented. The pressure to meet people's needs also helps to check corruption and maladministration.
   
   Both the South African and Lesotho governments remain either ambivalent or skeptical of the role of civil society in development — seeing NGOs and CBOs largely as delivery agents of the state. But the fault is on both sides as some civil society organisations (CSOs) still exhibit signs of a culture of entitlement where government funds are concerned, or seek to market themselves as being "better" delivery agents than government.
   
   In addition to this, the South African government frequently develops policies that although ambitious and developmentally sound, cannot be implemented for various reasons, (such as limited capacity and skills; treasury regulations; turf battles between departments and tensions regarding the roles). As a result pressure to roll out programmes and spend budgets, there appears to be growing (informal) tendency to revert to fast turn around non-participatory delivery - focusing on scale and speed of delivery at the expense of sustainability and local ownership.
   
   Thus, it is essential that civil society organisations in both countries develop a new vision as having a wider purpose — beyond delivery agents of the state. This new vision will help them to develop viable development strategies and models and use these to pressure decision-makers to ensure policy implementation and resource utilisation reflects the needs of the poor. To this end, CARE seeks to enable these stronger, more articulate NGOs and CBOs to engage effectively and credibly with decision-makers in other sectors - for example the private sector, local government and parastatals - through issue-based alliances and advocacy strategies. This pressures decision-makers in these sectors to actually fulfill their responsibilities.
   
   

3. Play an advocacy role - to provide critical feedback on policy implementation, resource utilisation and impact at local level
   
   

   It is critical to consider how CSOs and government work together and relate to each other as well as how they relate to and represent local communities. Both sectors are required to contribute to the development and promotion of inclusive participation of community groups in decisions that affect their lives. CARE's programming in this area seeks to stimulate NGOs and CBOs to engage more strategically with government, especially moving beyond a limited delivery agent role. This ensures that NGOs and CBOs can contribute more substantially to redressing social and economic imbalances in their communities. Thus, the ability of CSOs to engage in advocacy by acting on opportunities; building issue based alliances and influencing others, are all core competencies needed to achieve these objectives and to have an effect on social change.
   
   CARE's focus in this area is on helping organisations working at local, district/provincial or national levels to coordinate interventions to improve local level impact, share ideas and viable models and to build broader linkages to influence policy and decision makers. CARE also seeks to use its practical experiences, partners and informal/formal networks to play a wider role in stimulating dialogue and learning; positioning civil society and promoting its influencing agenda with different levels of government and the private sector in the region.
   
   

• CARE's activities and initiatives: