FINAL EVALUATION MEETING DURBAN TASK TEAM, FOR WCCA CAMPAIGN

WCCA CAMPAIGN


FINAL EVALUATION MEETING DURBAN TASK TEAM (6.7.10)

1. Attendance

A good number of people and organizations were present at the meeting. They were:

1 Gustavo Prepelitchi StreetNet

2 Gaby Bikombo StreetNet

3 Asha Moodley SOPA

4 Patric Ndllovu Asiye Etafuleni

5 Thandiwe Xulu Sasewa

6 Tamsanqa Mazibuko ITMB

7 Bahati Nzigire Petronella Union of Refugee Women

8 Njabulo Mthiyane Sangoco

9 Richard Dobson Asiye Etafuleni

10 Phumzile Xulu Asiye Etafuleni

11 Lindiwe Zuma ITMB

12 Vuyani Msomi COMBOCO

13 Judy Mulqueeny SACP

14 Mzwandile Mavula ACHIB

15 Themba Duma MATO

16 ZR Maphumulo MATO

17 Mudekere Bwenge Polyvalent/Educate Africa

18 Jacques Sumuni Polyvalent/Educate Africa

19 Sthembiso Madlala SANGOCO


2. The Evaluation

2.1 The Methodology to be used
Gaby introduced the meeting, thanking everyone to be present, and putting the meeting into the perspective of the Port Elizabeth Workshop to be held during 19th-21st July. It is stated that the output of this local meeting in Durban will be used as an output of the national workshop.
Sthembiso Madlala is introduced as the facilitator of this workshop. After a short introduction of the WCCA Campaign, the way of assessment about to be used was presented. It is called “Action Learning Cycle”, it follows the following structure:

Due to time reasons, it may result that the tool will not be fully implemented, but it was important to keep all the stages involved in order to make a correct assessment of the different activities that took place during the campaign.

The following activities were enumerated, in order to proceed with the analysis:
• Engagement with the Municipality
• Early Morning Market
• Fight Against Xenophobia
• Plight of Women Vendors and other vulnerable communities
• Mass action to City Hall
o Women´s Day
o Africa Day
o 16th of June
Asha Moodley suggested a change the item number 4. She proposed “Position of Women Traders” plus adding the situation of Women Trafficking and Street Children. There was consensus regarding this change.

The facilitator emphasized the idea that the assessment of these activities should have 3 main focuses:
• What worked good?
• What didn’t work?
• And all the reasons for those answers
In order to assess schematically each activity, the group of participants was divided in 2. The first one focused on the first 2 activities, and the other one in the rest of them. Each activity should be look upon the following issues, and then presented to all the audience:
• Impact: the difference that the WCCA Campaign and Task Team has made regarding this issue
• Efficiency: In terms of the correct use of time and resources
• Relevancy: how important was this activity in the local situation of South Africa
• Participation
• Partnerships
• Effectiveness: how well were objectives the objectives meet.
• Replicability: if the that specific activity could be repeated in South Africa or a different country with success
2.2 The participants Evaluation of the Different Activities.
1st Group:
Activities: Engagement with Municipality & Early Morning Market
• There was a considerable pressure throughout 2009. The fact that the provincial government stepped in is a strong sign of the success of this activities.
• The discussion of the Early Morning Market at EXCO was another important fact
• Other organizations were involved, also academics
• Feeling in the Market and among traders:
o Lack of a process of consultation
o Municipality acting unilaterally
o Municipality averse to alternative development suggestions to Mall
o No responses to memorandum sent to the Municipality
• Divide and Rule Tactics employed to divide Street Traders
• Mabuyakhulu´s report ignored
• EMM case made it difficult for other organizations to participate
• Focus on campaigns restricted to market trader issues instead of unifying all the street Traders
• Regarding the relevance of the Campaign it can be claimed that was highly relevant
• The final outcome: not effective as Campaign lacked follow-through. Did not anticipate the impact of City´s divide and rule tactics. Apart from that, there was also a feeling that divided traders on the ground instead of unifying them.
• Resources: in general the financial resources are usual constraints in this type of campaigns. Regarding human resources, the attendance became sporadic and later small.
• It was raised that it was not clear who was the negotiator from the municipality. That was never responded. Despite the presence of Philip, there was a lack of muscle to have that commitment from them.
• In general, regarding both issues it can be claimed that there was no clear success but the campaign can be regarded as fairly good enough.

2nd Group:
Activities: Fight against Xenophobia + Position of Women Trader + Women Trafficking + Street Children + Mass Activities
The fight against xenophobia was based on the actions of the 2 main events: Woman´s Day & Africa Day
• The resources and time were used efficiently
• The relevance was high
• The amount of participants was good; the partnerships developed for the special day enhanced the objectives of the WCCA Task group.

• The biggest challenge was the link between the task group and its different partners, especially in the meetings that took place every Tuesday (more below).

• The main achievement regarding Xenophobia was the importance of the campaign in raising awareness; in that sense, the good media coverage of the events was important, despite a conference press was not developed for the Africa Day.
Regarding the position of Women Traders and the rest of the issues, the main evaluations were:

• The assessment on the impact was that was rather low. But also taking into account that an accurate estimation of the impact is hard to assess.
• The relevance was high
• The improvements that should be made in order to have more impact were :
o Increase the awareness for Women issues
o Increase the participation of Women Organizations (only Sasewa and Union of Refugee Women were part of it)
o Because of a loose partnership, the partners had different interests, and made them not so well informed.
o Some partners join for specific reasons, different from the ones of the campaign.
o The best example of this loose partnership was the situation with the Early Morning Market, which after their situation was solved, their participation in the Campaign practically disappeared.
After both groups presented these results and they were shared among all the participants, the analysis was back on the campaign as a whole.

2.1 The Evaluation of the Campaign as a whole and the Task Group.

Asha from SOPA said that one important fact about the campaign was to put the needs of the poor in the first place, and making the prioritization of the people one of its main reasons. That challenged the approach of the Government, where a World Class City appears to be much more linked to infrastructure than to the provision of services to the poor.
The evaluation of the Campaign was introduced by the facilitator by asking:
• Did we have a clear strategy? With objectives and outcomes clearly defined?
• Did we have enough capacity to accomplish those objectives?
The answers appeared to be agreed. There was a general expression that many activities were more ad-hoc that initially planned. In order to replicate the campaign, it was expressed the need of a clear campaign strategy, that ALL the stakeholders must embrace from the beginning of it.
When it came to the moment of evaluation the task team itself, from an organizational perspective, on the positive side, the following achievements were enumerated:
• That is was a great way to put together different movements, organizations, stakeholders to express one common voice
• That through the formation of this “alliance” the outcome in terms of awareness was highly benefitted.
• The media coverage also improved by the presence of a task group instead of loose organizations.
• The events were successful, in terms of attendance, the quality of the speakers and impact.
• The building of networks
• A good feeling of working together through differences and learning to share collectively. Always the discussion of own interests it is difficult and it is the challenge of every alliance.
On the negative side, the following was expressed:• The attendance to the meetings initially was very good, but started to decline after the first months of this year
o Many expressed that it is difficult to be able to attend meetings in a weekly basis because of work reasons, and that once an organization stops attending, is then difficult to catch up.
• Deviations
• A general feeling of a lack of ownership was expressed that impeded to take the campaign where it was aimed.
• The lack of supporting staff
• Budgetary constraints
• Campaign on street or Boardroom?
• Different interests of stakeholders
2.4 The Future
• The campaign moves now to Brazil, because its original focus is on big sporting events.
• In Durban, the Durban Social Forum appears as a permanent structure where social issues are being discussed. Each organization part of the WCCA has the possibility of joining the DSF.
• The importance of the message that the Struggles continues, despite the WCCA moving to Brazil.
• In that sense, the National Alliance of Street Vendors should be place where the energies can be put for those linked with the informal economy. This is the issue where StreetNet will be focusing in the upcoming months.
• In order to keep the momentum, it is important that the other organizations support the street traders in this initiative.