The Black Sash is a 56 year old veteran human rights organisation whose current programmes draw on a rich institutional memory and heritage of advocating for social justice in South Africa.

The core purpose of the Black Sash remains to enable all who live in our country to recognise and exercise their human rights, particularly their social and economic rights. We continue to work towards a South Africa in which the government is accountable to all its people and attends to their basic needs, and where members of society also take responsibility for reducing inequality and extreme poverty.

In order to realise our mission, we utilise four main intervention strategies, namely advice giving, rights education, advocacy and monitoring.

Over the past three years, we have offered free paralegal advice services to over 20 000 clients and their dependents and secured more than R29 million in social grants and other financial provisions that were due to them.

The Black Sash conducts extensive rights education to enable vulnerable people to understand and access their social and economic rights. We have strong public media messaging, and have run thousands of workshops for leaders of organisations, and members of marginalised communities.

The Black Sash runs the Community Monitoring and Advocacy Project (CMAP), together with the Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT), in a bid to improve government service delivery to poor and marginalised communities and individuals. We have signed agreements with over 250 CBOs from across South Africa that have nominated monitors to maintain a presence at service delivery points in all nine provinces and record their observations. Their monitoring reports form the basis of local, provincial and national advocacy to improve service delivery.

The Black Sash advocates for legislation and policy that promotes social and consumer protection, as well as decent work and livelihoods for vulnerable people in South Africa.  Our advocacy is focused on improving policies, laws and the implementation of systems so that they reflect the principles in our Constitution and the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Our capacity and reach

The Black Sash is currently staffed by over 50 professionals (lawyers, paralegals, social workers, journalists and economists), and offers opportunities to volunteers and interns. We run projects in all nine provinces, operating from offices located in four provinces. Our free national helpline is consulted by clients from all over the country.  We achieve significant media coverage as well extensive web-based and social media reach.

Some Examples of Recent Work

Substantial advocacy has been undertaken with our civil society partners to advocate for the protection of excluded vulnerable groups, including:

• The extension of the Child Support Grant (CSG) to 18;
• The equalisation of the age for the State Old Age Pension for men;
• The inclusion of refugees in social assistance provisions;
• The inclusion of domestic workers in the provisions of the Compensation for Occupational Injury and Disease Act (COIDA) and the inclusion of vulnerable workers in the provisions of the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF);
• The extension of social assistance to those with a chronic illness and those who care for children, abandoned or orphaned, within family networks. 

Advocacy has also been undertaken within the following areas of social protection, with an emphasis on administrative justice:

• The transparent and correct hearing of UIF appeals;
• The clearing of the backlog of appeal cases before the Independent Tribunal for Social Assistance Appeals;
• The clearing of the backlog of foster care applications within both the Department of Social Development and the Department of Justice;
• The improvement of front line delivery of state services. Since the national roll out of our CMAP at the start of 2011, we have been able to take up some of the problems experienced by communities. SASSA has welcomed the feedback and in many instances, has acted to correct the problem.

Strengthening civil society voices through partnerships, networks and alliances

We are a member of the following networks:

• The Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS) network;
• The Good Governance Learning Network (GGLN), at committee level;
• The Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CORMSA), at executive level;
• The national working group on Social Security Eastern Cape NGO coalition, at executive level;
• The KwaZulu Natal Welfare Forum, at committee level;
• The Electoral Monitoring Network;
• The civil society working group on corruption;
• The Parliamentary Monitoring Group (Board representative);
• National Alliance for the Development of Community Advice Offices (Board representative).

Strengthening civil society organisations’ understanding of policies, regulations and practices that offer social and economic protection:

The Black Sash has worked to build the capacity of community based organisations through an extensive programme of workshops and courses with over 6 400 community leaders over the past three years.

Strengthening civil society organisations’ capacity to engage with significant social protection policy:

 Together with the Health Economics Unit and the Health E news agency, Black Sash organised substantial information and consultation workshops with civil society groups to establish their experiences of the national health system, particularly primary health care, and to identify priorities for health care system reform and community preferences for financing models.

Strengthening civil society organisations’ capacity to hold government accountable:

Together with Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT), the Community Monitoring and Advocacy Programme uniquely combines the actions of front line service delivery monitoring and advocacy to help build a culture of accountability – rights with responsibilities – within communities and government in South Africa.

Strengthening public awareness of and support for campaigns to overcome poverty:

We believe that decision makers are ultimately influenced by voters and tax payers, and therefore the building of an informed and active public is an essential component of our advocacy strategy. Understanding the unparalleled reach and impact of the public and social media, we have developed our media communication skills and strategies of engagement.  

Strengthening the regulation and organisation of the paralegal sector:

The Black Sash set itself a key objective to contribute to the sustainability of functioning advice offices in areas where we are not directly active. We have thus dedicated considerable time and resources to the building of National Alliance for the Development of Community-based Advice Offices (NADCAO) as well as with individual Advice Offices.  For this purpose, we have also developed Paralegal Guides on Debt and Credit, and Social Assistance, as well as information sheets and training manuals which resource our training courses.

For more about the Black Sash, refer to www.blacksash.org.za.