How civil society responses to COVID-19 in South Africa are resisting the all-too-common return to pre-crisis ‘normal.’
Civil society responses to COVID-19 in South Africa have shown remarkable agility, scope, and impact in the last nine months, especially in responding to the most-pressing problem in many vulnerable communities: hunger. These have included efforts by established nonprofits, as well as diverse mutual-aid groups like the community action networks (CANs) that spontaneously emerged in suburbs of Cape Town and then spread to other parts of the country. The individual CANs collaborate and support each other within a larger network called Cape Town Together. Interactions include “pairing” partnerships, in which a CAN in an affluent suburb collaborates with a CAN in a poor community, not to facilitate charity, but rather to foster solidarity across historically divided and profoundly unequal suburb communities. The impact has been significant and vital, with estimates suggesting that NGOs and mutual-aid groups provided more than half of all hunger relief during South Africa’s winter months.
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