TRANFORMATIVE POWER OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
Apartheid divided people and was in favour of white people and left the majority of black people poor. This created inequality between black people and white people, thus this resulted in the people in the people who are disadvantaged by apartheid to form civil societies to help fight poverty themselves. This essay will critically discuss whether civil society has transformative potential in south Africa and also to what extent does it have transformative potential, that is if it has transformative potential. This paper will discuss this by looking at what at what civil society is, looking at development and how ordinary people challenge forced development (top down) by engaging in
In this case study civil society has transformative potential because previously during apartheid “in South Africa poor women have been excluded from mainstream education by apartheid legislation, lack of money, no easy access to educational facilities, or social prejudices which dictate that women stay at home to care for the family” Ismail (2009,282). So by doing this civil society changed the social order or the functioning of the country by breaking the bounderies. According to Ismail (2009,292) “The VM women built on traditional notions of African ‘motherhood’ but went further in important ways and developed political skills in mobilising resources and learnt through great personal endeavour, patience, sacrifice and rigour but seldom developed a feminist consciousness and therefore made no analysis of patriarchy or capitalis

According to Ismail (2009) this social movement also broke the of women learning in informal and non- formal way, there for civil society transformed them because they can now participate in learning in their every day life and support their daily struggles. Ismail (2009,01) further says that “in South Africa informal education and learning has developed so that excluded groups do have some opportunity for learning. This development is people centred because if people where not there it wouldn’t take place. Furthermore “this development