• Respect for others
  • Respect is a tangible quality threaded through both internal and external relationships and is maintained without regard for social status. It is also the spirit that inhabits all the other values. Respect is concerned with the rights and personhood of others and honours the boundaries of responsibility between CLP and others.
• Reflection and learning
  • CLP works at understanding other parties and learning from them, at testing approaches and practices to find the value in them, and at rigorous reflection to inform and learn from its own work and to share learning with others.
• Being present with and listening to people
  • This value gives substance to what CLP understands to be the political meaning of democracy, and it involves working towards ensuring that the voices and needs of people (women and men, young and old) and the diverse meanings they attach to land, should guide the recreation of people's relationships to each other and to the land.
• Commitment to social justice and democratic practice
  • This value is enshrined in South Africa's Constitution. CLP works within the complexity of South Africa's reality for just outcomes in relations of class, race, gender, and the rural-urban divide.
• Professionalism
  • CLP works to develop its understanding and expertise within its field of practice, is careful in the conduct and presentation of its work, and seeks to bring an equally high quality of work in all situations, whether at local, national or international levels.

• CLP moves to focused attention on practice and reflection on practice
  • The 2004 strategic planning process opened a new direction for CLP, giving focused attention to practice and reflection on practice. This has had a profound affect on the manner in which CLP approaches its work, leading to an open ended commitment to "walking with communities towards the realisation of the choices that they make'. CLP thus opened itself to the politics of the poor and its practice is guided by an active solidarity with people in the struggles that they define and take forward on their own terms. CLP also broadened its focus to take in the relationship of people - land - church, taking up people's issues in relation to land - whether rural or urban - and interrogating the relationship of the church to those issues - whether the local church of the people themselves or the institutional church.
• CLP identifies animation as its core practice
  • In 2007, CLP identified animation as its core practice. This involves an iterative process that applies the learning and action cycle in people's specific situations and with the intention that they mobilise themselves to act to change that situation in ways that they decide. CLP has a clear and firm organisational commitment to this core practice. Consequent to this, people's movements, organised groups of the marginalised, and those acting in solidarity from within institutional spaces are the key groups with whom CLP interacts.

• The Board as at May 2011
  • • Ms Madalitso Mtine (Chairperson) Madalitso Mtine is first and foremost a citizen, child and product of SADC. She manages the Economic Justice & Participatory Democracy (EJPD) programme at PACSA. Previously, she worked at Economic Justice Network of FOCCISA in Cape Town with particular focus on trade justice. Madalitso studied for her BA Soc Sci at the University of Swaziland and majored in Politics Science and Industrial Sociology. She is passionate about people who are passionate about life, music, arts and creative expression as a whole. Sport is her first love and she still believes it is an instrument of healing....just don't politicise it!
    • Rev. Malika Sibeko (Vice-chairperson)
    • Mr Mervyn Abrahams (Treasurer) Mervyn Abrahams has been a member of the CLP board since 2006 and is Manager of the Advocacy and Policy Unit and temporary Deputy Director at PACSA. He holds a Masters degree in Theology from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Belgium, and has worked in the Trade Union movement, the Church, academic institutions and the NGO sector. Mervyn is married to Nozipho Zwane-Abrahams and they have a son, Neo, and a daughter, Ayanda Mbalenhle.
    • Mr Rod Bulman (Human Resource Committee) Roderick (Rod) Bulman is the Managing partner of Phelamanga Projects. He has been a Public participation specialist for the last 15 years. He holds an M SocSci. He believes one of his work achievements is that he has stayed solvent. Rod is married to Fiona and they have 2 daughters, Rosemary Owen and Sarah Dlamini. He enjoys spending time with his wife, children and friends. He also enjoys genealogy, travel, art, food, wine, coffee, promoting dialogue and challenging received wisdom. Rod believes that life is uncertain — so always eat dessert first.
    • Rev. Solomuzi Mabuza (Human Resource Committee) Solomuzi Mabuza is an ordained minister of religion in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa. He is president of the Pietermaritzburg YMCA. Solomuzi is a Development Coordinator at Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research Advocacy and Leadership.
    • Ms Thembela Njenga Thembela Njenga is Director of the Ecumenical Service for Socioeconomic Transformation (ESSET). She was an Economics and Business Economics teacher in Cape Town for 3 years. She joined PACSA in 1998 and worked as an Economic Justice Programme Manager for 7 years. Thembela joined ESSET in 2007. She is passionate about socioeconomic justice issues. Thembela is married and has two children.
• The Staff
  • • Graham Philpott - Director and Secretary for the Board
    • Thulani Ndlazi - Program Manager
    • David Ntseng - Program Manager
    • Nomusa Sokhela - Program Manager
    • Zonke Sithole - Finance Manager
    • Cindy Dennis - Office Manager

• Outcome of June 2010 seminar
  • In June 2010, CLP invited people from key groups to a seminar looking at the context and people's response to it. It was observed that the context is fast changing but several key themes emerged:
    • participants described what amounts to a war by the rich and powerful on the poor;
    • government is crumbling on the one side and is not there for the people but has enormous resources and capacities, as was shown by pulling off the football world cup, in the service of capital;
    • people are feeling the effects of economic depression in the loss of jobs while stark inequality has intensified with South Africa topping the global rankings.
    • the ecological crisis, headlined by climate change;
    • the war on the poor is made visible by the resistance of the poor and this resistance is itself critical in shaping of the context.
• Reports at local levels
  • At local levels, people confirm that the poor are under siege. Living conditions are deteriorating, state violence is increasing and a bias for the rich is evident in the conduct of state officials, particularly from land affairs, justice and the police. The consequent crisis in the lives of the poor takes place on the macro and the micro scales. An attack on AbM in the Kennedy Road settlement in September 2009, which was represented by the ruling party as a liberation, resulted in thousands of people being driven from the settlement. Abahlali believes the attack was orchestrated by the ruling party. The micro scale is no less significant. Women-headed and child-headed households associated with groups that CLP works with go without food for days on end. They are certainly not alone. 30% of people in South Africa go hungry every day according to FoodBank. But hunger is experienced alone: it is privatised to the household scale, largely hidden and politically disarticulated.

Other issues which affect the context in which CLP operates are:

• Economy
  • Recession can be a way that the powerful keep power. As banker Andrew Mellon put it, in a recession property returns to its rightful owner. That is, to finance capital. In the early 80s, a global recession was induced by the US and Britain with startling success in subordinating labour and third world suppliers of commodities. But the question now is whether the global elite are actually in control and what are the consequences if they are not?
• Elite politics
  • Since 2007, a struggle within the ANC led to the ousting of President Thabo Mbeki and his succession by Jacob Zuma. Some respondents remark that Zuma's administration has no direction or coherence. It is marked rather by the struggle for power and influence between the business and labour interests that brought him to power and, in a third corner, the technocrats of capital. Whatever coherence attached to Mbeki's 'developmental state' is disintegrating while corruption grows bolder. The South African state in its current form has been made into an instrument for elite looting.
• Land policy
  • Land and agriculture were split into separate portfolios in Zuma's cabinet reshuffle. This makes little practical difference as they already operated in silos. The split formalises what has long been evident: Agriculture serves the commercial sector while redistribution is left to Land. Redistribution itself, however, is largely driven by market criteria with a focus on emerging commercial farmers - including politicians and officials - and the department promising to remove land from those who do not use it 'properly'. A new initiative is a demand for 40% BEE equity in existing commercial farms. 'Subsistence' is ignored. To put that differently, peasant agriculture is ignored. The category of subsistence is itself a product of the market definition of farming. For CLP, land reform is not so much a failed promise as a myth.
• Court justice
  • Social movements have both initiated court actions or had to respond to prosecution of members. Either way, the actions are generally defensive. The court bias for the rich was significant in the formation of RN and this remains a factor that shapes the context in both rural and urban areas. Nevertheless, the movements have also won significant victories. This is partly because they have been able to mobilise significant resources for some cases. The costs of court actions or defence are a massive barrier to 'access to justice'. In the Macassar case, the lawyers representing a group of people facing eviction were removed from the City's list of approved suppliers of legal services, so deterring all lawyers from acting on behalf of those challenging government.
• Ecological collapse
  • The Copenhagen climate change fiasco again displayed the rich North displacing responsibility and blame on the poor South. That said, the purpose of all 'major' parties, North and South, was to defend their respective interests in the global accumulation of capital. In their vision, this is what is meant by 'development'. The conflict between them conceals a deeper collusion in ensuring a climate regime that is subject to capital and hence ineffective.
    
    Blaming the poor is the common resort of elites to environmental issues and tends to work because the poor live in the most degraded environments. This is because impoverishment and environmental degradation are simultaneously produced by the processes of accumulation. Climate change is just the head-line issue for the ecological collapse at all scales which is now in process and accelerating. It won't end life on earth but, without radical action, it may well end human habitation in this century or the next. In the meantime, life will get harsher particularly for the poor.
• Church and state
  • The ecumenical movement is regarded as having lost the plot or indeed any idea of a plot. Those who preach the prosperity gospel have elbowed into its place as the ANC at prayer.
    
    The institutional church and individual churches are, however, not monolithic. There are spaces where it can and does shift and this is most evident in Anglican Bishop Rubin Phillip's responsiveness to AbM and to what CLP is trying to do. The revival of the KZN Church Leaders' Group (CLG) has opened more space. It invited CLP director Graham Philpott and AbM president S'bu Zikode to address its meeting and it put out strong statements in response to the assault on AbM at Christmas and again at Easter.

• The equality of people is articulated
  • The equality and dignity of all people, and the integrity of their relation to the environment, is articulated in democratic practice.
• People speak for themselves
  • People speak for themselves and articulate their own demands.
• Leaders are held accountable
  • Leaders are held accountable and no leader is given a status above anyone else.
• People are connected
  • People are connecting in solidarity with the struggles of others and are creating a common vision.
• People are sharing
  • People are making linkages to access and share resources and skills in a manner that strengthens their struggles.
• Allies offer proper support
  • Allies from the institutional world of the church, academia and civil society honour the principle that 'those who suffer it must lead it' and offer solidarity and support on that basis.

• Listening
  • Listening to what people say is both a discipline and a political act, affirming people's right and responsibility to speak for themselves.
• Dialogue
  • Dialogue works through questioning as a way of drawing on and affirming people's own knowledge of their situation while clarifying CLP's role.
• Making connections
  • Making connections works on two levels: to connect people with resources; and to build movements by connecting local struggles to each other and to broader movements.
• Understanding
  • Understanding of the situation is built, for CLP staff and for local activists, through listening and dialogue and it creates the basis for people to decide and plan action.
• People take action for themselves
  • People take action for themselves and on their own responsibility. CLP provides support as requested but does not act for them.
• Reflection and learning
  • Reflection and learning is critical to the cycle. CLP works to create spaces for reflection where people can interrogate and build their own democratic practice.
• Material support
  • CLP will provide material support where appropriate in situations of acute crisis.

• People's basic democratic rights
  • The rights of the poor are under attack on all fronts. They are excluded from meaningful participation in deciding their own future, they are evicted from their homes and land and they are confronted by a consistent bias for the rich in the workings of state institutions and the criminal justice system in particular. CLP sees people's rights in the perspective of people's sovereignty: the freedom of all to own their futures in equality with others and in enjoyment of their relation to their environments.
• Poverty, hunger and food sovereignty
  • Hunger is a scandal. It robs people of dignity and life. A large proportion of the people in South Africa experience hunger daily but this experience is generally privatised within households and politically disarticulated. Women and children, and orphans in particular, are most vulnerable to hunger. CLP works with groups of women whose members have not eaten for days and also with groups who provide food for orphans and other vulnerable people on an entirely voluntary basis.
    
    Food sovereignty concerns both people's right to eat well and their right to land and the resources for ecologically sound production. It is about their "right to define their own food and agriculture systems' and "puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations'.
• Transformative theology
  • Mission, for CLP, concerns the relationship of people, church and land. Taking the option for the poor gives renewed force to the question: 'Who is the church?' For many people, the institutional church is not present in their lives and suffering but appears rather as a servant of power. The 'people's church' (irrespective of denominational belonging) nevertheless remains very much part of their lives and CLP has created a variety of spaces for reflection through which people can explore and make explicit their own theologies.
    
    At the same time, CLP remains cognisant of the social power of the institutional church and of the fact that it is not monolithic - there are spaces where it can and does shift. It has seen the God of the powerful in the institutional churches confronted with the scarred and weeping face of God in the shack settlements and believes something true and powerful emerges from this confrontation.
• Social movements and learning
  • Social movements are not at all uniform either in their organisational form or in their politics. Recognition that they are central to social change has stimulated intense academic debates but without necessarily engaging the movements themselves. CLP is therefore concerned to explore the possibility of creating platforms for dialogue and reflection on the politics of social movements within and between movements. Such a process would be designed to uncover with movement activists what is at the core of their different politics and understandings of the world.

• Reflection and Learning
  • Reflection and learning is essential to maintaining the integrity of CLP's practice and its accountability to its mission and to the people it works with.
    • CLP has a rigorous process of internal reflection including monthly reflection days and quarterly and annual review and planning sessions as well as formal research.
    • A resource centre will provide the knowledge and informational resources that staff need to take with them into the field.
    • External resource people are drawn on to respond to the expressed needs of local activists. This may include legal advice or expert inputs related to issues such as HIV/Aids.
    • Knowledge sharing is about engaging in the networks of knowledge production, with local activists, peer organisations and academic and theological institutions, through joint reflection, seminars or conferences.
    • Strategic evaluation and planning follows CLP's three year work cycle.
• Dissemination
  • Dissemination is about how CLP takes its practice, experience and knowledge into the world. It is composed of two parts:
    • Through the formation of activists, CLP seeks to reproduce the practice of animation, within local struggles, in peer organisations and through internships.
    • Communication flows from CLP's work and includes documentation using a variety of media, and public events.

• Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM)
  • Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is an autonomous movement of shack dwellers connecting some 30 settlements in eThekwini (greater Durban) and other centres. Despite an attack on its original home in Kennedy Road, the movement is growing with new settlements in the process of joining. It has powerfully insisted on the right of shack dwellers to 'speak for ourselves' and has established democratic practices based on regular meetings open to all.
• The Rural Network (RN)
  • The Rural Network (RN) connects various local struggles against violations of their rights, including illegal evictions, assault and murder, as well as a systematic bias against the poor in the workings of the criminal justice system and other state organs. The opening of dialogue between RN and AbM has created a basis for active solidarity.
• The Poor People's Alliance
  • AbM and RN, together with the Landless People's Movement (LPM) in Gauteng and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction League (WCAEL), has formed the Poor People's Alliance. The PPA identified evictions as the key common concern and mandated CLP to develop the Platform Against Evictions as a project.
• The Nkuthu women's groups
  • The Nkuthu women's groups provide mutual aid for women facing the harsh consequences of patriarchy. They were formerly associated with the Ladysmith Watersmeet Widow's Organisation (LAWAWO) but lost control of this network to an unaccountable leadership. They have retained a sense of empowerment through their own livelihood initiatives and some groups also provide meals for orphans and other vulnerable people and on an entirely voluntary basis.
• The eMacambini Community
  • At eMacambini the community rose in resistance to plans to appropriate common land and remove up to 50 thousand people for a massive theme park to be built with Dubai petrodollars and backed by the provincial government and Zulu king.
• People living on church land
  • CLP continues to work with people living on church land or who have acquired church land through the land reform process. These locations include: St Joseph's, Oakford, Springvale, Lourdes, Coniston, KwaThelaphi, KwaMagwaza, Emmaus, Roosboom, Nkunzi and glebes owned by the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA). At Roosboom a women's network has recently emerged in response to gender inequities within their communities. Farming and other livelihoods projects have improved people's well-being at some locations although conflict stemming from the state land reform process inhibits progress at others. On the UCCSA glebes, people were drawn into out-grower schemes (sugar cane and timber) and experienced severe economic and environmental costs - with massive debt, declining food security and the drying out of water sources.