Get to Know Us
Who we were and what we did
The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) was part of the global network of Open Society Foundations (OSF) and operated in eleven (12) southern African countries: Angola, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. OSISA promoted open-society values by working towards building vibrant and tolerant democracies across the region through its various thematic and country programmes.
What We Did
OSISA aimed to support a range of partners to implement catalytic and context-specific strategic interventions which would enable them to influence positive change in the attitudes and behaviour of citizens, civil society, the private sector, and government. Critically, we aimed to make both the government and the private sector more responsive and accountable to the needs of marginalised groups.
Our Key Assumptions
- Grant or financial support emboldened oppressed and marginalised citizens to organise and speak out.
- Production and availability of credible information and knowledge strengthened public pressure for change.
- Public pressure could force governments and societies to change policies and attitudes.
- Existence of groups and communities to assume agency or ability to identify and build them.
- Our voice and advocacy added weight to those of our partners and marginalised communities.
Grants
An opportunity for assistance
Our work included grant-making, research, advocacy, and other interventions such as civil society mobilisation and supporting social movements. Our goals were for people to live free from discrimination and enjoy their rights regardless of who they were, for power to be exercised responsibly, and for dissenting voices to have as much respect as those of the majority. In areas other donors did not fund, we continued strengthening citizen movements and individual agency to promote, protect, and advance the rights of the marginalised. We also supported investigative journalism and work that promoted transparency and accountability in natural resource governance.
The region continues to be faced by challenges such as; inequality, poverty, weak domestic resource mobilisation, a growing informal economy and deepening debt crisis. Four countries from the region (Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Botswana) feature in the top ten most unequal countries in the world. While on the other hand at least half of the region’s countries have the lowest human development rankings. The shrinkage of formal sector employment has resulted in a sharp drop in labour organising, thus undermining the capacity of unions to mobilise their membership and opened the unions to aggressive attacks from states on their leadership. The Programme, in collaboration with other Regional and Network Programmes, continues to monitor and advocate against illicit financial flows and push for better regulation and policy reforms to address tax havens, tax evasion and illicit transfers.
Timeline
1997
The Open Society establishes its first regional African foundation – the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA). In its early days, there were only five people in the organisation, with the head office in Braamfontein, in Johannesburg’s city centre
1998
In Namibia, people flee the Caprivi Strip to Botswana, alleging persecution by the Namibian government. Elections are held in Swaziland, but opposition parties are still banned. In the nearby kingdom of Lesotho, South Africa leads a controversial military intervention, supposedly to bring stability to SADC after post-election rioting and coup rumours.
1999
The Zambia Trade Network is established. Originally a trade advocacy network with a focus on gender, by 2009 it evolves into the Centre for Trade Policy and Development (CTPD), a not-for-profit, membership-based, pro-poor economic development think-tank. As part of OSISA’s Economic Justice Programme, regional grantees that focus on economic justice, including the CTPD, are given financial and technical support.
2002
The African Union is officially launched as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity. – Angola’s 27-year civil war ends.
2004
Germany formally apologises for its role in the colonial-era Herero genocide in Namibia but will not compensate victims’ descendants.
2006
In Zimbabwe, year-on-year inflation breaches 1000%. New banknotes, with three zeros deleted, are put into circulation.
2007
Through the Open Society, OSISA awards a $3 million grant to Partners in Health to help treat multi-drug-resistant TB in Lesotho, where at least 25% of the population is HIV positive, and 90% of HIV-positive people have TB.
2009
OSISA moves to its offices in Rosebank, Johannesburg.
2010
South Africa hosts the FIFA Soccer World Cup.
2011
Italian energy company Eni announces a massive gas discovery off the coast of Cabo Delgado, northern Moçambique.
2013
Supported by OSISA, a historic agreement is signed in South Africa between indigenous San and Khoi groups and pharmaceutical company Cape Kingdom Nutraceuticals. The deal acknowledges that the Khoi and San are legally entitled to benefits from the commercial development of the buchu plant.
2014
OSISA provides a small grant to Madagascar’s government to help improve access to education, develop a new curriculum and Early Childhood Development programme, and improve the quality of teaching. This catalyses a powerful education movement that draws the attention of even bigger funding partners like the World Bank.
2015
OSISA’s Natural Resource Governance Team supports the publication of Botswana’s Diamond Deception. The damning report exposes corrupt arrangements regarding diamond extraction by De Beers and Botswana’s ruling party.
2017
The Open Society announces that George Soros has transferred $18 billion of his fortune towards funding the future work of the foundations. This brings his total giving, since 1984, to over $32 billion.
- Through the Human Rights Programme, OSISA assists the Angola Human Rights Defenders’ Fund with a $130 000 grant. Angola inherited poorly built institutions that function with total disregard for fundamental rights, leading to the normalisation of human rights abuses.
2018
Through the Democracy & Governance Programme, OSISA provides support to Zimbabwe’s SIVO institute, an independent think-tank that aims to reduce poverty, narrow inequality, and enhance political participation.
2019
Cyclone Idai devastation in Moçambique’s Sofala Province.
- OSISA holds the Southern Africa Debt Conundrum Conference.
Release of State of Mind, directed by Hopewell Rugoho-Chin’ono. OSISA helped fund the making of this feature-length documentary that focuses on mental illness in Zimbabwe. It follows the work of Prof. Dixon Chibanda, the founder of the Friendship Bench Project – Zimbabwe.
2020
OSISA allocates $2 million towards combating COVID-19 in southern Africa.
- OSISA partners with documentary-maker Steven Chikosi for White Yet Black, a hard-hitting documentary about people with albinism in southern Africa. Part-documentary, part-experimental film, White Yet Black highlights the harmful attitudes that the region’s people with albinism face.
2021
The Appeals Court of Botswana upholds a historic 2019 court ruling to legalise same-sex activities and relationships, previously criminalised under a British colonial-era penal code. In Moçambique’s Cabo Delgado, nearly a third of the inhabitants are internally displaced due to the ongoing Jihadist insurgency.
2022
The separate regional Open Society foundations merge into a single regional entity: Open Society-Africa (OSF-Africa) with offices in Dakar, Nairobi, and Johannesburg.
- In Malawi, 12 men are convicted for the 2018 killing of 22-year-old MacDonald Masambuka, a person with albinism.
- Zambia becomes the 25th sub-Saharan African country to abolish the death penalty.
References
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/
