Oct 2006
Dear Friends of Shared Interest,
During the coming months, while continuing to guarantee micro-finance and low-cost housing initiatives, Shared Interest and its partner, Thembani, are turning increasing attention to a black farmers seeking our guarantees. Their projects are important not only to our work but to the success of South Africa’s transition to economic democracy. Although agriculture only constitutes 3.8% of South Africa’s gross domestic product, it utilizes most of the country’s land, and engages the labor power of 20 million of the country’s most impoverished people. The government hopes to meet its 2008 deadline for completing land restitution. Gauteng Province has fewer than 100 remaining claims, while the most challenged province, KwaZulu-Natal, has 1,700. continued…
Aug 2006
If you weren’t able to join Shared Interest and Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Boston, San Francisco or Pittsburgh, watch the discussion between Ms. Hunter-Gault and Belva Davis from the September 12, 2006 event in San Francisco on fora.tv or listen to an interview with Michael Krasney on kqed.org.
May 2006
Shared Interest’s sixth annual awards dinner honored W. Frank Fountain, Jennifer Davis and Albertina Sisulu on March 6, in New York City. The three leaders personify partnerships between the communities and businesses across the U.S. and South Africa’s communities that are making a reality of their dreams for a better life. continued…
May 2006
“As Shared Interest’s first investor, Partners for the Common Good continues to invest in the organization because of the catalytic role it continues to play in promoting economic justice for low income people of color in South Africa. We support organizations like Shared Interest because they provide models for others and show what is possible when committed investors work together to facilitate systemic change,” explained Jeannine Jacokes, executive director, Partners for the Common Good (PCG). continued…
“This constitutes a milestone and major precedent,” noted Norman Buckham, CEO of Shared Interest’s partner, the Thembani International Guarantee Fund. “ABSA Bank and Thembani are taking the lead in linking South Africa’s banks to its most marginalized communities.”
As 2005 ended, ABSA, Thembani and Shared Interest signed a memorandum of understanding to create a program through which ABSA will roll out loans to low-income communities, partially backed by Shared Interest guarantees. ABSA and Thembani will bring each other proposals for loans to low-income communities of color, their clients, or development finance institutions that, in turn, lend to individuals. Approved loans will receive partial guarantees ranging from R500,000 to R10,000,000 for one to three years. Shared Interest will continue to adapt its guarantees to clients ranging from micro-finance institutions to rural cooperatives. continued…
Nov 2005
During my last trip to South Africa, I visited Mashishing, a township near Lydenberg in Mpumalanga where Beehive Financial Services runs a micro-enterprise program benefitting from a Shared Interest guarantee. The experience was both hopeful and sobering. Hopeful because I again saw how resourceful people can be in difficult circumstances, and how modest help from strong development finance organizations can make a real difference. Sobering because there are still so many who are trapped in poverty in the second decade of a free South Africa.
Sonto Mkhonza, one of the group I met in Mashishing, expressed her frustration, citing a long period of searching unsuccessfully for work.”You’ve got a brain. You’ve got hands. You’ve got to do something!” she told me she said to herself. What she did was to join a saving and borrowing group of five women, under the supervision of Beehive Financial Services (BFS). Three months ago she borrowed R2,000 to boost her second-hand clothing business, which she operates by purchasing used clothes in Durban and Johannesburg, for her neighbors in Mashishing. (Mashishing’s answer to “personal shoppers” in a township with no clothing stores.) She has successfully repaid her first loan, and is now preparing to apply for a second. continued…
The 70 year old former mineworker in Welkom slowly swiped his new plastic card through the small portable banking machine. As it showed his transaction had been completed, he grinned. “Free at last,” he said. “Free at last.”
For impoverished communities like his that depend on mining, banking has remained beyond reach. Despite some rapidly growing national financial programs to serve the rural and township poor, nearly half of all South Africans still have no access to bank services. As they confront infrastructure hurdles and high establishment expenses, some banks are exploring lower cost mechanisms to reach the market of 17 million unserved potential clients. continued…
Jun 2005
Fifty years ago, on June 26, 1955, the Freedom Charter adopted by a people’s assembly in South Africa proclaimed that “All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security.” The ringing declarations in the Charter did not stop with the vote, but set housing and other social and economic assets such as “work and security” as indispensable goals to be guaranteed to all. At that time these fundamental rights were denied to people of color by the apartheid system in South Africa and by segregation in the United States. These denials were enshrined in discriminatory laws as well as in pervasive structural inequalities and racial abuse.
Today, in principle, the legal barriers to achievement of these rights are gone. In South Africa, moreover, the government’s obligation to realize social and economic as well as political rights is mandated by the Constitution. While the United States government still opposes the growing international consensus that states have a legal obligation to ensure basic living conditions for all, South Africa’s constitutional court has ruled that such rights are not just ideals but binding obligations (see the illustrative excerpts below on the right to housing). continued…
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