Fostering and Empowering Active Citizenry in South Africa

South Africa’s democracy currently faces a crisis of legitimacy. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic the country faces heightened threats to its social fabric and political order. Unemployment has surged to 35.6% in 2023, with unemployment among the youth at 61%. Poverty is 55.5% across the board, with 1% of Whites, 6% among Indians and Asians, 38% among so-called ‘Coloureds’ (i.e., mixed race) and 64.2% among historically disadvantaged Black Africans. Land ownership among Black Africans remains a pitiful 4.5%. South Africa exhibits the highest inequality in the world, which delineates along racial lines. The country also faces an infrastructure crisis that spans a broad range of sectors including; severe power supply shortages and daily rolling blackouts, deteriorating road and rail infrastructures, failing water and sanitation services, environmental crises, grand-scale corruption, maladministration and the progressively deeper involvement of organized crime in the political and economic spheres. 

As indicated by the aforementioned statistics, the impacts of these failures largely delineate along its historical Apartheid-era racial categories, which has in turn impacted on the value the citizenry attributes to its hard won democracy. This is particularly the case among those who were historically most negatively impacted by the Apartheid regime, and for whom the intergenerational transfer of Apartheid era inequalities and marginalization continues today, namely Black Africans. 

A key indicator of the extent to which South Africa’s hard won democracy is valued among the citizenry is voter turnout, which has been steadily declining since 2009, with only half of registered voters turning out in the local elections in 2021. Moreover, the public political discourse has degenerated, with politicians actively exploiting social divisions, scapegoating minorities and immigrants and spouting authoritarian rhetoric. This anti-democratic drift is not unique to South Africa. Many democracies - established and new - have been impacted by growing ‘big man’ styled authoritarian rhetoric that capitalizes on social divisions by mobilizing mis- and disinformation in opposition to the historical political establishments in those countries. 

South Africa currently stands at a political precipice; with polycrisis unfolding in the social, political and economic realms. Should the South African citizenry detach further from its constitutional democracy and the mechanisms it provides to empower grassroots, citizen based action that can hold power to account. Nearly 30 years into the new democratic dispensation, South Africa’s enlightened constitutional democracy, and the various mechanisms it provides citizens with to engage in active citizenry within the civics has never been less valued and used. It is precisely this challenge that this proposal responds to. There is a pressing and urgent need to activate the citizenry - especially the youth - through new and innovative ways of engendering and understanding of how to leverage the civics effectively and bring about prosocial outcomes at local and national levels.

The overall objective of the Fostering and Empowering Active Citizenry SA (FEACSA) program is to mainstream civics education in society, foster active citizenship, facilitate self-help initiatives, and promote transparency, accountability and good democratic governance in South Africa.

The specific objectives of Project FEACSA are to; (1) grow awareness among the citizenry of the value of the civics, (2) engender basic civics education, and (3) enable and facilitate the effectiveness of collaboration between active citizenry-based responses and civil-society actors and agencies. 

Drawing on MIT Solve’s broad definition of technology as the “application of science and evidence-based knowledge to the practical aims of life” we describe two core technological offerings proposed in the FEACSA program; 

1. The first, and core technology offering of the FEACSA program involves synthesizing the core intervention capabilities of CABC - that has been developed in our Defending Democracy project over the past three years - and focusing it on developing a full civics education focus area. This utlilises an existing national behavioural segmentation that was focused on public perceptions of - and attitudes towards - active citizenship, national pride and social cohesion, to develop a behaviourally refined (i.e., targeted) intervention program to create civics education awareness and deepen knowledge of how to take civic action through digitalising civics education. Through direct and indirect engagement and training of influencers and allies (e.g. online influencers and civil society organisations, respectively) we also support active citizenry based organising and action. At this level, the synthesis of CABC’s core capabilties is evidence-driven, applies peer-reviewed publications of behavioural science research, and involves achieving practical outcomes that relate to the ‘aims of life’ of the citizenry.

2. A second technology offering of the FEACSA program involves mobilizing the data and insights obtained from (1) above to enable the development of a peer-to-peer support and aid platform that is developed through an iterative, user-centric approach. Through rich data and insights obtained from social media analytics, surveys and interviews conducted on the aforementioned behavioural segments, qualitative insight-gathering from dialoguing into online conversations, consulting with constitutional and civics-education subject-matter experts, and working directly with individuals and groups of online social media users, as well as civil society organisations whom we train in digital civics education; we can enable a rigorous and robust user-centric design of the platform. At this stage we envisage the platform as providing the following types of support to users; a civics action guideline and FAQ, civics engagement and peer-to-peer learning, skills sharing, time banking, material donations and resource sharing, volunteer opportunities and community projects, and emergency assistance and support.  

Our core technology (1) will be significantly extended in respect of the impacts of intervention through the development of (2) the peer-to-peer support and aid platform. It enables  a long-term program that provides an always-on, digital civics education and support competence. While (1) is an organizational technology, (2) is a technological platform that will enable a diverse range of actors, agencies and organizations to become engaged with both civics education activities and active citizenship-based interventions.

• The primary target (and stakeholder) group of the FEACSA program is the South African citizenry. This in turn has been delineated into three distinct broad categories; the marginal and unemployed, the working--class precariat, and the global middle class (i.e.,South Africans whose income levels match the global middle class) and further arranged into ten key behavioral segments, each of which is characterized by specific propensities towards active citizenry, social cohesion and national pride (see Figure 1 in Section 3.3.3 for a more detailed overview). The 18-29 year old age segment will be key in unlocking social media amplification of messaging, and will hence be specifically targeted across segments. However, the aim of the project is to reach the broader South African citizenry as a whole through messaging across the broader media ecosystem that includes traditional media, as well as working with civil society and other organizations that are engaged in grassroots civics-education training programmes.

  The final beneficiary groups are the South African citizenry itself, as well as key government and civil society organizations and institutions that are dedicated to engendering transparency and accountability for both grand and generalized corruption in South Africa. The beneficiaries of this project are intended to be multi-level i.e., engendering accountability at both: 

  • Local levels where citizenry are directly affected by lack of accountability by local authorities, infrastructure and basic service provision failures, crime, poverty, lack of access and mobility, and local environmental degradation and ecosystem services failures, and the

  • National level, where grand corruption, political infighting and dysfunction in government, divisive opportunism, and the emergence of anti-democratic authoritarianism threatens to further erode the state and its capacities to deliver socio-economic stability, growth and security, and basic services and infrastructure provisions to the South African citizenry.

  A key target and beneficiary group of this programme are the South African youth, who make up the ‘youth bulge’ that will soon be the majority electorate and citizenry that will carry the democratic norms of the country forward into the future. The solution we are proposing leverages this youthful segment of digital natives’ ability to embrace digital technologies by directing their energies towards social transformation and political accountability and stability. By empowering the youth through civics-based education, building peer-to-peer networks, relationships and interest-based formations, we are investing in building the capacity to recast civic action in the digital era and bring about transformative social change through active citizenship. In this sense, the youth are a key vector through which broader transformative change can be effected, both in the short and long-term. While this program is intended to reach the different behavioral segments that constitute all of South African society, the same intervention materials will be used by civil society and other partners to work with communities, learners (in and outside of classrooms), organizations and interest groups alike.

The CABC has attracted a range of expert skills to the organisation. We are a highly respected, multi-disciplinary team of academics, social change activists, technology specialists, communications experts and content makers. Most of the team come from the diverse and even marginalized communities that CABC serves and many were active in the struggles of apartheid and play a huge role in dialogue facilitation through our projects.

CABC is a non-profit, public benefit organisation led by Camaren Peter (PhD) (Associate Professor with the Allan Gray Centre for Values- Based Leadership at the Graduate School of Business) where the CABC was incubated through. His

academic research and practice leverages complexity theory to tackle the grand challenges of the 21st Century. These range from political, technological and socio-cultural transitions and their implications, to powerful global change phenomena such as the fourth industrial revolution, urbanization, resource scarcity, ecosystems degradation and climate change. He is an author, has published in both theory and practice, and has worked with a variety of global institutions and organisations. CABC has established an internship and fellowship programme that draws in students from the Graduate School of Business’s MBA and MPhil programmes who gain invaluable work experience and skills while contributing to the organisation’s projects. 

The CABC has high level expertise in advanced social media analytics, AI, psychology, dialogue mechanisms at scale and a wide range of media partners to identify, report on and counter misinformation, disinformation, narrative manipulation, organised interference and associated narratives that threaten the uptake of a Covid-19 vaccine within the digital space. 

It has also secured academic, civil society and government partnerships that enable CABC to create impact in a variety of thematic areas including xenophobia, racism, public health, gender-based violence and misogny.

Via a set of tested and honed methodologies the CABC is also able to intervene in problematic narratives, especially where mis and information are clearly present.

Our work is focused on social cohesion and change, and we intend to role model this in our organisation structures. We have run workshops and invested in developing leadership and organisational skills to create a sense of teamwork and staff commitment. We have put strong HR systems and policies in place, and established individual key focus areas to empower staff to continue learning, developing and innovating proactively.

In our short existence, CABC has gained a great deal of knowledge into how to identify narrative manipulation and counter it. Our main goal is to expand our reach into a variety of conversations (e.g. Civic Education, Climate change or “Just Transition”, sustainability oriented solutions, gender and youth, and where shifting narratives are needed) and to scale up our operations across Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. To this end, we have invested in upskilling staff and refocused staff to key projects for our core funding.

Solve would enable CABC to become a global leader in this space over the next three years and develop a proper pan-African network upon which we can build to establish global reach. It will help us establish and demonstrate our capability to undertake large campaigns across a variety of thematic areas. The funding will also enable us to conduct in-depth social media and network analytics and improve our data-analytics strategy, particularly to bring down costs. Last, working in different regions where different contextual specificities present will enable us to improve and refine how we deal with differing political contexts and social identities.

CABC would value support in the Business modelling (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development); Financial modelling (e.g. improving accounting practices, pitching to investors) and Public Relations (e.g. branding/marketing strategy, social and global media)

Our solution mobilizes a technology-enabled approach that leverages online platform capabilities, humans-in-the-loop and advanced data analytics to foster and empower informed active citizenry in South Africa through; (1) boosting civics education, (2) enhancing civic engagement and (3) supporting efforts to produce an inclusive social compact. It builds on an ongoing program that has a proven track-record of exposing and countering online mis/disinformation and coordinated narrative manipulation that poses a threat to social and political cohesion.

The CABC integrates across six key capabilities to create impact, namely;

(1) Research: Monitoring and feedback of campaign effectiveness to enable an adaptive intervention campaign that follows the public discourse, and produces insight driven reports and exposes of mis/disinformation and coordinated narrative manipulation that catalyzes societal polarization.

(2) Creative Content Creation: Developing affective, high-impact professional content that has high reach and impact across both social media and traditional media platforms, alongside everyday CANVA design content for always-on circulation and continuous engagement on matters of key public interest.

(3) Media & Communications: Monitoring traditional media narratives, identifying campaign aligned media that is trustworthy and feeding into active campaigns to supplement creative content, as well as coordinating the circulation of creative assets on above-the-line media.

(4) Social Media Community Management: Strategic coordination of roll-out of creative assets on digital channels and platforms, and monitoring and feedback on creative asset performance.

(5) Online Dialoguing: Mobilizing online allies (whether individuals, civil society, grassroots and other groups), training and equipping them to enter fraught and polarized conversation spaces while fostering open respectful dialogue and growing organic engagement with campaign themes, and providing feedback on social media sentiment on deployed creative assets.

(6) Technology Development: Developing internal and external user-centric technologies that reduces costs of analytics and interventions, and amplifies interventions and their impacts.

Through integrating between the respective capabilities of the CABC this project will be engaged in:

(1) Seeding and activating citizen voice and action through a compelling targeted, creative and informative civics education intervention,  

(2) Fostering active citizenry, identity-building and the emergence of a new social compact that cuts across races, classes and behavioral segments through stimulating and curating peer-to-peer citizen engagement on online platforms,

(3) Exposing and countering mis- and disinformation efforts that pose a threat to social cohesion and expose coordinated narrative manipulation efforts both online in and in the media, and

(4) Develop a user-centric peer-to-peer support and aid platform that connects communities and individuals to foster supportive community and inter-community networking through mobilizing resources, skills, cooperation, self-help and civic action.

(5) Establishing and consolidating the program within a network of government, civil society and other agencies and actors devoted to activating, empowering and informing inclusive active citizenry in South Africa.

The intervention is an always-on, high-reach, technology-enabled and amplified program that broadens public understanding of how to take constitutionally aligned civics-based action from which active citizenry-based mobilizations and actions emerge, ranging from community-based organizing around issues of local interest, to self-help, petitions, protest actions, policy-lobbying etc at different levels of governance in South Africa.

The proposed program is mainly focused on the “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions” and “Reducing Inequalities” UN Sustainable Development Goals (i.e.,16 and 10, respectively). By activating and empowering active citizenry-based efforts in SA, inequalities in power and resources that manifest in skewed outcomes in the political and economic realms will be lessened. Notwithstanding, there are also secondary outcomes due to the high intersectionality of focusing on empowering active citizenry.

We draw on CABC’s Theory of Change (see next section) to detail the intermediate (1-2 year) and long-term (5 year) outcomes of the FEACSA program.

Intermediate outcomes include:

1.    A high-impact civics education campaign that mobilizes both high-level and low-level, always-on content that gains high traction on social media as well as above the line media and can be used by teachers in the classroom as well as civil society organizations alike in civics education programmes.

a.    High volume and reach of social media traffic with respect to the creative content we disseminate.

b.    Significant re-circulation of online content by the targeted segments (and key online influencers).

c.    The intervention is not limited to online platforms but is cascaded through the broader media ecosystem for maximum social impact.

2.    Successfully detecting, tracking, exposing and countering false narratives – whether coordinated or organic – that seek to leverage public interest issues for political and economic gain, and engendering broad public awareness of them.

3.    Fostering inclusive and tolerant peer-to-peer citizen engagement on – often divisive – matters of key public interest through dialoguing, mobilizing and training online ‘volunteer’ allies and training civil society influencers and groups on compassionate inquiry-based dialoguing methods and techniques.

4.    Developing technology-based platforms and tools for fostering and empowering active citizenry at local, community scales and broader inter-community scales. Specifically, the data-based, behavioral and insight-based learning we derive from undertaking these activities, will serve as a foundation for the user-centric development of peer-to-peer support and aid platform.

Long-term outcomes include:

1.    Enhancing educated consumption of social media and online narratives and news.

2.    Reducing the impacts of polarizing and divisive online campaigns that seek to scapegoat and exploit pre-existing social divisions.

3.    To become part of an actively engaged global community of practice.

4.    Empower active citizenry to identify and counter disinformation organically and organize – through tech-enabled platforms and tools – to take informed civic action on key issues of interest through cooperation, self-help and/or towards local, provincial and national authorities.

5.    Ensure the long-term sustainability of the FEACSA program through securing long-term cross-sector partnerships and sustainable funding sources.

Ethics of how outcomes are achieved: We engage sensitively in polarizing and divisive conversations, employing compassionate inquiry-based techniques and methods in conversations that we intervene in. We also train online allies and civil society actors and organizations in hope-based narrative intervention methods and techniques. Adopting these approaches enables an ethically sound approach that is philosophically rooted in harnessing the self-organizing capacity of communities and social movements, adopts a non-judgmental and non-ideological approach towards fostering engagement between polarized groups.

The envisaged impact of the project is a shift in understanding of how civics education, and citizen-based collaboration, learning and exchange; can empower the individuals, groups and organizations to undertake self-help programs, reduce power asymmetries and hold power to account. Hence, the core outcome is an observable shift in organic participation and engagement in key matters of local and national interest. To this end, the following measurable outcomes are scoped for the program:  

1.    Using an existing communications strategy alongside new social media analytics findings, academic and gray literatures, an ongoing longitudinal national behavioral segmentation study, surveys, interviews and dialoguing based insights we will develop a high-level integrated content-driven civics education through-the-line media and communications campaign.

a.    With respect to quantity, one full-length digital content campaign would typically be developed that covers each of the key thematic civics-education areas identified as of significant public interest and relevance. For example, one content video campaign that we have developed is the Under the Microscope campaign that consists of 7 eight-minute episodes on average, from which in excess of 140 shorter length ‘talking-point’ clips were drawn and cascaded through social and traditional media, achieving extremely high impact at very low cost.

2.    The through-the-line multi-media communications campaign will consist of; (1) above the line media such as film/television, radio and print (editorial and concept), and out-of-home ambient media (2) below the line media such as websites, podcasts and webinars, and (3) digital media and communications campaigns across social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), leveraging Google search engine optimisation and other Google platforms to create awareness (e.g., PMAX). 

3.    Develop and circulate CANVA designs that activate interest in civics-education and provides easy-to-access and understand infographics, gifs and rich pictures that help the public better understand how to embark on civics-based programs of action.   

4.    Campaign effectiveness: traditional media statistics brokered through engagement with traditional media outlets (such as newspapers, radio and television).

5.    Deliver 24 social media analytics reports on key public interest narratives to internal teams and stakeholders, and/or exposes of coordinated disinformation based narrative manipulation where instances are detected on social media (i.e., over a 24-month period).

6.    Facilitate >10,000 hours of online civics-education and public interest-based dialogue on social media that stimulates active citizenry efforts.

7.    Capacitate and train > 8 key allied organizations (e.g. TSIBA) across South Africa to amplify civics education-based dialogue online, train teachers and conduct in-class civics education exercises, increase public awareness, mitigate against mis- and disinformation efforts and mount active citizenry-based initiatives.

8.    Develop and maintain thematic dialogue decks that leverage short content clips that are drawn from the high-end media and communications campaign.

9.    Source and distribute aligned civics-education based editorial print and visual media content that aligns with the civics education campaign roll-out strategy. This will involve the dissemination in excess of 150 campaign-aligned media pieces.

Sustaining short term outcomes for long term impact is key, hence the ability to learn and adapt the intervention is critical.

CABC’s “Theory of Change” as outlined above directly informs our Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) efforts. The CABC integrates across the range of aforementioned core capabilities in service of actualizing the intermediate and long-term outcomes articulated, with the primary goals of achieving two key high-level impacts in society:

1.    Improving informed and critical consumption of online and traditional media.

2.    Fostering and empowering inclusive and progressive social movements and activities that seek to promote social cohesion and political integrity.

We intend to open source our case studies, learning, know- how, methodologies, technology platforms and tools to help establish similar organizations on the continent and across the world.

All theories, technologies, insights, methods and techniques developed in service of CABC’s greater objectives will ultimately be shared with groups across the continent and the world who seek to establish similar such capabilities in their own specific geographic and cultural contexts.

Over time we hope to establish a network of similar civil society organizations that is characterized by cross-pollination of ideas, co-creation of platforms, tactical exchange, learning from case studies in different contexts and collaborating through networked action on key thematic areas of mutual interest.

We have already forged links with different networks through which this networked, continental and global strategy for impact can be achieved.

The Key Measure of Success (as per below) and Outcomes in line with our Theory of Change focus specifically on:

1. Deepening and growing our core advocacy focus areas and their impacts. We track the increasing number of harmful online narratives that are identified and reported on.

2. Compelling counter narratives are developed and deployed. We measure and report on the reduction in the effects of divisive online activity that we are intervening on.

3. Inclusive online citizen activist communities are fostered. We develop active citizenry across our programs and build strong, engaged communities of practice. Our current measurement of the size of our online activist communities is based on the number of unique individuals we directly interact with through social media platforms, websites and direct messaging platforms across all narratives collectively. 

4. We also conduct training with individual online allies and civil society organizations that are actively engaged in outreach activities related to our thematic activities.

5. CABC-owned tools for tracking and reporting on disinformation are further developed. This is measured by increases in public capacity to identify and counter disinformation through a reduced need to pay for 3rd party tools as well as granting public access to CABC developed tools through open source publication 

6. Expanding our reach and impact through media and digital content. We attract considerable editorial coverage, and as our projects deepen and grow we will capitalize on this. We measure these two impact metrics by being able to track the number of people who watch our content (reach),watch rates, cost of reach (e.g., cost per click), and where possible the actions taken after watching the content (engagement).

Summary of CABC’s Civil Society-Based Technology Offering:

The CABC adopts a knowledge-intensive, technology-enabled approach towards empowering civil society and society to achieve prosocial outcomes. We combine academic rigor and deep subject matter experience and understanding, with ‘coalface’ interventions that act on socially divisive digital narratives that spill over into the broader public domain (e.g., the emergence of highly politicized xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric).

The integration of the different core capabilities of CABC – which include the aforementioned research, content creation, media and communications, social media digital management, dialoguing and technology platform development – constitutes a unique organizational behavioral change technology in itself.

This cross-disciplinary integration brings together different methodologies, techniques and knowledges (i.e., scholarly, expert and user-based) to produce a behavioral change technology that is greater than the sum of its parts.

To our knowledge, no such parallel civil society organization exists as yet. Most similar organizations are simply devoted to retrospectively exposing mis/disinformation and coordinated narrative manipulation. In contrast, the integration between CABC’s capabilities enable it to go beyond this ambit; proactively mounting campaigns over key issues of societal interest and countering efforts to mis/disinform and polarize society.

The Intervention Knowledge-Base:

The FEACSA program builds upon one of the core advocacy focus areas of CABC, namely the “working for and defending democracy” project, which has been active since February of 2020. The FEACSA program will extend the working for and defending democracy project into a full program by: 

(1) Introducing a dedicated civics education focus area that is critical to producing an informed active citizenry in South Africa, and 

(2) Developing a peer-to-peer support and aid platform that is based on existing and new research into citizen behavior, which adopts a user-centric approach to ensure relevant, ergonomic platform design that is responsive to user needs and can achieve high absorption.  

The target groups for intervention in the FEACSA program will draw on pre-existing behavioral segmentation research conducted and published by Brand South Africa. This segmentation spans the entire gamut of the South African population, although specific segments that will be leveraged to garner cross-race and cross-race anti-corruption unity and active citizenry, will be identified in the formulation of the communications campaign strategy and the supporting research that will inform it.

To this end ten South African behavioral segments that have been identified through rigorous research conducted by Brand South Africa – and published in reputable academic journals – are shown below in Figure 2. Each segment is characterised by a range of key factors pertaining to how they relate to national pride, social cohesion and active citizenry as well as a trove of information relating to their particular opinions and perceptions of government and society. Based on thousands of interviews, information such as geolocation, age, income-levels, gender, identity-preferences, education levels and employment status are also included in the data. Moreover, longitudinal data is being collected annually, enabling long-term intervention that tracks changes in segments and segment alliances. Hence, we are able to precisely understand the needs, constraints, fears, biases and prejudices of the various segments and work with that understanding to formulate campaign interventions that can foster cross-class and inter-segment unity on active citizenry prerogatives and monitor how that is evolving over time.

As can be viewed in Figure 2 below, some segments such as “Independent Humanists”, “Proud Democrats", “Uncritical Loyalists” and “Celebrators of Achievement (Religious)” span across the key socio-economic classes that characterize the broad socio-economic divisions in South Africa. These segments are also evolving over time and longitudinal studies are being conducted and published regularly on them; the CABC has privileged access to this research. Working with the understanding of how segments overlap and cut across critical class divisions in particular, is key to forging a nation-wide active citizenry-based compact that is truly representative of the interests of both the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. This is a critical requirement for representative active citizenry in South Africa because it has been noted as exhibiting the highest levels of inequality in the world.

With respect to the needs of the target groups of the FEACSA program there is a pressing need for the citizenry to hold power to account at both local and national levels. However, all groups are constrained in their organizing capacity to hold power to account.

Several key factors impact their organizing capacity; (1) time constraints: while the disenfranchised and unemployed are preoccupied with survival both the South African working class and global middle class spend a lot of their time working and commuting, with little time left for traditional ‘townhall’ and other styled organizing that prevailed in the anti-Apartheid struggle era, (2) a deeply divided society: that deep prevailing socio-economic and spatial inequalities mean that the working and global middle classes – which largely has the local and national networks, financial means and professional capacity to play a key role in supporting cross-race and cross-class grassroots actions to hold power to account are instead rendered ‘divided and conquered’ in the face of political and elite power.

In respect of participatory-based action, the FEACSA program seeks to; (1) leverage virtual platforms to build organizing capacity by building local and trans-local linkages within the citizenry through which peer-to-peer learning, engagement, cooperation, solidarity and mutual action can be mounted, and (2) curate online engagements in cooperation with civil society partners who can build real-world grassroots and trans-local networks and cooperative efforts that leverage cross-class and cross-race linkages to mount direct actions ranging from local collaboration and self-help, to holding political and elite power to account.

What is clear, however, that – as is the case throughout Sub-Saharan Africa – the youth, particular those between 18 and 25 years of age, and generally under the age of 35 will likely play a key role in disseminating the messaging and information that is required to broker alliances and agreements that underpin active citizenry efforts. They are also key to producing the social transformation that is necessary – over time – to produce a more engaged, active citizenry in South Africa. Hence, the FEACSA program will specifically regard this age segment as a key vector through which both short- and long-term impacts can be achieved.

To this end, the CABC has partnered with TSIBA to establish the FEACSA program. TSIBA is a non-profit social enterprise which hosts a business school, ignition academy and an education trust. It has vast reach into learner and educator networks and can serve as an ideal vector through which civics education training of civil society practitioners, teachers and learners can be brokered. Other organisations such as the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR), Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC) as well as the grassroots networks of other civil society groups that we forge links with in common purpose (e.g., the Defending Our Democracy network). Professor Hugh Corder, who is one of South Africa’s pre-eminent experts on Constitutional law - and whose personal passion is constitutional education - is a Special Advisor to the CABC and will be a key subject matter expert providing advisory counsel to the FEACSA program.

Core Technology-Enabled Intervention Competency

The Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC NPC) is uniquely positioned to lead this project, having spent the last three years studying mis- and disinformation and exposing coordinated online narratives that are intended to undermine democratic integrity in South Africa.

As previously outlined, while other similar organizations are generally limited to fact checking and reporting on online narratives, the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change actively intervenes in both online and traditional media, and works with civil society, to foster active-citizenry-based responses. We conduct advanced social media analytics (i.e., both algorithm and human-filtered) and merge it with scholarly research and expert opinion to develop effective, targeted civil society campaigns to effect behavioural change in society.

Our advanced social media analytics uses the Brandwatch and Brandseye platforms, as well as bespoke analytics software that we developed in-house (i.e., Ananzi) that is used to assess inauthenticity of user accounts and perform network analysis. Brandwatch enables us to scour key publicly available social media platforms and online websites with great accuracy. Brandseye involves using a human crowd to filter relevant information on specific narrative queries, which improves accuracy and reliability of analytics. This enables us to identify and track emerging narratives in real-time, and to discern the micro-narratives that underpin them. The CABC has demonstrated competence in detecting, tracking and exposing coordinated narrative manipulation that mobilises mis- and disinformation for political and/or influencer gains [7,8,9].

We also have demonstrated competence in intervening upon coordinated narrative manipulation efforts that seek to exploit pre-existing socio-political divisions to foster conflict, unrest and public violence, and diminishing their impact. When the riots of July 2021 in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal erupted (i.e., when ex-President Jacob Zuma was sentenced to an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of the Constitutional Court relating to corruption charges against him), CABC detected coordinated efforts to amplify the ongoing violence in real time. We were able to mount a number of interventions – by providing early warning to authorities and other bodies – of impending violence, enabling on-the-ground action to be taken to prevent further destruction of property and loss of life.  The CABC also conducted a retrospective analysis of what transpired on social media during the unrest and exposed a coordinated network that was deliberately seeking to incite and amplify the violence [9].

As shown in Figure 3 below, the CABC draws on the six aforementioned key capabilities for implementation and impact, namely; research, creative content creation, media and communications, social media digital management, dialoguing and technology platform development. The intervention campaign strategy and process is designed to be adaptive and responsive to learning and experimentation, but within well-defined parameters. 

For each capability, a list of capability-specific impacts is provided in Figure 3. The integration of these capabilities, however, enables a greater competency that provides competitive leverage to CABC in this civil society activity space. The higher-level impacts of this integration are shown in the red rounded-rectangular boxes, which are distributed across the figure alongside the capabilities that in most part contribute to creating these outcomes. However, they are a product of the synthesis and integration of capabilities and cannot be attributed to each capability alone. Their integration enables a behavioral change competency that is unique to CABC as an organization, in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors.

Since CABC’s inception, a great deal of in-house know-how and expertise has been developed around how to actively integrate capabilities for maximum impact, and the organization has been through several restructures and leadership and culture-building programs to empower it to be innovative, adaptive, self-driven and self-organizing.

Peer to Peer Support Aid Platform:

The peer-to-peer support and aid platform that we propose building is a digital platform that connects individuals, communities, interest groups and organizations from different groups who are engaged in civic actions and/or who want to engage in active citizenry. Connecting individuals, communities, interest groups and organizations who can provide assistance to each other, fostering supportive networks. This could include various types of support such as:

• Civics Action Guideline and FAQ: An interactive, case-based and/or principle-based set of guidelines that curates the user’s understanding of how to take constitutionally-based civic action at local and higher levels. This can range from how to take legal political action, to setting up non-profit organizations to address local social challenges, to how to set up a   

• Civics Engagement Peer to Peer Learning: Individuals, communities, and organizations engage each other over their challenges and experiences of taking civic action, fostering exchange of strategies, tactics and planning, building a rich interactive learning platform that facilitates cross-pollination of ideas and experiences, relationship building and organizing power.

• Skill Sharing: Users can offer or request specific skills, knowledge, or expertise. For example, someone proficient in a foreign language could offer tutoring, while another individual could request assistance with home repairs.

• Time Banking: Participants can exchange services based on time spent rather than monetary value. For example, a user could provide gardening services in exchange for car maintenance, fostering a spirit of mutual support and cooperation within the community.

• Material Donations and Resource Sharing: The platform could facilitate the exchange of material goods, such as clothing, household items, or tools. Users can offer items they no longer need or request items they require, promoting a circular economy and reducing waste.

• Volunteer Opportunities and Community Projects: Users can post or find local volunteering opportunities, such as participating in a community clean-up, mentoring youth, or assisting with a fundraising event. This feature encourages civic engagement and community development.

• Emergency Assistance and Support: In times of crisis, the platform can connect individuals in need of immediate assistance with those who can provide help. This could include temporary housing, food, or transportation.

The FEACSA program will move to a significantly different level of impact - with commensurate outcomes - through adopting a data-driven, iterative user-centric design and development process. In this project, the learning, and close monitoring of the development of different functionalities of the platform will be piloted and tested in order to establish a long-term development trajectory for the evolution of the platform. 

Demonstrated impact:

We have demonstrated capacity to create high-impact content-driven campaigns that exhibit extensive reach across both above-the-line and below-the-line media i.e., through the broader societal media ecosystem, and not just on social media alone. For example, our anti-vaccine hesitancy project that ran across six Sub-Saharan African countries – Project Countering Covid-19 Disinformation Africa – which was funded by Impact Amplifier and ran from May 2021 to June 2022, achieved the following coverage. (1) Above-the-line content: total paid media donated and number of spots for above-the-line content was: (a) total television media was R4,602,726 and 1,332 spots, (b) total radio media was R1,116,216 and 535 spots, and (c) total broadcast media was R5,718,942 and 1,867 spots. (2) News media coverage: (a) total August 2021 to May 2022: R 4 356 323. To put this into perspective, over the period spanning April 2020 to May 2022, CABC’s total media coverage across all projects, of which a large percentage were focused on Covid-19 was R 50 519 041. Very low costs of engagement were achieved on the project, surpassing advertising industry standards.

The FEACSA program is an extension of our ‘Defending Democracy’ project, which has effectively been running since 2020. The “Under the Microscope with Dr Riaad Moosa” (UTM) comedic late-nite styled series the second season of the show. Dr Riaad Moosa is a popular South African comedian who emerged from the same generational cohort of comedians in the early 2000’s in South Africa that ex-Daily Show host Trevor Noah is a product of. The show tackles polarizing and complex socio-political and other topics, demystifying them through humor, debunking mis- and disinformation and encouraging sober engagement on socio-politically polarizing and divisive issues.  

The second season of UTM was launched on 27 November 2022. This season’s theme was Democracy in South Africa and we have advertised the series on YouTube and Facebook . Our latest data analytics (ending 31 March 2023) show that 589 hours of our videos had been watched and the March campaign generated 258 earned views (where users return to the channel to watch more within a 7 day period), and this was a 156% increase from February. The most popular videos out of the 7 episodes were: “Corruption and why it erodes democracy” and “Populism and how it threatens our democracy” (with the latter having an 80.98% view rate). Our total spend across media platforms from 27 November 2022 – 31 March 2023 has amounted to R69,800.79 and we have 679 YouTube subscribers and over 13 000 views of the “Populism” episode.

We have deep experience in uncovering, reporting on and countering xenophobic (and multiple other) networks in South Africa.Recent expansions to our way of working has meant that our programmes now encourage dialogue around challenging social issues beyond social media – and our programmes have the potential to deliver widespread change in our communities. We have generated considerable interest in media, showing over R55 million in earned media. (Please refer to https://www.redbook.co.za/shar... adac4940e35998e0d70e25a9ccc)

For-Good Technology:

The CABC is a non-profit company devoted to acting in the public interest and is not beholden to any political party, state or government entity, private donor or donor foundation.

Core Global Challenge Alignment:

The CABC’s sole reason for existence, since conception, is to develop the know-how, tools, methods and technologies to counter the internet and social media enabled wave of mis- and disinformation, narrative manipulation and resultant socio-political polarization that poses a deep and aggressive existential threat to democratic order the world over. With the advent of advanced analytics, online surveillance based market offerings that leverage personal data for profit, online media, and artificial intelligence based capabilities that have massive potential for catalyzing the emergence of a post-truth era - such as ChatGPT - the 21st Century has potentially yielded an ‘Oppenheimer moment’ that poses an unprecedented onslaught on democratic integrity, order and sustainability. Responding to this challenge requires citizen-led, bottom-up education and mobilization that leverages the same technologies to correct the vast asymmetries that have emerged in the first two decades of this century. Actualizing the UN’s SDGs of “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions” and “Reducing Inequalities” requires new, innovative approaches that mobilize existing and emerging technologies to bring civil society into the 21st Century so that it can better serve the peoples of the world.      

Overall, an organization that exhibits high levels of diversity across, race, class, culture, gender, sexual orientation and languages – this is key to intervening effectively in the activity areas that we operate in. It is also key to generating innovative and new ways of tackling societal challenges.

 ·         Majority female board with a black African female chair.

·         Racially and age-diverse executive team with great depth of experience in specific areas of knowledge that align with core capabilities.

·         Majority female and racially diverse steering committee.

Beneficiaries/target groups: by making methodologies, tools and platforms available for other civil society actors to make use of and engage in the space of social media to transform it into a more tolerant and inclusive medium is a key strategic goal of the CABC. The CABC’s key beneficiary is society itself, and views its role as protecting social and political cohesion in keeping with the principles upheld in the South African Constitution. Members of the public are identified and capacitated to initiate critical dialogue online and to counter harmful narratives. Virtual communities and networks offer individuals opportunities to interact, and to find solidarity. The CABC harnesses this potential by supporting citizens to be trained in online dialogue facilitation and to create virtual networks of mutual support, training and social mobilisation. This social mobilisation ensures the development of counter-narratives. Given the virtual nature of this social media project, the organisation’s geographic reach is wide and the organisation works across diverse urban and rural communities of SA.

CABC’s biggest value-added other than the social changes is the ability to scale to reach thousands of South Africans. Partnerships and collaboration with civil society organisations amplify online impact. Significant added value is leveraged through free or donated media distribution.

Recognising that measuring impact online and in broader society is limited by the complexity of multiple factors influencing trends, CABC has invested in developing a high-precision communications campaign that is based on rigorous in-depth research on behavioural segmentation in SA. This provides a refined view of what particular groupings coalesce around in respect of national pride, social cohesion and active citizenry, and what underlying factors characterise these segments. It also provides a unique view into what commonalities exist across the spectrum in SA, and also points the way to conducting additional in-depth research on possible avenues for fostering cross-class and cross-race unity.

Social And Customer Value Proposition: Our “customers’ are primarily the philanthropic donor organisations that fund our social impact. Our compelling rationale as per our TOC is dovetailed with our social impact. Our commitment to ongoing review, reflection and innovation is generating an increasingly compelling and unique proposition. There is no other social justice focused organisation in SA like ours, focusing on online mis/dis information as we do, and combining leading market research technology and research, with creative content production and direct ‘live’ engagement with those members of the South African public engaged in online discourse within our core social justice focus areas. For our service consultancy work, we are refining our outcomes that are typically tailored to the needs of our client. 

Surplus: We have carefully managed our cost base to date in a way that has allowed us to build up some reserve funding. In our cyclical sector, this is an invaluable part of our sustainability. In all our current proposals, we include the request to provide a contribution to our reserve funding. Any additional surplus generated from service level income will also be allocated to our reserve funding.

We have focused on generating multiple income streams during our first three years in line with our commitment to developing our financial sustainability. We have developed relationships that have generated and continue to give us unrestricted philanthropic donor funding, programme specific donor funding and service income via service level agreements with foundations and companies. We also generated an income stream as part of a government focused health initiative. While we anticipate continuing to be reliant on donor funding for the foreseeable future, over the next three years we will in particular look to grow our service consultancy income generation. 

CABC’s growth in its start-up phase has been outstanding in terms of its scaling, refining and integration of organizational capabilities, impact across society, and its growth in civil society networking and partnerships. Over the past three years CABC has secured reputable, established donor foundations that have high governance compliance requirements and monitor organizational progress and sustainability very closely (e.g., ELMA and Ford Foundations, and the European Union). Other donors include the Millennium Trust, Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (OMT), Elma Philanthropies, Claude Leon Foundation, Investec Private Trusts, The Solidarity Fund, Yellowwoods, Africa Climate Foundation, Lewis Foundation, UN (OHCHR and UNICEF), Impact Amplifier and Innovation Edge.

We have also worked for a variety of organizations in a consulting role, providing services that would otherwise be unavailable to them. These include UNICEF, Singizi Consulting and Joe Public via the Solidarity Fund. We currently have a strong pipeline of similar consulting assignments that we hope to finalize shortly including Takalani Consultancy and the NBI Gender Group.

Our detailed list of donor funding secured to date is listed in the next section. In addition to these existing funders, CABC is also actively engaged in developing new, sustainable donor relationships as indicated below:

We have designed a pathway to financial sustainability into our operational planning and set-up since our inception, and we have a number of examples where this is now coming into fruition.

Core funding: in our start-up phase we knew that core funding was critical to give us a chance to build a solid platform for the future. And we secured a philanthropic grant in unrestricted funding that covered our core set-up costs for our first 3 years.

In parallel, after realising the risk of having most of funding concentrated in one donor, we intentionally set out to diversify our donor base. And a few years later, we have achieved this, with multiple donors – both unrestricted and providing project funding (as listed in the previous section).

It was also important for us to develop long-term funding relationships, and our current 2 year grants from the European Union and the Ford Foundation are good examples of this.

Finally, we have by now developed a core service offering to generate consulting service income, reflected in our partnerships with UNICEF, Singizi and Joe Public via the Jobs Fund.

Critical to our ongoing attractiveness to donors and hence our financial sustainability, has been our diverse and developing service offering. We are now able to offer market-leading research into social justice themes, we have expertise in developing behavioural change dialoguing processes online, within our core social justice focus areas (e.g xenophobia, gender based violence, just transition in the energy sector), and have won marketing awards for our high quality media video creation that allows us to target specific niche sectors in our target audiences. We are able to offer each of these services separately, or in combination, which gives us an attractive broad service offering to take to market and underpin our financial sustainability.

Finally, another critical ingredient to ongoing financial sustainability is our investment in developing fluid, dynamic and supportive internal management processes including project management, human resource investment and employee well-being. And this internal focus has built a resilient workforce, equipped to manage the highs and lows within our dynamic sector.

Our grant funding and service income generated to date is indicated below:

While our  organisation is young, we are setting up structures to build reserves for long-term operations. We are planning to build our reserves to the R5m level by 01.03 24. The CABC has received a 3 year long commitment to unrestricted funding (2022-2024), which will allow for continuation of projects and space to create structures for growth. The CABC has in a short space of time built a strong team of qualified, committed staff, as well as systems and processes for scale. The CABC is working hard to build sustainability mechanisms to ensure that we are building capacity for long term operations. We have a sustainability plan to build reserves to cover core operational costs and in parallel build partnerships to fund projects through income generation and research.