Garbage Gutters

One of the top objections many people have to Yeoville is that it is dirty. The Dad fusses that it is 'unsightly', and the Yeovue News (when it was still around) used to bemoan the littering that took place. On one hand, it's hard to argue with facts. There is trash on the streets. When Pick-it-up doesn't make an appointment, there are piles of garbage on the street corners; and the day or two before garbage collection, the park usually looks pretty grotty.

The other day, The Dad made a comment about how it must be possible to fix it - he came up with a few technical suggestions, like placing big dumpsters on street corners. or distributing more bins. I objected, seeing the refuse problem as reflective of a broader issue of a too-high density area with lots of squatted buildings, all around poor service delivery, and high levels of poverty, all of which contribute in various ways to the garbage in the streets.

But more to the point, I'm curious about why this garbage doesn't particularly bother me, when other people have such a strong reaction to it. I see it more as a reminder of the work all of us need to do to make the world a better place than a problem to be fixed, as such. Coincidentally, I remember feeling similarly when landing in Mumbai 15 years ago...exchange students from all over were so upset by the garbage on the streets, which I just kind of filed away.

I see lots of reasons why cities need a good refuse disposal system - public health is important. But why are bags of garbage on the streets unsightly, when kids out of school a weekday aren't? Or racially segregated neighborhoods? Or all the cars coughing out pollution? Or the high walls and security systems in Houghton? Or the inability to see the stars because of all the light pollution? I'm not saying I love having garbage around; but I'm relatively confident that with a good development plan, management, and resourcing, that can be sorted out without too much trouble. I'm more upset about the high walls, which seem harder to solve, and on the whole, more damaging to public health...

Personal finance in Joburg

Preparing not to work for the next 6 months has obviously required a fair amount of time getting my financial house in order. In doing this, I read personal finance blogs from time to time. Most of them are American (is that jut where bloggers are? Or where money is? Or some combination thereof?). It seems like most personal finance blogs have, somewhere in their archives, a guiding manifesto - 10 key points to follow, a list of easy ways to save, etc. Inevitably somewhere on these lists is 'make sure you never ever pay a penny in bank charges;' it always irks me, because it's undeniably good advice - and totally not an option in Jozi. I'm sure in the big picture, American banks are no less evil than South African banks....but they're certainly far more consumer friendly (and there are lots of friendly, local cooperative alternatives - Farmers and Merchants State Bank in Wayne, I love you!).  This is one of the few times I think the entitled view of a foreigner might be helpful ;)

Choosing a bank in Joburg seems like a choice between exploitative and evil.....One of my most frequent gripes is about bank charges (which, after groceries, utilities, transport and telecommunications is usually my highest monthly expense. It's considered normal to pay a fee to deposit money in your own account, which probably pays you no interest. Really. Free deposits are a perk your high monthly fee might cover). I find something fundamentally wrong with the fact that I pay a bank R80 a month for the privilege of using and investing my money - but the worst part is that I have no choice!

Apart from small scale, informal stockvels, there aren't formal cooperative savings banks. Nobody, it seems, apart from the big, nasty corporations, has access to the financial infrastructure of the country. I've heard analyses on why from various people who should know, and it always seems to boil down to a very unsatisfactory amalgamation of the highly regulated industry, history, barriers to entry, old boys club, tight connections with mining, neoliberal development paths, etc....all true, I'm sure, but that doesn't make it any less lousy, or any less fixable. Making financial services pro-poor seems like a no-brainer if  you're trying to boost equity.  As things are, banks are hugely exclusionary.  Before I got a grown-up job, I stuffed cash under my mattress; it was a better deal than a student bank account (though, completely impractical)! I don't quite understand why nobody else is outraged.

If The Dad and I open a joint bank account for tiny blob, maybe I'll try and disinvest, and just do all my banking from the  US...

Power Paradox

This afternoon, just in time to prepare dinner (of course), the power in my flat went off. This caused slightly more running around than usual, since the person who usually has the keys to the trip switches was away....but at least it's not winter, when power cuts mean freezing in the dark.

In the end, a call to City Power was needed. On the whole, service from City Power is impressive. I may not like having to call a "customer care center" when I have a power cut, but they sent a vehicle around in about an hour. Everyone was efficient and professional; after checking our meters and establishing the source of the problem was outside the building, we had lights back on in about half an hour.

I spent that half an hour watching the rain, and chatting on the stoep to the head of the neighborhood community policing forum. Knowing nothing about electricity, I asked him why our building is on two different grids (power to the whole building never goes off, it's always either to units 3, 6, 7 and 9, or the rest of the flats). This seems odd, and one grid definitely has a more stable power supply than the other. He couldn't explain to me why our building would be on two grids (though, it's quite convenient that someone in the building usually has power), but he *did* point out that the reason my flat experienced more cuts than the other half of the building was because of the illegal hookups of the building across the street.

I don't generally have a problem with illegal hookups - power costs a fortune, and in a rare failure of the South African justice system, there seems to be a lot of hesitation around considering most public services human rights....this whole gray 'progressive realisation' area. Particularly in this part of town, most buildings that have illegal hookups already have several layers of quasi-informal tenancy, ranging from spaces that are slum-lorded to those that are permanently squatted. Illegal hookups are obviously a small part of a much larger picture, and I'm pretty sure the neighborhood isn't going to benefit by making sure the guys across the street don't have power.

That said, if it's a chronic problem throughout the winter (as it was last year), it will become quite obnoxious; if I don't want to report them, what can I do? See about lending them a good electrician? Try to get on a first name basis with the City Power crew, since I'll be calling them out on a weekly basis? Look for a place to live that has natural gas?

Alternatives to the State

It seems like every few years, political scientists get excited about the idea that Somalia will provide a creative alternative to the nation state system. Chris Blattman outlines the debate in its current manifestation here. Ken Menkhaus,  Andrew Natsios and others had similar discussions in the late '90s, soon after the fall of the central government. Most people who thought Somalia might forge some new not-quite-nation-state path (noteably Ken Menkhaus, Hussein Adam, and Maria Brons, all experts on Somalia) subsequently revised their enthusiasm for this option; for very good reasons. You'd think that two decades of shockingly poor human development, if nothing else, would be a strong case for more conventional state; not less. The Somali people certainly aren't getting anything out of being on the cutting edge of international relations theory, and de Waal's suggestion of just funding the "vibrant middle class" seems out of touch with reality.

What I wonder is, why do political scientists so often turn to Africa when looking innovations in statehood? With its history of exploitation, colonialism, failed SAPS, unfair trade....is it any mystery that there are few examples of perfectly functioning states? It's nice that innovation does happen as a result of this severe malaise, but there are many other grey areas of state control. Why not look at a broader range of 'states on the brink of non-state'?  If we're looking for experiments in the nation-state system, I'd like to nominate Belgium as a first stop! They currently hold the world record for the elapsed time without an official government, beating out war torn Iraq. Why don't people talking about statecraft all look to Brussels?

(Why am I writing random blog posts about Somalia? I wrote my undergraduate thesis on it a decade ago. It's far from my research focus, but close to my heart. I harbour secret fantasies of retiring there with a herd of camels, some day when political stability has returned. )

#2: Summits are Not for Me

It impresses the pants off people to have passes to UN meetings, pictures with heads of state, rub shoulders with Bono, and other seemingly important things that come with the summiteering that's inevitable in global campaigning. It's widely accepted (but somehow not widely talked about) that successfully engaging at these summits is devilishly difficult, and very expensive. It's also an unfortunate reality that, even though it rarely provides results, it needs to be done just the same. These are the kinds of things that drive we evaluation people nuts - we know costs are high and results are limited, but the work must go on, even at the expense of more effective and cheaper work elsewhere. 

They're almost never the time and place decisions are made - outcome documents were usually negotiated ages before, and while there's occasional wiggle room at the actual summit, big breakthroughs usually happen much earlier in the process. 

They're designed to make public mobilization difficult. They're often held in inaccessible places, information about the logistics of the meeting is often released at the last minute, there are usually a gazillion side events taking place. It's almost inevitably an organizational nightmare. 

They're not a great place to get your message out. There are so many people doing so many different things, that even if there is consensus around your message, and  you're well resourced, well coordinated, and so on….your message is very likely to get lost in the noise. Plus, no matter how diligent the preparation, one recent global event (like the Greek debt crisis) often dominates discussions (and therefore press coverage).

So why bother? Partly because it impresses people, and can therefore contribute to organizational legitimacy. It's great to be able to tell funders you met with Ban ki Moon, and have speakers from your organization addressing the General Assembly. Partly, to be part of a club. This is where global campaigning organizations go, so it's where a lot of networking and outreach happens. International travel is expensive, so these events, when people are all face to face, are when a lot of important planning happens (even if it's often an afterthought). And partly because it's often the culmination of a lot of other more important work, and making space for that is important. You need to 'be seen' at global summits to be part of working groups and planning processes where more substantive work gets done. I wish everyone could frame them for what they are, though, and save all of the expensive, bedazzling media hubris. 

In spite of all the complaints I have about summits, I recently discovered that they do build useful skills; at a recent overcrowded and disorganized concert I went to with a colleague, we were super stars at figuring out which queues we needed to stand in for which tickets, and how to get access to the right sections of seating! 

5 reflections on 5 years in MDGs campaigning: #1

1. Success isn't necessarily what I thought it was.

It's just not sexy to say I'm working on evaluating the global coordination of national  civil society campaigns on the ratification of the optional protocol of the international covenant on economic and social rights. In comparison, my PhD research sounds riveting. Revolutions aren't inspired because a bunch of people read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Even people who are professionally immersed in the field don't keep track of every regional and thematic protocol and declaration. But, this is the level at which government commitments are made, so accountability starts there. Even for die hard policy wonks, it can be tedious wading through jargon and budgets to figure out what governments are actually going to do, and what can be done to influence it.

Somewhere, in the back of your head, you always know that all of these sub committees, statements, teleconferences, and working groups are supposed to mean something, in the real world, to people. There are occasional flashes of clarity, when your neighbor's daughter is going to be able to finish matric because the age of the child support grant has been extended, or the church around the corner can afford to offer a second free meal in the community each week because taxes on some basic foods have been reduced, and you realize this is why we all sit in meetings about MDG 1 and 2 progress….These moments are rare, and creating them is actually a specific kind of work. In addition to my 'actual' job, it's been virtually a second job to learn how to see, and reinforce why, the little bit that my organization does matters to people. 

Finally, policy change is often a gold standard in a campaign's effectiveness. It is great when it happens; it's hard to accomplish, and makes a convincing story. But it's not the only thing campaigns can achieve. It's really impressive to be able to say that Russia's health care system is now much more accessible to people with disabilities because of a campaign. It sounds less exciting to say that this campaign is one of the first times civil society in Russia has come together to advocate collaboratively on issues outside of each organization's technical specialty. This may turn out to be irrelevant; or, it could be far more important than a  specific policy change. We're not very good at measuring lots of things. That doesn't make them any more or less important. 

After these 5 years, I am finally confident in saying that we have done some amazing things to make the world a better place. This is in spite of a range of frustrating inefficiencies and mistakes along the way. But there are also times when I have to admit that we don't know what works; or, in fact, for various reasons can't do what works. Statements of solidarity are good for the morale of the people who issue them; sometimes they may do something more, sometimes not. Sometimes, stories about 'things that worked' come back to us; sometimes it feels like energy is being thrown into a void, and we don't know if efforts were wasted or not. As the resident monitoring and evaluation person, it has been my job to make sure we have structured ways of thinking about our impact, we know what our outcomes are and have evidence about how we can work most effectively to achieve various sorts of things. This has been important, and I think it's an area where knowledge is growing very, very quickly. But one thing I never would have thought I'd say five years ago, is that there are things it's okay to take on faith. Donor reporting happens in log frames, but outcomes happen in people's lives. That may not change the way I do my job, but it does change where my motivation comes from.