Social movements can bring real political change
November 9, 2008
 By Vuyo Jack
The recent victory in the US presidential election by Barack Obama highlights the success of a movement approach versus an organisational approach.
The formation of the new party in South Africa, provisionally named Shikota by the Mail & Guardian, may be experiencing the early stages of the movement approach. Its success is yet to be seen.
This theory of the movement versus the organisational approach is advocated by Parker Palmer, who was involved in his youth in the civil rights movement and, lately, in educational reform in the US.
The organisational approach to change is premised on the notion that bureaucracies set the rules and define the limits of social reality within which change can occur. Organisations are essentially arrangements of power.
Palmer describes the organisational approach as entrenching patterns of corporate power against fragile images of change harboured by a minority of individuals. The match is inherently unfair.
Constrained by this model, people with a vision for change may devote themselves to persuading power holders to see things their way, which drains energy away from the vision and breeds resentment when "permission" is not granted.
Palmer notes: "When organisations seem less interested in change than in preservation (which is, after all, their job), would-be reformers are likely to give up if the organisational approach is the only one they know."
The movement approach involves resisting the prevailing powers in organisations.
The movement mentality, far from being defeated by organisational resistance, takes energy from opposition. Opposition validates the audacious idea that change must come.
Palmer has identified four stages in the life of a movement:
n Isolated individuals decide to stop leading "divided lives";
n These people discover each other and form groups for mutual support;
n Empowered by community, they learn to translate "private problems" into public concerns; and
n Alternative rewards sustain the movement's vision, which may force the conventional reward system to change.
The first stage is where people choose integrity. This is when individuals forgo the comfort of an organisation that may require them to compromise their integrity, and that leads them to live divided lives.
This step is exemplified in the action of Rosa Parks in 1955, when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white person because, she said, she was "tired of giving in". This action sparked the civil rights movement.
In the Obama campaign, Americans were fed up with eight years of Republican rule and voted individually for change.
The second step is the formation of support groups to give people a forum to vent their frustrations. The mutual support provided here is important to build a critical mass to take the movement forward.
This was seen in the formation of the ANC movement in 1912 as a broad church of activists from across the spectrum who were sick of racism and colonialism.
More recently, some people argue, the ANC has moved away from the movement approach to an organisational approach since becoming the governing party. This has led to a breakaway party being formed that is seemingly trying to revive the movement approach.
On the economic front, the black economic empowerment (BEE) movement was started by the Black Management Forum (BMF) in 1997 in Mafikeng. Black businesspeople and managers were fed up with the lack of progress in transforming the organisational structures of established businesses.
The civil rights movement and the ANC used branch structures to organise themselves. The Obama campaign used the internet to mobilise different people who had concerns about the political status quo in the US. The BMF established the BEE Commission to investigate the concerns around the ongoing economic hegemony.
The third stage is taking the issues to the greater public. This is where the message is spread to a greater number of people. The media is an important tool for this step. The success of the internet in the Obama campaign has spurred other political groupings to look at ways of using technology for their own purposes.
The last step is the alternative rewards that the members of the movement receive. In the ANC's case it was the ending of apartheid injustice, winning the elections, and governing the country. The reward is similar in the Obama campaign. Regarding Shikota, the jury is still out.
Ultimately, it seems the movement approach can work to foster change. However, there is always the risk of a movement turning into the organisation it opposed. That is the nature of organisational cycles.
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