Wilma de Villiers's Page

Hallo Wilma, my email address is casper@mweb.co.za

Hello Wilma, Thank you for showing interest in my comments and ideas. I would gladly respond to yours. However, I am not an authority on "civil society" and have learned that one should not air your opinion if you don't really know what you are talking about. Of course I have my own opinion, but really, it is not worth much. I hope you will understand. On the Skills Universe issue - I have actually decided to limit my participation because I still feel that one is misusing them as a "free marketing" opportunity when you use your company's name in your comments and because they don't focus on QA of ETD as we do. On the other hand, not identifying yourself would be a waste of time; so yes, one is actually misusing them and this makes me feel unfomfortable. Regards, Hannes Nel

Hi Wilma -

I have read your blogpost and the subsequant value bearing comments of the participants with great interest. Hereafter I visited  the article quoted by Des - also with great interest.

In order for me to understand more about the concept of civil society, I  also looked at what SACSIS (The South African Civil Society Information Centre has to say about the topic.

Des indicated that if it can be seen  as professional associations, religious groups, labour unions, citizen advocacy organisations, that give voice to various sectors of society and enrich public participation in democracies, Skills Portal and Skills Universe can be identified as civil societies.

Further common terms to describe a civil society used are NGO, NPO, charity, voluntary sector and so on.

The Centre for Civil Society at John Hopkins University (London, UK) defines a civil organisation as: "Any organisation whether formal or informal, that are not part of the apparatus of government, that do not distribute profits........that on self-governing, and in which participation is a matter of free choice. Both member-serving and public-serving organisations are included. Embraced within this definition, therefore, are private, not-for-profit health providers, scools, advocacy groups, social service agencies, anti-poverty groups, development agencies, professional associations.......and many more"

As confirmed by Des it is clear that many definitions for civil society exist.

From my perspective both Skills Portal and Skills Universe are the places where all stakeholders in the development of human resources meet. This would include matters of all aspects of the world of work - as pointed out by Sylvia.

I also had a look at the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa.

During the little research done by me on the topic of civil society the first thought that came to my mind was (and perhaps still is) - this has something to do with politics.

However - if you consider all of the above and you also look at civil society from the perspectives highlighted by Des and Sylvia then I support them when they indicate that, based on these perspectives, Skills Portal and Skills Universe can be civil societies. 

Hello Wilma -

Thanks for you good wishes - I appreciate your kind words.

Yes, I will read through your article and give you feedback shortly.

Regards.

Thanks for the quick response Wilma:o)