The basic twin expectations of government are that NGOs will firstly, continue to act as monitors of the public good and safeguard the interests of the disadvantaged sections of society. This performance of this social watch role requires both transparency and accountability on the part of NGOs. The government's second expectation is that NGOs will assist in expanding access to social and economic services that create jobs and eradicate poverty among the poorest of the poor. This requires cost effective and sustainable service delivery. (Zola Skweyiya quoted in Barnard and Terreblanche, 2001: 17)

For many of the activists … working in different spaces and having different strategies and tactics, there was a binding thread. There was unmitigated opposition to the economic policies adopted by the ANC … Activists spoke of how the right-wing economic policies lead to widespread and escalating unemployment, with concomitant water and electricity cut-offs, and evictions even from the ‘toilets in the veld’ provided by the government in the place of houses. More importantly, there was general agreement that this was not just a question of short-term pain for long-term gain. The ANC had become a party of neo-liberalism. The strategy to win the ANC to a left project was a dead end. The ANC had to be challenged and a movement built to render its policies unworkable. It seems increasingly unlikely that open confrontation with the repressive power of the post-apartheid state can be avoided. (Desai, 2002: 147)