Movements Toward Inclusion: Integrated National Disability Strategies and the Role of DPOs in Sub-Saharan Africa
Creators: name: Crow, Casey Lynn
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2015

description: In 1998 Deputy President Thabo Mbeki spoke at the official opening of the Perkins
Brailler Project in South Africa saying, An image the world will remember of the first democratic elections in South Africa in
1994 is that of thousands of disabled people queuing at voting stations across the country
under the hot African sun. They came to exercise their right to vote under the most
difficult of circumstances. They came in wheelchairs, on crutches, navigating their way
by means of white cane, in wheelbarrows and even physically carried on the backs of
relatives and friends. Why did they come?
They came because they knew that the policy and practice of apartheid had only served to
compound their experience of discrimination, indignity and poverty as a result of
society’s response to their differentness. They came to participate in one of the most
empowering experiences ever. They came because they had a vision of a better
dispensation under new conditions of liberation and democracy (Mbeki 1998, p.46).
In 1997, South Africa adopted the White Paper on the Integrated National Disability Strategy
(INDS). The INDS stands as one of the most comprehensive and progressive disability strategies
in the world, one that seeks to integrate disability protections into every level of society. The
adoption of the INDS served as the culmination of years of activism by people with disabilities
in South Africa, activists who fought against the discrimination and marginalization inflicted by
an inaccessible society, as well as the compounded oppression of the apartheid regime. The
global disability movement has since taken on the slogan of Disabled People South Africa,
“Nothing about us, without us!” and has held the country as a model for disability inclusion and
forward-looking policy (Disability and Social Change 2006).
I focus on the INDS because it takes a mainstream approach to disability rights, and
generally is used as a blueprint for disability rights policies the government will adopt in the
future. The INDS also signals a government’s commitment to establishing disability protections
in various sectors, and increases pressure inside and outside the state for the enforcement of such
protections. Although it is unclear to what extent these policies lead to concrete behavioral
change, the adoption of an INDS serves as a productive first step toward the institutionalization
of disability rights.
My thesis seeks to understand under what conditions governments adopt an INDS. In
order to do this, I examine the various strategies employed by disabled people’s organizations
(DPOs) in Sub Saharan Africa and whether or not these strategies result in the adoption of an
integrated national disability strategy. I hypothesize that the adoption of an INDS is dependent
upon DPO partnerships with a broader civil society movement, and DPO strategies that engage
cross-disability networks and advocacy methods informed by the social model of disability. I use
South Africa as a theory-building case, for this reason I will explain the events leading up to the
drafting of South Africa’s INDS in detail as an illustration of my variables. My thesis explores
the factors that contributed to the adoption of South Africa’s INDS, and whether or not these
factors are present in other Sub Saharan African nations, including Kenya, Zambia, and Uganda.