I have always held that a Non Government Organisation (NGO) is simply an organisation which is governed by a Constitution as opposed to a Non Profit Company (NPC) which is governed by a Memorandum of Incorporation. I would state categorically, that a NPC is registered at CIPC, but that an NGO is not registered. They can both, however, register as a Non Profit Organisation (NPO) with the Department of Social Development.

We own Gallagher Combined School NPC and it is registered as a NPO, so I was speaking with some experience. Then along came a client wanting to register their NGO. After I explained that this was not possible, she produced a certificate for another of her NGOs. It was identical to the school’s NPO certificate except that it replaced the words Non Profit Organisation with Non Government Organisation. In both cases the certificate states “registered in terms of the Nonprofit Organisations Act (No. 71 of 1997).

Not to be flustered, I asked if I could step out of the meeting and look up the Act. I downloaded it in .pdf and did a search for the word “Government”. It occurs only once in the entire act and has nothing to do with NGOs. I then searched for NGO. Nothing found.

So here we had a certificate issued in terms of an Act which does not authorise the issue of such a certificate. I have tried to phone the Department on two occasions since and in both cases gave up after listening to some dreadful musak for about 1/2 hour.

No wonder SASSA is such a mess! They can’t read (the Act). They can’t write (their home page spells Gazette as GAZZETTE). So I doubt they can even think.