Monitoring violence prevention

The document examines the gaps in South Africa's violence-prevention M&E framework, noting that government monitoring focuses on financial compliance and service access rather than long-term outcomes. It highlights the reporting burden on NGOs, the lack of a unified national results framework, and the disconnect between administrative data and the lived experiences of communities.

• South Africa lacks a shared national results framework for measuring the activities and outcomes of violence-prevention policies, leading to fragmented reporting across different policy instruments and provincial departments.
• Government monitoring of violence-prevention programmes primarily focuses on outputs and access to services—such as the number of children or families reached—because this data is easily verifiable, rather than tracking qualitative outcomes or the reduction of risk factors.
• The M&E system is heavily driven by financial accountability and the Public Finance Management Act of 1999, turning reporting into a compliance exercise for auditors rather than a tool for assessing programme effectiveness.
• There is a systemic failure to integrate the outcome data and evaluations from NGOs into national reporting, meaning the actual contribution of community-based interventions to violence prevention is not adequately recorded.
• NGOs face a significant administrative and financial burden to meet government reporting requirements, which are often not covered by the limited state funding provided for services.
• The rigid nature of public finance systems and service level agreements hinders the agility of NGOs, making it difficult for them to reallocate funds to respond to emergent community needs, such as those arising during the Covid-19 pandemic.

APA

Amisi, M. M. (2021). Monitoring violence prevention. Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/ monitoring-vp-rev.pdf

Chicago

Amisi, Matodzi M. Monitoring violence prevention. Institute for Security Studies, 2021. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/ monitoring-vp-rev.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Amisi |first1=Matodzi M |title=Monitoring violence prevention |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=November 2021 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/ monitoring-vp-rev.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{amisi2021monitoring, author = {Amisi, Matodzi M}, title = {{Monitoring violence prevention}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2021}, month = nov, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/ monitoring-vp-rev.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }