The CSA has as its vision the institutionalisation of the right to social accountability and the realisation of social and economic rights through the effective management of public resources. The CSA seeks to achieve this vision in South Africa and the Southern Africa region by generating, disseminating and sharing knowledge about the right to social accountability and the tools necessary to give effect to this right.
 
The CSA hopes to emulate the example of the environmental movement in its efforts to institutionalise the right to social accountability. Whereas the concept of citizens having a right to a clean and sustainable environment was perceived as the esoteric view of a small fringe of environmental activists after its inception in the 1960s, this concept has since been entrenched within the curriculum of international universities. A range of courses (including environmental education, environmental law, environmental history, environmental health and environment and society) have since served to regularise and normalise the concept of environmental rights such that these have now become part of the common-sense thinking of many societies.
 
The philosophical approach to be adopted by the CSA, as indicated above, rests on the contention that citizens have a fundamental and inalienable right to obtain explanations and justifications from those in positions of power about the management of public resources and the integrity of their conduct. Citizens’ recognition of this right, however, is a necessary but insufficient condition for their improved participation in governance. The realisation of the right to social accountability requires the ability of citizens to engage in a number of demand-side monitoring approaches and requires the practical use of a range of evidence-based monitoring and advocacy tools.
 
For this reason, over the coming three-year period, the CSA will undertake a series of consultations with CSO leaders and interested academics across eleven SADC countries (including South Africa). During the course of these consultations the CSA will expose these potential change-agents to the right to social accountability and a range of applied social accountability monitoring and advocacy skills. The CSA will provide various forms of training to interested civic actors on the right to social accountability, including an introductory course on the fundamentals of monitoring social accountability and a set of advanced course on social accountability monitoring (drawn from the PSAM’s monitoring methodology).
 
The CSA also aims to generate a dialogue with regional academics around the right to social accountability and the need for current students and future civic and political leaders to acquire the skills necessary to give effect to this right. In the interests of disseminating these skills it will provide free access to its training and academic learning materials to interested regional academics seeking to replicate these materials in regional universities. Over the longer term the CSA aims to offer its support to regional academics seeking to implement social accountability academic or training programmes in the region.

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