amandla.mobi launched its first campaign in June 2014. The campaign was run with young people from townships across Ekurhuleni, in isiZulu, using USSD and SMS and focused on youth unemployment.  

Since then amandla.mobi has grown into a national movement of over half a million people, with members in every province. We’ve run over 300 campaigns and worked with over 40 community organisations, NGOs and social movements. 

Together, our team, volunteers, partners and members have amplified the voices of Black women from low-income backgrounds.

Some of our most significant victories include:

1. Stop using R-5 assault rifles campaign: Run with Gun Free South Africa, the campaign saw our former Police Minister create a Task Team to address police brutality and the banning of R-5 rifles from crowd control, and remove R-5s from public order policing in the meantime;

2. Justice for Marikana campaign: amandla.mobi members organise 77 community events across the country to demand justice for Marikana. This helped force eTV to agree to screen Marikana documentary Miners Shot Down, and more recently government has committed to compensation;

3. Tax justice campaign: With Oxfam and the Economic Justice Network, we put pressure on Finance Minister Nene who agreed to attend a key international summit to curb illicit financial flows, and Finance Minister Gordhan announced new regulations.

4. Solidarity with Fees Must Fall campaign: Helped stop the proposed increase of university fees in 2016, and forced the Department of Higher Education and Training to release their ‘no-fee varsity’ report, which provides a policy platform for reforming higher education funding. On a local level we helped Durban University of Technology students get their qualifications released so they could begin looking for employment;

5. Scrap the Virgin Bursaries campaign: Successfully maintained pressure to get the virgin bursaries scheme scrapped in uThukela District Municipality;

6. SABC censorship campaign: Worked with SOS Coalition, Media Monitoring Africa and Freedom of Expression Institute to successfully put enough public pressure on the SABC and ICASA to overturn a SABC censorship policy and reinstate 7 journalists who had been fired, as well as build enough public pressure for President Zuma to sign the Special Investigation Unit proclamation to allow for investigations into corruption;

7. Data Must Fall campaign: Built pressure to ensure government and regulators including ICASA and the Competition Commission to initiate inquiries. We ensured over 44,000 submissions were made which resulted in new regulation benefiting at least 20 million South African pre-paid users who’s bundles will no longer expire after 30 days and who now have the choice to opt into expensive out-of-bundle rates.

8. Sugary drinks tax campaign: Together with our partners HEALA, Health-E and Priceless we ran a 12 month campaign resulting in Parliament passing and the Presidency signing into law a tax on sugary drinks in order to curb type 2 diabetes and other non-communicable diseases.

9. Axe the tax on our periods campaign: Successfully campaigned to have VAT removed from sanitary products. We also successfully forced government to allocate budget for free sanitary pads at low-income schools.

10. Increase the Child Support Grant: Over half a million people added their name to this campaign, and President Ramaphosa announced a top-up of the grant. This campaign victory is extremely significant as it has directly impacted the lives of over 18 million children and 11 million caregivers.