'Living inside the movement': The Right2Know campaign, South Africa

Abstract

Abstract:The Right2Know (R2K) campaign was initiated to protect access to information and, more broadly, freedom of expression in South Africa. The campaign is structured at national and provincial levels and is a 'democratic activist driven' organisation mobilising activists, supporters and allied organisations. R2K activists describe their own organisation as a hybrid, combining features of formal hierarchy with the more fluid and open characteristics of social movements. More widely, analysts view 'such hybrid protest formations as organisational configurations that might check cyclical processes in which social movements decline after initial phases of mobilisation'. This paper focuses on R2K's experience to test whether its hybrid character has helped it to retain vitality and resist bureaucratisation.