SAFOD

Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled

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History

In the early sixties there were already institutions or “rehabilitation centres” in some countries in Southern Africa that were constructed or created to look after or take care of people with disabilities. The management of these institutions was done without consultation or involvement of the people with disabilities themselves.

As a result of this lack of consultation, a group of inmates (as they were referred to at that time) who lived in one of the institutions in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, decided to liberate or free themselves from this “oppression”.

 Thus the Council for the Welfare of the Disabled (CWD) was formed in the early 1970s to be the voice of people with disabilities in Zimbabwe. The CWD which was in 1984 renamed the National Council of Disabled Persons of Zimbabwe (NCDPZ) was registered in terms of the Welfare Act (now Private Voluntary Organisations Act) on 17 April 1975.

The attainment of independent rule in Zimbabwe in 1980 created more space and opportunity for the spread of the philosophy of self-representation by people with disabilities not only within the new independent state but throughout the length and breadth of Southern Africa where formation of organisations of people with disabilities and other self-help groups spread like a veld fire.

In 1986 the Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled (SAFOD) was formed by disabled people for disabled people as a federation of non-governmental disability organizations in the Southern Africa Development Coordinating Conference (SADCC) countries; and at that time representatives of anti-apartheid disabled persons in South Africa and Namibia were accepted as members of SAFOD. The abolition of apartheid and subsequent attainment of independent rule in Namibia and South Africa in 1992 and 1994 respectively, reinforced SAFOD’s resolve to build a strong movement of people with disabilities in Southern Africa.
 

“Nothing about us  – without us”.