Taking a back seat: the politicization of municipal environmental governance in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Local government (LG) in South Africa (SA) is mandated to provide adequate service delivery and to ensure environmental protection within municipal boundaries. Local Environmental Governance (EG) is influenced by the actions of municipal councils and political leadership, resulting in politicized local EG. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has been gradually losing political power since 1994, and corruption and unprofessionalism in LG have increased and influenced EG. Limited scholars have attempted to examine the in-depth relationship between political dynamics, environmental issues and local municipalities within the political−administrative interface in SA. To address this, we utilize a Political Ecology Approach (PEA) to assess the influence of political dynamics on local EG in the uMzinyathi district and Endumeni local municipalities in SA. A mixed methods approach was utilised. The findings revealed that political dynamics both enabled and impeded local EG. While mainstreaming and alignment to national policy were evident, EG interventions and environmental resources were often co-opted for political canvassing and incentivization, or the relative prioritization of EG was dependent on political mandates. The research contributed to a detailed understanding of how EG ‘takes a back seat’ to political exigencies within a predominately fragile and under functioning LG sphere in SA.

KEYWORDS:

• Politicized
• environmental governance
• political ecology
• political−administrative interface
• local government

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant UID: 112418 and 131570) for their financial assistance for this study, as well as the relevant stakeholders such as the Endumeni and uMzinyathi municipalities that participated in the study. We also humbly thank the peer review authors for their comments, suggestions and feedback of our paper.

Disclosure statement

This study was financially sponsored by the National Research Foundation of South Africa, and this may lead to certain content of the study being licenced to the National Research Foundation of South Africa. I have hereby disclosed these interests fully to Taylor & Francis and have a conflict resolution plan for any potential conflicts resulting from this agreement.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (112418).