South African local government at crossroads

A year after the November 2021 local government elections on South Africa we reflect on their significance and implications. This is in light of the growing concern about the extent to which local government has evolved into the democratic and developmental local government envisaged in the National Development Plan 2030. This puts into sharp focus the questions of evolving leadership capacities and challenges, institutional effectiveness and its impediments, efficacy of local government in connecting with local communities and local non-state actors. The challenges and prospects of the post-apartheid democratic state and society seem to hang to a large measure on the health of local government.

South Africa's electoral democracy especially at the local government level has encountered many dynamics in the past three decades. Among these are power alternation in metropolitan municipalities, the replacement of major parties by new ones, expanded ways of public participation, and experiments with coalition governments. It is a level of government that benefits from more diverse electoral system than levels above since citizens have a chance of electing their councillors directly.

Yet the country is undergoing stress tests whose effects are to be determined in the future. Each election is now a sort of a referendum on the whole electoral democracy. It is a yardstick for the very idea of democratic and developmental local governance. It is at this level of government that the democratic experience is verified and where the capacity to deliver a better life for all is demonstrated.

The 2021 local government election took place in the backdrop of declining trust in public institutions, declining levels of service delivery, weakening leadership and stability in local government, economic malaise on the back of Covid-19 impacts and generally low economic growth for a decade or more. New campaign finance legislation and splinters within the major parties, decline of the main opposition party, the emergence of new political movements, a dithering governing party, all contributing to the complexity of local electoral politics.

Under these conditions, levels of poverty have increased, unemployment and a resultant disillusionment especially among youth has grown and a sense of grievance against the local authority has spread.

The onset of elections amid this climate presents a potentially once-in-a-generation opportunity to understand the South African political process from below. Potential insights in this regard include patterns in political campaigning, within-party dynamics, political economy dimensions, leadership, and the role of technologies and ‘new media’ in South African democracy. Additionally, a comparative analysis of the South African experience with those of others holds promise for sharpening trends and bringing about analytical clarity.

This special edition provides the platform for researchers to discuss the local government elections of November 2021 and its ramifications on local governance and development. Papers included in this edition represent a variety of perspectives on this subject, best read together to come close to a state of academic debate about local government today. We hope that this discussion will provoke more discussions on themes covered by papers included and those excluded. The subject of local government will need volumes of works to tackle adequately.

We wish to thank the authors who submitted papers in response to our Call and worked hard to respond to reviewers. We appreciate the reviewers who took on the task of assessing the scientific quality of submissions. Thanks also to the editors of the journal for their guidance and support.