Local government transition in five Eastern seaboard South African towns

ABSTRACT

After a period during which central and provincial government questions have dominated the stage, the importance of local government is on the rise in South Africa. This article introduces the challenge of local government establishment by outlining the process proposed by central government actors and by identifying a central dilemma inherent to it – delayed transition at local level.

Subsequently, the ways in which the pre‐election process was conducted in five small towns on the Eastern seaboard are analysed. These case studies were selected since research to date on this question has focused on metropolitan areas rather than on small towns. Analysis centres on the establishment of transitional local authorities rather than on the day‐to‐day business of these authorities — on local government transition rather than on routine operation. In this political (rather than fiscal) context, these case studies reveal tolerance, compliance and co‐operation among local government stakeholder groupings in the smaller towns of the Eastern seaboard – the politics of non‐collaboration and township ungovernability of the mid‐1980s, and of apartheid and Afrikaner separatism of the late 1980s appear, in the five case studies at least, to have all but disappeared.