Challenging Elite Understandings of Citizen Participation in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This paper explores why official participation mechanisms and donor induced participation programmes do not work for ordinary citizens to make their voices heard in local governance. Referring to the South African context, it is argued firstly, that, as technologies of governance, participatory mechanisms do not increase local democracy because they are not designed to do so. Where democratic participation seeks to increase citizens’ influence in decision-making and change power relations, participation as technology seeks to improve programmes’ effectiveness. The latter will not be able to dislodge the power hierarchies prevalent in the local government space. Secondly, development agencies and government work within predetermined results-based logics, where lines of accountability lead to donor countries or heads of department rather than back to the citizen. Finally, participatory technologies have persisted to inspire governing elites, as ‘participation’ serves as powerful metaphor to keep the narrative of the active citizen in local governance alive, and to maintain partnerships with international donor agencies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 ‘War rooms’ have been introduced in for example Gauteng under the name ‘Ntirhisano’. A similar initiative has been launched in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu Natal under the name of ‘Operation Vuka Sisebente’.

2 Civics are local civil society structures that are associated with the localised civil society networks of the UDF during the struggle against struggle. Many of these have become affiliated with the South African National Civic Movement (SANCO) that was formed as an umbrella organisation in 1992.

3 This is an own translation of: ‘Es scheint geradezu grotesk anzumuten, dass man freiwilliges Engagement und Beteiligung von Gruppen voraussetzt und erwartet, um bspw. sein persönliches Umfeld zu gestalten, deren Lebenslagen so konstituiert sind, dass bereits eine Teilhabe am alltäglichen gesellschaftlichen Leben nur marginal möglich ist’.