More than the armed struggle, international sanctions and the underground struggle, it was mass struggles that most contributed to bringing the apartheid state to its knees. And it is mass struggles both in cooperation and in conflict with the state that will ultimately shape the content of our post-apartheid South Africa.
The state must engage creatively with these struggles. But mass struggles must also creatively engage and transform the state, not see it as a permanent obstacle.The state and the people, in short, need each other – and they most certainly need to strengthen their relationship.
I will today look at one, if crucial, aspect of this – community participation in local government, in particular what are the challenges, and what are the prospects of strengthening this?
Why is community participation not working well?
- Not enough has been done to foster a culture of community engagement among councillors and especially administrators, as is required by the law. So, many municipalities meet the policy and legislative requirements for community participation in a nominal, compliance-driven, ritualistic manner
- But there are also major funding and capacity challenges
- Ward committees are often dominated by political party activists, sometimes almost becoming adjuncts to party structures or sites of contestation between political factions, instead of representing the diversity of civil society interests in the ward community that they are meant to. Wards, especially in rural areas, are sometimes too large to make for functional ward committees. Many ward committees are hamstrung by the lack of administrative support, resources and training of its members. Most municipalities are unable to pay the out-of-pocket expenses of ward committee members.
- Communities too must take a share of responsibility. Communities do not often use the space for community participation effectively or at all. Of course, residents are not often aware of their rights to participate and the spaces open to them, and municipalities do not always inform them appropriately. But this is not enough of an explanation. Partly, it is necessary for community organisations to improve their understanding of the local government system and how to engage with municipalities.
- As much as community participation is crucial to the success of municipalities, we should guard against romanticising it. Communities are far from monolithic and immune from capture by elites who primarily represent their own narrow interests. Many communities, particularly in informal settlements, are very fractured. They are highly contested, complex and multi-layered, with fluctuating leaderships, with different strata or factions constantly competing for hegemony. Exactly how representative of the communities the leaders are and how stable, is not always clear. Identifying needs, priorities and targets in these communities and ensuring participation in implementation of plans, programmes and projects can be difficult. Ensuring effective community participation in these conditions can be very challenging. But it is all the more necessary.
How can we improve community participation
- In the first instance, municipalities should implement much more of what is in the policies and laws. Since they cannot or will not, provincial and national government have to far more actively monitor municipalities and assist them to do so. Assistance with strategies, programmes, capacity, funding and other resources is very important – but it is crucial that councillors and administrators internalise the value of community participation and imbibe a culture of engagement with communities
- Municipalities have to understand that if their aim is to basically get communities to endorse decisions already taken, community participation will not work. It must be directed at ensuring communities have an effective say on decisions affecting them and the space to play a role in implementing them, even if the council is ultimately responsible for governing the municipality. Community participation must serve to strengthen and empower communities. For community participation to work, communities have to see the value of participating through at least some of their reasonable demands being met over time.
- Municipalities should avoid a bureaucratic, technocratic, “one-size-fits-all” approach and be flexible, creative and imaginative in their engagement with communities, using a variety of different processes and structures with different communities and even within the same community.
- There are many things that can be done to create space for more effective community participation. Because of time limits and other constraints I will not be able today to deal with a comprehensive range of the possibilities. I’ll focus mainly on ward committees as they are the most important structures of community participation and have the most potential. Of course IDP Forums, structures of participatory budgeting and other structures of community participation are important, but ward committees, with their base in wards, if transformed and empowered, are key to any strengthened system of community participation in a municipality overall. It is only in the local sphere that we have directly elected public representatives, and it is through ward committees that they can best be held to account and act on the needs and interests of those who voted them, making democracy more than just about voting or being elected once every five years. Many of the proposals raised about ward committees here can be adjusted to strengthen IDP Forums and other structures of community participation.
- Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) has been discussing how to strengthen and empower Ward Committees as part of improving community participation. A “refined ward committee model to deepen democracy”’ is now output 5 of the outcome 9 delivery agreement the CoGTA Minister has signed with the President. No final proposals have been made on how to change the Ward Committees.The ANC is to discuss a new Ward Committee system at the December 2012 Conference and will provide guidelines for the government to take the matter forward.The proposals will be discussed with the fullest range of stakeholders.
- Composition: Consideration needs to be given to amending the legislation to ensure that Ward Committees do not comprise political party activists but represent a range of civil society interests, including residents, ratepayers, business, trade union, women’s, youth,taxi, sport and cultural organisations.Traditional Leaders should also be in ward committees where relevant. Instead of the current 10, ward committees could comprise up to 30 people and set up sub-committees and area structures, especially in geographically large wards. Within national framework regulations, MECs could provide guidelines on what criteria to use in determining the issues of numbers, diversity of groups, elections procedures and the like.Ward committees should have Deputy Chairpersons who are civil society representatives who can take responsibility for the ward committee when the councillor is not available. Consideration also needs to be given to proportional list councillors also serving ex-officio on ward committees.
- Expanded role: Through legislative amendments, policy changes and other means, ward committees need to be given an expanded role. Within a clear framework and in an incremental, experiential manner, municipalities should consider delegating some limited powers to ward committees, as allowed for in terms of the law.But even without delegations Ward Committees could do much. Ward committees could take also responsibility for ward development plans that feed into and respond to the IDPs. Ward Committees could draw up annual profiles of the ward community. They could also oversee the delivery of services and development in the Ward, including possibly contributing to the municipality’s assessment of the quality of the services provided by a contractor before the contractor is fully paid out. Where possible, within clear guidelines, municipalities should incrementally allocate resources to “enable ward committees to undertake development in their wards”, as is provided for in the law. Ward committees could, at least, take some responsibility to fix potholes, pavements, street lights and similar issues, using local labour. Of course, the allocation of funding and resources and power to employ labour could produce tensions within ward committees and communities, and will need to be managed adroitly.
- Municipalities obliged to consider ward committee decisions: Consideration needs to be given to amending the legislation to oblige municipalities to consider proposals from ward committees and inform them of their responses. Within reasonable limits, ward committees should be given reasons for why their proposals were turned down, should they request this.
- Frequency of meetings: Ward committees could be required to meet at least once a month.Meetings could be chimed to fit in with meetings of the Council or other important structures or committees of the municipality. Meetings could, for example, fit into the municipality’s annual cycles on IDPS and budgets. The ward development plan could provide a framework for the programme and operational plan of the ward committee.
- Accountability to ward community: The ward committee could be required to hold at least 4 ward community meetings and interact with the community regularly in other ways.
- Code of Conduct: It might be useful to have a Code of Conduct for ward committee members.
- Annual reports: Where possible, ward committees could be required to present annual reports on their activities and their future plans and programmes.
- Municipal administrators attendance: Where possible, an appropriate member of the municipal administration could attend ward committee meetings to assist with processing issues, providing information and being of help in similar ways. If it is somebody relatively senior with some decision-making-power that would be even better. This would be particularly useful where municipalities have decentralised regional administrations which could allocate representatives to clusters of ward committees.
- CDWs' role: Consideration needs to be given to attaching a Community Development Workers (CDW) to each ward committee to act as a general secretary or organiser of the committee while continuing with other aspects of their work linking people actively with government in all three spheres to improve service delivery and development.
- Technical support: Municipalities should provide administrative and other support, including for the training of ward committee members.
- Municipality oversight: The Public Participation Unit (PPU) in the Speaker’s Office could monitor support and report on the functioning of ward committees. Part of the key performance indicators (KPIs) of the PPU staff could be the performance of the ward committees. For the PPUs to be effective, they will have to take into account the complexities and contradictions of communities, some of which were mentioned earlier. Where funding and other resources are provided the municipality must actively monitor that ward committees use them productively and effectively in terms of the law and policies. If ward committees do not function effectively, municipalities could consider dissolving them as they are empowered to do in terms of the law.Learning the lessons, municipalities must then assist to create effective ward committees.
- For ward committees to be properly effective, other forms and structures of community participation also have to be effective. The proposals presented here on ward committees need further discussion. Some of them are part of the preparations for discussion at the ANC’s 2012 conference. Obviously, there will also be discussions in the public domain on these and other proposals. We need the widest range of stakeholders involved. You are more than welcome to engage on the issues.
Enquiries:
Vuyelwa Vika
Cell: 082 877 3898
