Pioneers of Participation

Mzwanele Zulu (center), a community organiser in Joe Slovo, gives a tour to participants of the Pioneers of Participation gathering.

Pioneers of Participation

According to the residents of the Joe Slovo township, the trouble started when President Thabo Mbeki peered out his window while cruising down the N2 highway and noted that the cluster of shacks - the place many there had called home for 12 years - was an eye-sore for visitors arriving from the airport.

True or not, two years after the alleged incident, the South African Cabinet approved the N2 Gateway project, intended to beautify the city's main entrance, and to modernise the human settlements along the corridor.

The shack dwellers of Joe Slovo – thousands of families – were given a choice. They could purchase a new home in the area for 200,000 Rand (about £16,000), or they could accept government relocation to Delft, a community 40km outside of Cape Town where there are no jobs, few schools, no railway line and a higher rate of crime. Community members refer to it as a "dumping ground."

The story is a parable of the state of local governance in southern Africa, according to a group of local councillors, government officials and civil society leaders that gathered at a week-long meeting in Cape Town. The gathering, called ‘Pioneers of Participation’, brought together more than 30 innovative councillors, officials and civil society leaders who are on the front line of democracy, and who recognised much familiar in this story.

According to Laurence Piper, a researcher at the University of the Western Cape, at the core of this parable is the simple but often neglected lesson. “We have learned to rule, but not necessarily to listen. And as a result, we have institutions that are decisive yet deaf, that endeavour to solve the housing crisis, but fail to hear when citizens have found their own solutions,” he wrote recently in the weekly Mail & Guardian.  

Coming from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana, Congo-Kinshasa, Uganda and Kenya, the delegates identified a gamut of common challenges to citizen participation in policy-making and service delivery: gaps in the legal framework, a lack of political will, conflict and violence, problems with the procedures of participation, the presence of ‘gatekeepers’ in the community or government, and the exclusion of marginalised groups.

Resolving these challenges requires a fundamental shift in attitude – from an emphasis on ruling to a form of listening leadership – that must come jointly from political parties, civil society organisations, universities and schools. Above all, all these actors must recognise the energy and innovation emerging from communities and new social movements. 

The point is exemplified by South Africa, where the government has itself been a pioneer in enshrining citizen rights to participation in the constitution, and yet where locally elected leaders by and large been unable or unwilling to play a new role as intermediary.  

The residents of Joe Slovo have chosen to remain close to the city and jobs, and to seek their own solutions to their predicament. It was the community and not government that took the initiative to rebuild homes. Using better materials, homes were rebuilt in a block formation, leaving paths between the neat rows to make the community safer and easier to connect to services. Perhaps then it is not surprising to hear community organiser Mzwanele Zulu say, ‘away with councillors. We want community structures, democratic structures that represent our communities’.

Recognising and rewarding community involvement in governing themselves – the Pioneers concluded – must be central to government efforts to encourage participation. Communities themselves, however, also have a responsibility to leave the door open for collaboration with government officials. In some cases, contentious politics – protests and civil disobedience – are the only option, but communities can achieve more when they find fellow pioneers inside the state.

A full report of the event will be out shortly.