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Columnists
Rebuilding trust in governance

Re-examining the model that has sparked a wave of community protests is a window of opportunity to introduce a genuinely consultative one

October 10, 2007 Edition 1

The wave of community protests that have racked the country since 2004 continues to gain momentum.

In Durban, two shack dwellers’ protests have been violently put down by the police in less than a week, and in Cape Town the stand-off between Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and 5 000 residents of the Joe Slovo settlement is becoming more tense.

We have witnessed police action that appears indistinguishable from that of the 1980s and strong statements of condemnation of police violence from senior church leaders and international human rights organisations.

The cabinet has been widely derided for setting up a committee to investigate the causes of the protests when the protesters have made the reasons for taking to the streets crystal clear.

Many development experts are arguing that the fundamental problem is not complex or difficult to understand – it is simply a lack of genuine public participation in local government.

The internationally renowned South African historian and activist Martin Legassick recently made this point in a highly publicised exchange of letters with Sisulu with regard to the N2 Gateway project in Cape Town, the project that has resulted in an attempt to forcibly remove 5 000 people from the Joe Slovo settlement.

Legassick noted: “The NGO Development Action Group, which has worked with government on housing, wrote as long ago as 2004-5 in its annual report that ‘the top-down approach in the N2 project undermines its overall sustainability. The casual, continued and increasing practice of excluding people from decision-making about development processes that directly affect their lives is an obstacle that communities are unlikely to tolerate for much longer’.”

Prescient

As is now well known the Development Action Group’s analysis proved prescient. Top-down development led, as it so often does, to a total break-down in trust between a community and the government it had voted for. But why was this analysis not heeded at the time? And why did a government that came to power on the back of a mass democratic struggle think that people would accept unilateral top-down decision making?

Amid this mess the Department of Provincial and Local Government is undertaking a review of the Local Government White Paper. A consultative process has begun with the public expected to make input in the process.

The department argues that the decision to review the policy on local government is in response to “the expectation of all South Africans, like citizens of any other country, to have the right to a more responsive, accountable, efficient, equitable and affordable government and a better quality of service”. By the end of 2008, we are expecting to see a review report on local government.

According to the department, the process draws on lessons of practice in South Africa’s era of democracy, but perhaps understandably fails to acknowledge that the policy review process is simply informed by the kinds and types of protest we have seen in Khutsong, Durban and Cape Town.

Some may also point out that, while the efforts at consulting the public around the review process may not be entirely adequate, there clearly is an attempt to get public input in this policy review.

This review is not an isolated crack in the edifice of top-down policy planning and implementation. For instance it is also known that after years of shack dwellers’ protests the eThekwini Municipality is now undertaking an internal review of its housing policy.

Local government is a key point of contact between people and the state.

Trust

That contact is often direct and quite personal. It is here that trust is either built or destroyed. People don’t expect to be able to discuss their issues with the president or premier, but they certainly do expect to be heard when they have things to say about the implementation of policies in their own neighbourhoods.

There have been many problems with local government, including a lack of capacity, too much influence over service provision by party and business interests and, in some instances, outright corruption. But the one consistent problem is a technocratic top-down approach to policy formulation and implementation that assumes that experts should make unilateral decisions on behalf of communities.

This kind of approach has been tried, and rejected after decades of painful experience in places such as Porto Allegre (Brazil) and Kerala (India).

The wave of community protests across South Africa indicates the clear rejection of top-down local governance here too.

The review process is a window of opportunity, which, if used correctly, could reorientate local government towards a genuinely consultative model.

This in turn could rebuild trust between poor communities and the local state, allowing us to move forward with a genuine development partnership. It is clear that the present model of local government is failing badly. A lot hangs on this review.