By Nico Bezuidenhout and Benjy Mautjane

This article was first published by CARE-SA-Lesotho

The challenges Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in South Africa have faced in redefining their roles since 1994 are mirrored to a large extent by the ways in which CSOs define their roles at local government level.  Before 1994, CSO contact with government was mostly focused on bringing about a change of government.  From 1994 to roughly 2000, CSOs played an important role in assisting government in raising awareness of the implications of the new dispensation, while the period from 2000 up to the present has seen CSOs not only assisting with service delivery, but also playing an increasingly vocal advocacy and monitoring role.

New legislation such as the Constitution, the Municipal Systems Act and the Municipal Structures Act create space for public participation in local governance through specific mechanisms such as Ward Committees and Integrated Development Planning (although these do not preclude other forms of public participation, such as “imbizos” and sector forums created by CSOs) and demand that local government promotes public participation.  In addition to this, CSOs are called upon to make input into policy developments such as Provincial Growth and Development strategies.

In Idasa’s view there is, in spite of all these changes, still considerable scope for increasing public participation in local government in line with the SCAPE Civil Society and Governance Relational Rights approach.  This approach emphasises the role of CSOs in promoting and advocating for the interests of Rights Holders (citizens and households) with Duty Bearers at all levels of government.  Our work with CSOs at municipal level is based on an analysis of the respective responses of, on the one hand, local governments and, on the other hand, CSOs to the changes within the sphere of local government.

Some local authorities do well in promoting public participation, as evidenced by the fact that budgets are set aside specifically for the purposes of promoting public participation and support to the formal participatory structures.  Others are willing to fulfil the mandate of promoting public participation, but struggle to do this due to lack of administrative capacity, the availability of councillors (who work part-time) and the infrastructure for councillors to service constituencies, for instance at Ward level.  In some cases there is a lack of understanding of the difference between party-political consultations and “broad community” consultations.  This could have the effect of alienating organisations and individuals who are not formal allies of political parties, especially CSOs which are wary of being too closely identified with a specific political party.

As already mentioned, CSOs sometimes find it difficult to participate due to the party political nature of consultations, while others display what can be called “opportunistic tendencies”, where CSO leaders use their organisations as a vehicle for gaining political power and CSOs see themselves as opposition to elected councillors.

More often, though, the formal mechanisms created to promote public participation actually hinder participation by CSOs.  These mechanisms are normally structured along Ward lines, and few CSOs are ward-based.  Similarly, most municipalities use Ward Committees as their IDP participatory structures.  Traditional community-based structures such as civic associations and residents’ associations face the threat of being sidelined as more attention is given to Ward Committees.  Where CSOs do participate in these formal structures, participation is often limited to a number of larger, well resourced CSOs, for instance in the IDP forums.

Finally, some of the problems CSOs encounter, relate to the level of understanding of the nature and time-lines of participatory processes such as IDPs, where CSOs that do not understand these well often find it difficult to make their voices heard.

Idasa’s work at local government level focuses on enhancing the ability of CSOs to participate by addressing some of the obstacles to participation mentioned above.  At the same time, some efforts also aim to enhance the capacity of municipalities to promote Civil Society participation.

Ideally facilitation and training workshops with CSOs and municipalities should be based on the specific needs of communities.  However, even when needs assessments are conducted, our experience is that most Idasa interventions aim to achieve some or all of the following objectives:

In future, more attention will also be given to proposal writing and project analysis to enable CSOs to play a more direct role in local government projects.

On the local government side, Idasa also assists municipalities to work more effectively with CSOs.  An example is Tzaneen Municipality, where the roll-out of a project for CSOs in the area, as well as an assessment of the public participation strategies of the municipality are about to commence.

While Idasa will continue following this model to promote public participation in local government, and while anecdotal evidence and informal feedback suggest that this type of assistance to CSOs does indeed lead to increased participation, Idasa plans to build follow-up workshops for all CSOs, which have participated so far, into the work plans for the next period.  Through these workshops we hope to not only receive formal feedback and measure change in the extent of participation, but also identify further obstacles to public participation and consider ways to deal with these obstacles.

For more, contact Nico Bezuidenhout at the Institutional Capacity Building Unit at IDASA.