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‘participatory governance’. 3 This is meant to change a longstanding culture of councillors and
municipal officials taking decisions without community involvement. In this regard, it introduces
a number of democratic innovations.
Democratic innovations refer to ‘institutions that have been specifically designed to
increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process’ and
represent a departure from participation as limited to only elections. 4
These democratic innovation designs are judged on whether they realise four desirable
qualities or democratic goods: inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgement and
transparency. Inclusiveness refers to the realisation of political equality in presence and voice
within the design. Popular control focuses on the extent to which participants can influence
policy decisions. Considered judgement is about whether the participants understand the
policy issue that they are dealing with and the perspectives of others. Transparency is about
the openness of the proceedings to scrutiny by both the participants and the broader public. 5
However, there are challenges that confront the implementation of the participatory
legislation. 6 A majority of South Africans remain ‘passive citizens’ who are ‘recipients’ and not
participants in governance. 7 There is, in some cases, reluctance on the part of municipalities
to allow for public participation as they continue with the top-down mode of planning. 8 Councils
are confronted with a dilemma of how far community participation should go without the
municipality surrendering its governing responsibility and risking ‘open contestation, revolt,
conflict’ and fierce competition from civil society, when councillors have recently established
political legitimacy through elections. 9 This is compounded by municipal staff’s lack of skills in
engaging communities to participate in. 10 This is a challenging task as it involves some form
of redistribution of power. A further complicating factor in South Africa is the historic and
continuing racialised divisions. This complexity has an effect on participation as Jun and Bryer
cite a number of scholars who have argued that ‘racial heterogeneity is associated with lower
levels of participation’. 11 This is another complication for South Africa as the ‘prehistory of
cooperation or conflict’ (in other worse, the initial trust level) has an effect on the rate of
Kevin Barichievy et al, ““Assessing ‘Participatory Governance’ in
Local Government: A Case of Two South African Cities”. Politeia, 24(3) (2005): 370-393.
4 Graham Smith, Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1 .
5 Smith, Democratic Innovations, 1.
6 Mathekga, “Participatory Government”.
7 Mathekga, “Participatory Government”, 89.
8 Davids, Participatory Development.
9 Claire Benit-Gbaffou, “Politicising and Politicking Community Participation”, in Popular Politics in
South African Cities: Unpacking Community Participation, edited by Claire Benit-Gbaffou (Pretoria:
HSRC Press, 2015), 2.
10 Benit-Gbaffou, “Politicising and Politicking”.
11 Kyu-Nahm Jun and Thomas Bryer, “Facilitating Public Participation in Local Governments in Hard
Times”. American Review of Public Administration (2016): 6.
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