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elected in public meetings for a period of five years, and in that way their term of operation corresponds to that of the municipal councillors. Ward committees have to be chaired by the elected ward councillor. The IDP is a‘ single, inclusive and strategic plan’ for the development of a municipal area that has to be developed every five years and reviewed annually with the participation of the public. Ward committee structures and community participation are critical institutional features of the democratic innovation being attempted in South African local government.
Literature on public participation in South African local government raises a number of challenges about ward committees and participation in the IDP process.
Ward Committees as Participatory Structures
With regard to the ward committees, there seems to be consensus that they do not work as planned, to the extent of being dysfunctional. 22 This leads to some people finding other ways of participating despite these legislated structures. The poor protests on the streets, the rich goes to courts of law, and the level of clientelist practices rises.
Piper and Deacon’ s research found that ward committees are not the independent structures for participation in local government that the legislation intended them to be, and that they cannot supply the‘ constructive form of accountability and responsiveness’ that would be helpful for the consolidation of democracy in South Africa. 23 Ward committees are dysfunctional, and where they are functional, they remain under the influence of local political party agendas, and this party dominance erodes their capacity to keep party councillors accountable. 24 This political party influence, however, does not make ward committees obsolete for extending participation as they can still facilitate that many people’ s voices get heard in municipal decision making. The problem lies in that the participation will voice views that are consistent with the political party, instead of views that emanate from the local community. 25
There is also an argument that ward committees are too dependent to be a reliable and effective forum for participation as they are caught up in‘ dependency relations’ with ward councillors, political parties and the municipality itself, and this threaten to cause them not to
22
Piper, Laurence and Roger Deacon.“ Too Dependent to Participate: Ward Committees and Local Democratisation in South Africa”. Local Government Studies, 35( 4)( 2009): 415-433; Everatt, David, Hein Marais and Nobayethi Dube.“ Participation … for what Purpose? Analysing the Depth and Quality of Public Participation in the Integrated Development Planning Process in Gauteng”. South African Journal of Political Studies, 37( 2-3)( 2010): 223-249; Benit-Gbaffou, Claire. and Oldfield, Sophie.( 2011).“ Accessing the State: Everyday Practices and Politics in Cities of the South”. Journal of African and Asian Studies, 46( 5)( 2011): 445- 452.
23
Piper,“ Too Dependent to Participate”, 79.
24
Everatt,“ Participation … for what”; Piper,“ Too Dependent to Participate”.
25
Piper,“ Too Dependent to Participate”.