Recent shocking images of the police shooting at South Africa’s poorest citizens were beamed around the world as people in poor communities were protesting. The damage to the country caused by these images that looked like a flashback to the 1980s is incalculable.
There were more than 6 000 protests in 2005 and one academic has calculated that this makes South Africa “the most protest-rich country in the world”. With the rate of protests at local level currently, we are set to break that record.
However, despite the incredible scale of these protests, analysts have battled to properly understand them. 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 Port Alegre in Brazil and Kerala in India. The wave of community protests across South Africa indicates a clear rejection of top-down local governance here too.
Quite clearly, the people organising and participating in these protests are very seldom given a chance to speak about what they think, what they are doing and why.
We need to remember that democracy is not ruled by experts. That is oligarchy. Democracy is ruled by the people. If we pay attention to the thinking of people organising and participating in these protests, one thing becomes immediately clear. And that is that these protests are in response to a crisis of local democracy rather than a crisis of service delivery.
It is true enough that in most instances failed service or misguided delivery is where things begin to go wrong. But even here the problems with service delivery are often due to a lack of democratic public participation in decision-making.
For instance if people are not consulted about whether it is in their interests to be moved from urban shacks to RDP houses, protest is likely even though service delivery is happening.
But time and again people organising these protests explain that they didn’t take to the streets because of failed or misguided service delivery.
They explain that they took to the streets because there was no way for them to get to speak to government, let alone to get government to listen to them.
For as long as government officials continue to assume that a mandate at the polls gives them a mandate to act in a unilateral and top-down manner for five years, these protests will continue.
Ordinary South Africans had a taste of popular democracy in the great democratic upsurge of the 1980s and expect the post-liberation democracy to take the same popular form — to be ruled by the people rather than by experts. Especially now, with the Zuma administration in power, poor people expect him to be the “service delivery president” because he embodies the aspirations of millions of poor people.
This level of intense social conflict is potentially very damaging to society and could, for instance, be extremely embarrassing come 2010. Imagine if the eyes of the world turn to us to see an action replay of the 1980s with burning tyres, teargas, rubber bullets and pitched battles between the very poor and the police on our streets.
Already both police and protesters are taking an increasingly hard-line stance with very negative social consequences.
These protests are clearly about a crisis of local democracy. It is the nature of local democracy that needs to change.
The government needs to take public participation seriously and to recognise that ordinary people have every right to be part of the deliberations and decision-making that will affect their lives. And commentators and experts, be they in the media, NGOs or the academy, need to learn that they should listen carefully to the voice of the poor rather than just make easy assumptions about what they think people are saying.
Experts would like this crisis to only be about service delivery because then the response to the crisis would be to bring in more expertise. But a crisis of local democracy means less reliance on experts and taking the intelligence and experience of ordinary people more seriously. It means fewer Powerpoint presentations and more community meetings. And we wait anxiously for Minister Shiceka’s turnaround strategy for local government expected by the end of 2009.
This is a joke right?
“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.”
The problem is not the “top-down” approach this critique has been articulated by the left since the 90s – the problem is your assumption about the experts who make “unilateral decisions” – the real problem is that nobody is taking responsibility for any shortcoming and everybody wants to do everything for “the community” – there is a strong delusion about communities in south africa and what they can and what they can’t do.
if the municipalities don’t have the capacity to deliver “bottom-up” i wonder how one can come to the conclusion that the “imagined communities” can.
I never cease to be amazed at what South Africa deems “democracy” – the majority vote elects individuals into seats of power, and these individuals then have free reign to do as they please, even if that means essential national services are run into the ground.
Apartheid wasn’t the cause, apartheid was a symptom and the real illness is an autocratic govt that is not in touch with its people.
“It means fewer Powerpoint presentations and more community meetings.”….or less talk and more action.
How many community meetings would stem the flood of protest marches? How many issues, brought up in such meetings can be addressed for all to see AND at short notice.
How many bodies does the government have in its employ who are prepared to call or attend community meetings in townships and rural areas?
How many bodies does the government has in its employ who still understand the people at the bottom of society’s pile?
A power-point presentation in a first class game lodge, heated rooms, first class dinner seems a far more attractive proposition than driving around in a hostile environment and bombarded with questions to which you have no answers.
Mr Zuma promised us that he would make his boys do the work. He has already been backtracking on the promise of 500.000 jobs by telling us that these would be only temporary jobs.
After 15 years of the same ANC in government and the promise that things would change after Polokwane, people are justifiably becoming impatient.
We might not like the way they show it but we should indeed be listening to their message instead of to the noise of thrashing and breaking windows.
With few exceptions the incoming ANC officials have since 1994 carried on the colonial/apartheid era tradition of patriarchy, to perfection. Entitlement and patriarchy are opposite sides of the same coin.
Entitlement within the leadership structures “I never joined the struggle to be poor” matches the view that “we know best” and the total disregard of the capability of the poorest of the poor making decisions in what is in their best interests.
The lack of any progress in land reform within the former “homelands” or the redistribution of parts of the 30% – 40% of SA land that is currently state owned to the poorest of the poor is a major limitation on resolving the poverty levels at the bottom of the spectrum.
Why – because the ANC power brokers believe that the poor will soon have the land taken from them by unscrupulous capitalists. For sure this may be true for a small percentage but in my view we should never underestimate the fact that 90% of people will make (correct) decisions based on their own long term best interests.
In the absence of significant initiatives we continue to have growing young, restless, bored, unemployed urban populations that can be manipulated to protest without major effort by various local leadership cliques.
“It means fewer Powerpoint presentations and more community meetings.”
30% of the councillors can’t read and write and half of south africas municipalities are dysfunctional.(SALGA numbers)
i doubt that a person without reading and writing skills can do a powerpoint presentation!
it is simply an naive romanisation to believe that in community meetings the problem can be solved.
“These protests are clearly about a crisis of local democracy. It is the nature of local democracy that needs to change.”
yes, but what do you want? to believe that street committees and communities can solve the problem is simply naive – there is and was room for community participation during the IDP process for years now.
what do you think is the reason people don’t participate in this process? the experts? sorry but i don’t buy into this is nonsense!
the simple point is that, in south africa, some people, for pure ideological resons want to establish “east germany” in africa and this idea simply is abound to fail because unfortunately people are materialistic.
maybe just give them some state credit to improve their lives and put their houses on the deeds list instead of putting them on the “housing waiting list”.
stop talking about and communities and start to talk and about households, because they solve problems and especially the women.
If you riot — and let’s not tamely call a riot a “protest” shall we? — you fully deserve to be shot. It was true in the 1960s, the 1980s and it’s still true today. If you don’t riot, or join up with rioters, you’ll be left alone. Rocket science this is not.
The Anglo American and De Beers Chairman’s Fund learned close on thirty years ago that if it did not first ask poor communities what they most needed, any unilaterally chosen gifts it gave them would remain unused. It got the message, “Don’t patronise us, work with us”, and acted on it.
South Africa’s so-called civil service, by contrast, was arrogant before 1994 and remains so, especially at municipal level. It does not want face-to-face, two-way communication with those it is paid to serve, since that will increase pressure on it to meet demands it knows it is unable to, chiefly because of its shocking incompetence. It therefore raises barriers to such communication.
I disagree with you that a democracy ruled by experts is an oligarchy.
An oligarchy is a system governed my a few people.
This does not mean that they have to be experts by any means, and historically oligarchies have typically been relics of feudal systems.
In fact, most democracies today are ruled by politicians which is an order of magnitude worse than being ruled by experts.
If we could create a society where expertise and scientific outcome determined policy and implementation instead of politics and political allegiances, it would certainly be a better place.
The country needs to urgently lure back all the hard-working, competent, honest, qualified expats from Australia, UK and New Zealand. Municipalities cannot possibly continue without these people. We need people that rather work than talk, and not people that continue to use the word “challenges.”
Turn the “challenges” into action. And no more self-enrichment. Serve the people, that is what you get paid for. Work for your pay.
I think the point that government isn’t effectively engaging “it’s people” is well made.
Indeed, other than theoretically better opportunities and increased freedom, the situation faced by the the majority of the poor is much the same as it was in the 80′s and, as they were then, the poor are angry and frustrated. Government’s reaction to this, albeit a much milder variety, is regrettably much the same as it was in the 80′s as evidenced by the pictures mentioned.
I will disagree about the issue of experts ‘calling the shots’ as it were. I think its simply a case of the wrong expertise being applied. Experts in good governance, accountability, communal cooperation and economic growth on the small to medium scales would be able to do a great deal for our country.
Sadly, the same set of skills required to win elections is not the same needed to run a country. What we have seen from the ANC in the recent past is that they are true experts at winning elections and making a select few people very, very wealthy. They will probably continue to focus on this skillset as there is no real motivation for changing a winning formula.
I think we simply have the wrong people in government and while I do think that communities can make a bottom up approach work (@peppi) they are no match for the ANC’s particular flavour of expertise.
It has been said that a lack of alternatives clears the mind wonderfully. Maybe if we drop all the preferred angles/ideologies for a moment and ask a different question – e.g. WHO shoule do WHAT by WHEN for WHOM if we want to deal with our latent conflicts before it spills over into sporadic and protracted manifest conflict?
With respect, a competition between causes does not help us to understand the interaction of causative factors. At this point we need to be action oriented before thing spill over and jackboot methods win the day.
If you riot — and let’s not tamely call a riot a “protest” shall we? — you fully deserve to be shot. It was true in the 1960s, the 1980s and it’s still true today. If you don’t riot, or join up with rioters, you’ll be left alone. Rocket science this is not.
^^^^^But Cops have a tendecy to shoot at any random person they see regardless of whether they were protesting or not. During the 2007 UJ protests I witnessed innocent bystanders get shot close range, are you saying these people deserved it?
The protests in SA are two fold.
1. Poverty makes people do the unthinkable
2. Lack of capacity at municipal level. Most councillors should not be in public office at all because they don’t even undertand what is planning and how it should be done. Last year I was part of a team that went to Bushbuckridge to talk to local people on how to alleviate poverty in the area as part of a presidential project. The two councillors who met with the portfolio committee could not follow the discussions as they later claimed a language problem. Our system of governance is what is wrong and should be overhauled completely. Massive amounts of money is returned to treasury while services were not rendered, that is just incompetence.
It is far simpler than that. The previously disadvantaged were led down the garden path 16 years ago. They truly believed that once the NATS were out of power that their ANC leaders would be able to give them a new lifestyle. This is why they fought.
Now they are finally realizing that the ANC is not going to deliver for them and they are pissed off.
The issue is a false culture of entitlement engendered by the ANC during it’s freedom fighting days – not democracy
We should make a distinct difference between a “strike action” and a “protest march”.
A protest march is a communal act against behaviour or lack of service by the government. This can be real or perceived, but mostly real. Government can respond with promises and/or an action plan. The protest march is often the only tool left for the poor to make an impression on otherwise deaf officials.
A strike signifies a break down in negotiations on wages and/or labour conditions between employers and employed. A strike is called by the unions often on the advice to their members to put pressure on the negotiating partners.
The sad thing in SA is that unions, running out of arguments, call easily for a strike. It does not cost them a penny as the negotiating partner still pays the wages of the strikers.
In many countries in the world, the unions will have to pay the wages of the strikers.
This does two important things to the balance of power: 1. union membership fees go up, reducing the number of members to convinced unionists. 2. the unions will try to exhaust all negotiable issues before calling a strike, so excluding brainless fanatics from the negotiating teams.
It will bring some stability to the labour market.
Its not the way to address the South African complex by saying “Quite clearly, the people organising and participating in these protests are very seldom given a chance to speak about what they think, what they are doing and why” for the reason that South African problems have been in the public domain for over a century. The racial history, economic inequality, lack of ownership of South Africa’s huge resources by the African majority are the fundamental problems. When the Zulus vented their anger on their African brothers, it was not the beginning but a contiously boiling pot and the target was not the Zimbabweans, Somalis, Ethiopians, Nigerians or any other African, because Africans in South Africa do not have much. The fundamental target is the South African wealth, its ownership and distribution. If those who have a lot of it do not want to see beyond their nose-end, the risk would be theirs to ignore. Malema is their voice, listen to some of his concerns and review, be it land, mines, business or high paying jobs, try to compromise and you will see a better South Africa.
Benzol wrote “It does not cost them a penny as the negotiating partner still pays the wages of the strikers.” I think not. The “no work, no pay” rule applies. Strikers often pass the point where the extra Rand per hour doesn’t cover the wages lost. I calculated this during a major Pick n Pay strike some years ago. It would take 20 years for the workers to earn back the extra increment for which they prolonged the strike and extra 2 weeks.
1. Poverty makes people do the unthinkable
2. Lack of capacity at municipal level. Most councillors should not be in public office at all because they don’t even undertand what is planning and how it should be done…
All over the world there are far poorer people who do NOT do “the unthinkable”.
The incompetent councillors who are in over their heads are, invariably, cadres deployed there by the ANC regime. The faceless and utterly unaccountable “collective” at Luthuli House should bear all the blame for having these useless people in responsible positions, collecting fat wages and perks from the gravy-train.
And a riot shouldn’t ever be tweely described as a “service protest”. A riot is a riot, plain and simple.
“If those who have a lot of it do not want to see beyond their nose-end, the risk would be theirs to ignore. Malema is their voice, listen to some of his concerns and review, be it land, mines, business or high paying jobs, try to compromise and you will see a better South Africa.”(from Bantu Nzira above)
Malema is the epitome of service delivery failure in South Africa!
There are 4.5 million white citizens and between 44 and 50 million black citizens (just for argument sake we take the other minorities out of the equation) if you take all the wealth and all the jobs from the white citizens and redistribute it all to the majority – the majority would still be poor!(and the economy would collapse as we have seen next door) so maybe instead of looking at your “fundamental target” you should look at the fundamental problems.
and one of the fundamental problems is your stone age marxist, post-colonial call it what you want ideology – it has been laid to rest in 1989 but somehow some people in sub-sahara africa still follow these historic relics.
Imraan, thanks is a good analysis. I definately agree we need to change governance and ask the difficult questions if we are address the deeper issues that catalyse these protest.
When President Zuma came into office, he launched a presidential hotline, which aimed at taking his office closer to the people. so far we have, if not I, have not heard any feedback of even some of the achievement of this hotline. This was a brilliant public participation initiative but it seems to be silent with its achievements. What I can say in this discussion is that, we live in a capitalist world, and every one is more concerned about their personal interests. Do not let lesgislations and rhetorics fool you, there is very little political will to engage the public in government’s development programmes. Most, if not all, ministers and top government officials have tenderpreneur relatives. Now which government official will refuse to award a tender to Zuma’s wife? We should understand that the Zuma administration has only five years and may not be re elected in the next elections. So officials will loot while they can, to hell with the public. Public participation will remain a dream legislated until we get a committed and willing leader, who will not only visit communities once, but every day of his life. Read about Ahmadu Bello of Nigeria for the kind of leader im talking about