by Nontando Guwa

Community participation is defined as public participation at municipal level where residents at the municipal level are called “the community”.

This is according to the National Policy Framework for public participation developed by the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG), where participation is viewed as an open and accountable process through which individuals and groups within selected communities can exchange views and influence decision-making (Kimemia: 2007).

Public participation is largely viewed as a democratic process for engaging people in decision-making, planning and generally allowing them to play an active part in their development and service delivery.

In a debriefing meeting organised by the Social Working Group of the Eastern Cape NGO Coalition, civil society organisation (CSO) representatives from around the Amathole District who had attended the IDP review process in 2006 and 2007 came together to review and discuss the manner in which the process had been conducted.

It came to light during this meeting that the IDP consultative process was at the time nothing more than a get-together for the public and CSOs, to sign an attendance register and have lunch. Anything other than that, it seemed, was not conducted in any meaningful way in any of the local municipalities within the district.

Legislation requires that development planning be participatory – that is, it must incorporate the voices of the communities affected by the planning. But the way consultative processes are currently conducted does not allow for meaningful structured citizen participation.

It is shocking to note that even now, 14 years into our democracy, public participation still holds no real meaning or value to our local government officials.

An IDP document is a very thick – and to a certain extent, technical – document, yet community members are given only 10 to 20 minutes to study it and are expected to later give meaningful input, comments and ask questions.

Who are we kidding? Community members are mostly illiterate, CSO representatives require more than 10 minutes to read through a 30-plus-page IDP document and be in a position to give meaningful contribution, feedback, comments and ask the relevant questions.

What happens in these consultative meetings, according to CSO representatives, is that ordinary citizens who for obvious reasons would not have read through the IDP document, ask questions and raise issues that are relevant to them, but not necessarily related to the contents of the IDP document.

These questions are promptly ruled “out of order” and all sorts of tensions arise in the meetings.
Another issue that was noted by the CSO representatives was the manner in which the IDP document was presented by the local government officials. The presentations were said to be very long and monotonous. They were not simple enough for ordinary people to understand.

Quite clearly, the brand of participation practised within the ADM regarding IDP falls way short of the definition of the process as stated in the National Policy Framework for public participation.
A number of recommendations were therefore made by the CSO representatives with the hope of submitting these to the leadership of the Amathole District Municipality and the local municipalities therein. The recommendations were that:

1. A public participation office should be created in local municipalities. The office should be responsible for co-ordinating community participation and should ensure that the process moves away from a meaningless farce to being a more productive process.
2. The IDP document to be discussed should be made available to the public prior to the meeting, and when invitations are sent out, people should be told where to access the IDP document in preparation for the meeting.
3. A better way of measuring public participation in local municipalities should be devised by the DPLG rather than looking at the attendance registers only to see if NGOs and the public were at the meetings.
4. Municipal consultative processes should not be linked to party politics; and IDP and Budget Review consultative processes should not be used as a vehicle for parties to campaign.

All these recommendations made by CSO representatives are now captured in the National Policy Framework for public participation which was made available by the DPLG in November 2007.

The document provides a policy framework for public participation in South Africa. It states that “government is committed to a form of participation which is genuinely empowering, and not token consultation or manipulation”.

It is hoped that this framework will assist municipalities with the practical implementation of a well-planned, resourced and structured participation programme, so that communities can actively contribute to the decision-making process within the council and development.

The legislative framework in the country gives a clear mandate as far as public participation is concerned. The notion of public participation is embedded in the Constitution of South Africa.

Chapter 4 of the Municipal Systems Act is devoted to public participation. It is therefore surprising that so many local municipalities still have not grasped the principle of meaningful participation.

The National Policy Framework for public participation further proposes that public participation be institutionalised. It is recommended that the responsibility for co-ordinating public participation be housed and properly resourced in a Public Participation Unit overseen by the Speaker.

The task of the Unit would be to draw up an annual Public Participation Plan which should map out a strategy for community participation in the municipality, and should set time-frames and costs for key participation processes, identify key target constituencies, especially the poor and marginalised, and suggest how to engage with them. Target groups must be consulted in drafting the plan.

Perhaps we should ask “Why the need to promote public participation?”. Research conducted by Khanya (2003) shows that public participation is promoted for four main reasons:

• Public participation is encouraged because it is a legal requirement to consult.
• It could be promoted in order to make development plans and services more relevant to local needs and conditions.
• Participation may be encouraged in order to hand over responsibility for services and promote community action.
• Public participation could be encouraged to empower local communities over their own lives and livelihoods.

The National Policy Framework further acknowledges ward committees and stakeholder forums as the legitimate structures for public participation. However, numerous studies have repeatedly shown that ward committees are not adequately facilitated to play their rightful role.

Under circumstances of severe poverty and unemployment, the spirit of voluntarism – good as it is – doesn’t sit well with the people, especially in a situation where you have community development workers (CDWs) whose duties overlap with those of the ward committees and are being paid.

If government truly wants to meaningfully and effectively involve the majority of citizens in governance, municipalities should embrace the challenge of developing community participation policies best suited to their conditions, and which outstrip the basic requirements listed in the National Policy Framework for public participation.

Nevertheless, government should be commended for their directed intervention in the form of the National Policy Framework, in its quest to involve the public in governance.

References:
Constitution of South Africa, 1996
http://www.khanya-aicdd.org/
Kimemia, P., 2007, Public Participation Need for a re-definition (Afesis-corplan)
Municipal Structures Act, 117 of 1998
Municipal Systems Act, 32 of 2000
National Policy framework on Public Participation; Department of Provincial and Local Government

The Local Government Transformer Feb/Mar 2008