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Government should stop top-down approach and rather engage actively with the South African public

8 Jul 2024

The government must recognise that a mandate at the polls doesn’t give it carte blanche to act unilaterally. Instead, it must actively engage with citizens, creating meaningful spaces for participation and dialogue.

The excitement of our elections has subsided, but we know that democracy must be an everyday way of life for all citizens. Democracy needs to extend beyond voting every few years. Now, more than ever, we must recognise that active citizenship is the essence of radical democracy, ultimately coming down to ordinary people’s right to participate in governance.

With a new government in power, we must focus on keeping it accountable. That ideologically diverse parties are in power nationally and in provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng makes active public participation in processes of governance uniquely important.

South Africa has a sophisticated architecture for public participation in policy, legislative and constitutional terms. However, the spaces created by this architecture don’t always result in meaningful participation.

What academics call “invited spaces” for public participation often amount to little more than spin-doctored roadshows showcasing government policies, with minimal opportunity for real debate.

As a starting point, both provincial and national governments need to demonstrate greater political will to have people’s voices heard. These spaces always entail risk for governments, and it takes a particular kind of leadership to genuinely open itself up to this public participation.

Interestingly, local governments often get it right – like the municipalities of Porto Allegro in Brazil and Naga City in the Philippines, or the state of Kerala in India. This is likely because social movements tend to have more power at the local level, where they can successfully pressure governments to open up to popular participation.

This administration needs to realise that the nature of democracy needs to change.

Porto Allegro gained worldwide acclaim for its participatory budgeting, and Naga City is recognised as a leading municipality in treating informal settlers. In Kerala, people live longer, are better educated and have better access to healthcare than elsewhere in India. However, this progress has never come easily. The devolution of power from states has always been hard-won after years of grassroots organisation.

Unfortunately, despite rhetoric about public participation, post-apartheid South Africa has largely followed the top-down approach to development that characterised authoritarian governments during the previous century.

As long as government officials assume that an electoral mandate gives them the right to act unilaterally for five years, protests and dissatisfaction with governance will continue. South Africans experienced the democratic upsurge of the 1980s and expect post-liberation democracy to take the same popular form – to be ruled by the people rather than experts.

We need to move beyond tokenistic forms of public participation and embrace a model where citizens are genuinely empowered to shape the decisions that affect their lives.

The current level of intense social conflict is potentially damaging to society and could be extremely embarrassing as we enter the fourth decade of democracy. Protests in recent years clearly indicate a crisis of democracy. This administration needs to realise that the nature of democracy needs to change.

The government must take public participation seriously and recognise that ordinary people have every right to be part of the deliberations and decision-making that affect their lives. Commentators and experts in media, business, NGOs and academia also need to listen carefully to the voices of the poor, rather than make easy assumptions about what they’re saying.

Experts would prefer this crisis to be about service delivery because then the response would be to bring in more expertise. But a crisis of democracy means less reliance on experts and taking the intelligence and experience of ordinary people more seriously.

Read more in Daily Maverick: GNU marriage of convenience is a chance to fix local government — but it will be far from easy

For as long as South Africa follows a top-down approach to development, the country will continue to face challenges in realising true democracy. The government must recognise that a mandate at the polls doesn’t give it carte blanche to act unilaterally. Instead, it must actively engage with citizens, creating meaningful spaces for participation and dialogue.

As we move forward, it’s crucial that we reimagine our democratic processes. This means moving beyond tokenistic forms of public participation and embracing a model where citizens are genuinely empowered to shape the decisions that affect their lives. Only by doing so can we hope to address the root causes of social unrest and build a more inclusive, participatory democracy that truly serves all South Africans. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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