Nadvi, L.

Piper, L.

English

IDS OpenDocs

9 | Popular mobilization, party dominance and 
participatory governance in South Africa
L A U R E N C E  P I P E R  A N D  L U B N A  N A D V I
This chapter seeks to explore the character of popular mobilization in 
South Africa, mostly at the local level. This is done through exploring the 
interaction of two independent processes. The first concerns the rela-
tive empowerment of political parties and the disempowerment of civil 
society (especially social movements) by the democratization process in 
South Africa. The second concerns the introduction of new institutions 
of public participation in local governance. Hence, while the latter are 
portrayed as ‘invited spaces’ in which communities can engage the local 
state constructively, the poor design of these spaces, a lack of genuine 
will on the part of elites and the relative power of key social actors mean 
that, in practice, they are either meaningless processes or simply co-opted 
by political parties. Notably, civil society has tended either to disengage 
from the local state and focus on provincial and national levels, or to 
resort to forms of popular protest to be heard by local government – the 
non-governmental organization (NGO) sector usually favouring the first 
approach and social movements the second.
This ‘disengaged–enraged’ dichotomy reflects clearly the failure of 
the formal invited spaces for public participation in local governance. 
Furthermore, it is hard to see how this dynamic will change, even with 
better-designed invited spaces, until the balance of social forces is restored 
with the revivification of civil society, and especially social movements. 
Reasons for optimism include the growing popular disgruntlement at 
poor delivery of public goods by local government – which is arguably 
exacerbated by the introduction of meaningless forms of public participa-
tion – and evidence of a new crop of local and organic community-based 
organizations which could form the basis of future social movements. 
In short, popular mobilization at the local level in South Africa remains 
dominated by political parties, despite new participatory institutions, 
although we are witnessing the creation of conditions for new and power-
ful forms of popular mobilization into the future.
In making this argument, the chapter begins with theoretical literature 
on state–society relations, and the character of and relationship between 
Pa
rticip
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tory governa
nce in South A
frica
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‘invented’ and ‘invited’ spaces. It then moves to the received views in the 
literature on popular mobilization in recent South African history, and the 
nature and purpose of new forms of ‘participatory governance’ at local 
government level. The relationship between these ‘invented’ and ‘invited’ 
spaces is then explored through case studies of two municipalities, with 
special focus on the consequences for popular mobilization. The chapter 
concludes by analysing the causes of demobilization that result from 
participatory governance, identifying the consequent tendency of civil 
society to ‘disengage’ from or become ‘enraged’ at local government, 
and pointing to the necessity of oppositional-movement revival to change 
state–society relations in a more democratic fashion.
Theorizing state–society relations through invented and invited 
spaces
In recent years almost every democratic country in the world, regard-
less of economic development or democratic robustness, has witnessed 
attempts to enhance public participation in governance, especially local 
governance. The reasons for this are many and complex, and can be traced 
to new theories and practices of development (World Bank 1996); new 
theories and practices of democracy (Cohen 2002; Habermas 2002) and 
democratization (Mattes 2002); and at the intersection of all of these, 
new theories and practices of citizenship (Cornwall 2002). Following 
Cornwall (ibid.: 17), these new participatory institutions and practices 
can be termed the ‘invited spaces’ of participatory local governance. These 
invited spaces would include Hendricks’s (2006: 486) ‘micro deliberative 
structures’ and Fung and Wright’s (2001: 5) ‘empowered deliberative 
democratic structures’. Examples are the participatory city budgeting 
in Porto Alegre, Brazil; functionally specific neighbourhood councils in 
Chicago, USA; village governance in Kerala, India; and citizens’ juries in 
the United Kingdom.
Initiated by the local state, invited spaces typically look to draw local 
communities into processes of consultation, deliberation and sometimes 
joint decision-making on key local issues. Perhaps just as important in 
understanding emergent local state–society relations is popular mobil-
ization led ‘from below’ by civil society or local communities. Hence 
Cornwall (2002: 17) contrasts the ‘invited spaces’ created ‘from above’ 
by the state with ‘organic spaces’ created ‘from below’ by those outside 
the state. The latter include spaces created from popular mobilization, 
as well as spaces in which ‘like-minded people join together in common 
pursuits’. Holston and Appadurai (1999) describe the emergence of a 
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rights-based citizenship among the urban poor, marginalized by neolib-
eral governance and mobilized through social movements, which looks 
to transform social relations from the ground up. Miraftab (2006) paints 
a picture of ‘invented’ spaces opposing ‘invited’ spaces in South Africa, 
but also elsewhere in the world, for the same reason, the globalization 
of neoliberal economic policy.
Importantly, as Cornwall and Coelho (forthcoming: 1) indicate, the 
conceptualization of local state–society relations is not exhausted by a 
binary opposition between top-down, state-driven, invited spaces and 
bottom-up, social-movement-driven, invented spaces. Hence they talk of 
a ‘participatory sphere’ that lies at the interface of the public sphere and 
the state, composed of hybrid institutions, some of which are extensions 
of the state and some of which are claimed from the state. The critical 
point is that the relationship of these institutions with the state and 
the general public is partial: ‘its institutions have a semi-autonomous 
existence, outside and apart from the institutions of formal politics and 
everyday associational life … They are spaces of contestation, but also of 
collaboration and co-operation …’. Lastly, but most importantly, Gaventa 
(2007: 2) points out that international experience shows that a functioning 
participatory sphere or meaningful public participation in local govern-
ance requires three things: good institutional design, political will to 
make it happen and a strong civil society.
These theoretical reflections matter to the South African case precisely 
because the last ten years have witnessed a process of institutional reform 
of local governance in the name of greater public participation on issues 
related to the delivery of key social goods. Hence there are very specific 
and identifiable ‘invited spaces’ that have the potential, in theory, to both 
engender more constructive and democratic state–society relations and 
enhance the delivery of social goods. At the same time, there is a particular 
history of social mobilization in South Africa around the liberation strug-
gle which has empowered political parties at the expense of civil society 
and especially social movements. It is this particular dialogue between 
‘invented’ and ‘invited’ which we wish to explore and characterize. In the 
following section we outline this history of popular mobilization, and then 
move to outline the democratic reforms of local governance.
Invented spaces: the changing patterns of popular mobilization 
in South Africa
With the formal deracialization and democratization of South Africa 
in the early 1990s, the fundamental shape of inclusion and exclusion 


Popular Mobilization, Party Dominance and Participatory Governance in South Africa

https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/20.500.12413/12539/1/piper_etal_2010_popular.pdf

Popular Mobilization, Party Dominance and Participatory Governance in South Africa

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