Top-down rule is not democracy

RIDDEN with cadre deployment, our municipalities are incompetent and corrupt. Local government is supposed to be democratic and accountable to communities, and it should encourage the involvement of communities.

A key policy instrument to achieve this is the integrated development plans (IDPs). Through the plans, local governments are supposed to facilitate community participation by finding sustainable ways of meeting people’s social, economic and material needs and improving their quality of life. Communities are meant to be able to express their priorities and needs.

This is a vision for participatory governance, but it is not borne out by the experiences of impoverished and working-class communities.

IDP meetings do not provide space for meaningful participation. The lack of genuine engagement is apparent in three ways.

First, access to information and scope for meaningful engagement is limited. The documents are written in English, and many residents struggle to give meaning to them.

Second, the choreography of the meetings is problematic. The politicians are seated at the front whereas the community members occupy chairs that are not properly arranged. The politicians decide the agenda and chair the meeting, dictating the process in a language and a tone that is intimidating at times. There is no space for community input, and questions from community members are often shut down with contempt.

Third, the IDP meetings are not prioritised by politicians. They can be postponed or cancelled at short notice, with little or no communication

Attempts by grassroots activists to organise and build popular power in communities outside the compromised official spaces have often been met with repression.

The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, the first major grass-roots movement, was formed with the aim of “fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing and opposing police violence”. It organised more than 10 communities to fight for essential services. Its members were harassed and jailed while the organisation was the target of the state, police and politicians. Since then, other examples of grass-roots organisations, such as the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement, have been met with similar violence and hostility.

In the Makana Municipality in the Eastern Cape, most people have lost confidence in IDP meetings and the municipality generally. Instead of drawing in the community, officials from the municipality have encouraged ward committees and ruling party cadres to attend the meetings, not to engage but just to comply with the law. The process has become a farce.

There are many other ways in which the Makana municipality expresses its disregard for participatory governance. For example, the high court in Makhanda made a landmark ruling last year that the council be dissolved because of its failure to meet its constitutional obligations. It was found to operate so badly that it violated human rights. The ANC councillors appealed against the ruling, but instead of instructing the municipal leadership to fix the mess, the provincial executive joined them in the appeal. The Unemployed People’s Movement, which had brought the case, collected 22 000 signatures in support of the council’s dissolution. Compare the number with the 23 000 residents who voted in the local government elections in 2016.

The council and the provincial executive were denied leave to appeal the ruling in the high court, but they took it to the Supreme Court of Appeal, which granted their application in October last year. Despite the legal threat, the state of governance in the municipality has not improved.

In June this year, Makhanda experienced large-scale protests. Protesters met at the square in Raglan Road to hold important discussions. This was a democratic space, and decisions were taken democratically. Participants demanded that Premier, Oscar Mabuyane, come to the square to account.

But the politicians viewed the square and the public as rogue, disruptive elements who were a threat to democracy. They showed that they believe that politicians and ANC government officials must be accountable to the ruling party only, in fact, to factional politics and corruption schemes in the party. Mabuyane refused to attend but sent a lower-level official, member of the executive council for cooperative governance and traditional Affairs Xolile Edmund Nqata, who then insisted on meeting the leaders rather than the public. This was refused, and the people insisted that Mabuyane and Nqata come to the square. Nqata refused and asked the police to disperse the crowd. Later, a meeting was called between the provincial government and the public, but only in the form of a few hand-picked community leaders from ANC-aligned bodies with no clear powers.

Then, the council obtained a court order against the shutdown, with every event – even disruptions that were not controlled by the participants in the in the square – blamed on “instigators”. This set participants up for jail time. The police station was listed as a respondent, which laid the groundwork for the police to brutalise people.

In acting in the undemocratic, corrupt and unaccountable ways, the political elite continues to invoke the flag of “democracy”. For the politicians, they are elected with every right to rule. Any forms of leadership or rule external to them are viewed as a threat and must be vanquished. This is a form of top-down rule, which renders people as nothing but subordinates of the unaccountable “leaders”.

In a true democracy, people must be able to participate in the governance of their daily affairs. They must not, as Frantz Fanon warned, be sent “back to their caves” by politicians and only come out once every five years to vote which faction of the political class will decide their fate. This is not democracy. It is a farce. The model has failed. We need to build an independent democracy outside the state.