Analysis of Public Participation in South Africa

In South Africa in 1994 the first democratic election was held, where after the apartheid struggle where marginalized communities - communities of colour - were not allowed to participate in terms of the governance of the country, both in a political stand point as well as economical. Then in 1994 after the activities of the ANC and other parties The Liberation struggle was one and we were then able to participate in the democratic process of the country.

One of the core mechanisms for effective democracy is public participation and public participation is a process wherein the citizens of a country are involved in the context of what is needed in the decision-making process of the country. So, it requires then that you engage – you know read up on information and one familiarizes themselves with the content and so on and so forth.

And so in 1994 when South Africa as we know it today – when the democracy was open rather , to people of colour – one of the things that meant is that it enabled communities - particularly those that were previously excluded – to be an active participant in the decision making process of the country’s future.

Now there is different types of public participation depending on the need at the time and there is different ways of going about it, but for now key for us is just to discuss participation and what it means for the group that we’ve been working with. So when we were doing the previous EU project one of the major learnings out of that and one of the recommendations as well was that many communities – firstly the project was to understand what the energy challenges are in many of these communities and so we then understood the nature of those challenges and problems and offered some recommendations and workshopped those together with the participants and essentially the “lions share” of the recommendations pointed directly toward a policy intervention in order for them to be resolved.

Which then lead us to ask the question well if its going to require a policy intervention, what is the status presently of peoples or community’s participation in different government structures. And the short answer is that many of the communities that we worked in did not participate very actively in decision making processes and that when they did the nature of that participation was lackluster for the most part. In many instances for people it was just a “tick box” exercise or the process itself was not done properly were a person or people just felt that all they needed was just their names on a register – not clearly understanding what is the content that is going to be engaged on. And what is it that is expected and required of them to become more effective when it comes to their public participation.

So what was supposed to happen in a sense was that after democracy was extended to people of colour, many people at the time did not fully understand what It meant to be a part of a democratic system and what was involved, and so training education and awareness was supposed to be provided to POC to help them understand how the system works, how to make use of the system, how to participate within the democracy.

Now when we look at the communities that we face today we specifically talk about the energy challenges that people are experiencing. If policy intervention is going to be required to alleviate many of these challenges, it is going to require that the people who are facing these challenges are the ones who are at the forefront of the dialogue around how to alleviate them, what their challenges are and the details that are taking place within.

We found that in many instances with people that we work with and even in this specific program we are finding that people don’t have a very good idea of where to go in order to get answers for the or certain challenges and what the process is in getting some of these things, which then resulted in a situation where people, for instance when looking at electricity, in one community the power cuts. If you knew where to go a person would be able to a person would have been able to get that specific challenge or problem fixed within a shorter space of time, but purely because a person does not know were to go or whom to approach in order to find a solution o there problem, said person sits without electricity for an extended period of time.

We found that even when we engage people and people engaged us on energy and other issues -we found that it’s the same thing with water and the same thing with housing and several other socio-economic issues within low income communities particularly. And so this then has a direct impact in terms of what it Is that we then see when we look at many communities and this also explains in part why It is we find such widespread disgruntlement when it comes to communities in terms of the access to services and the quality of services they receive and also the poor quality of infrastructure that they get.

Now, public participation often times requires that the authority in question communicates what it is they are intending to do, communicating those plans via documents on their website. In many instances they use newspaper and different types of media to be able to get that message across. However the challenge is that even though a person might pick up on this invitation, where it is situated - it is obviously situated in a place that is usually to far out for many in the community to be able to attend, because many people - in the case of South Africa – are poor and they cant afford to go to town and thus cant afford to have their voices added to the conversation so that it can be considered when making any specific decision.

So when you look then at the kind of decisions that are taking place – again specifically around electricity. You look at price if electricity, the continuous increase in the price of electricity. Though when we look at the issue of electricity prices, every year for at least ten years now the price has been continuously going up and has resulted in many households not being able to afford electricity.

And so each year that ESKOM wants to increase their electricity tariff – because it’s going to have a wide set impact on society – they need to have a kind of public participation meeting where they inform people and they give people an opportunity to get their voices heard. Now the challenge here is that in many instances the documents that have been issued in the space have been technical in nature and are usually published online; that means most of the people who are going to be affected are unable to interact with the documents because firstly, to get online to download the document it has its own costs and implication and even if they could download it, one could argue how much understanding they would have of some of these documents. Even for those more seasoned at looking at some of these documents they aren’t the easiest documents to read. Then there is also very little support that these communities get to help them understand exactly what these documents mean for them, other than just a specific price increase.

And so we find then that communities that are marginalized that were previously unable to participate in the democratic system, still are not able to participate in the democratic system even though this was part of the promise that the 1994 elections brought about. They are unable to participate – like I’ve said – for reasons out of cost or out of understanding. What then ends up happening is that if those communities which were previously marginalized continue to be intrenched in the circumstances that they face, they are still unable out find resolutions or solutions to their problems.

What we find is that because of the way in which the system is presently working – where documents are issued online and meetings are held in hotels etc – they far better suit a more affluent community. And so even when the feedback comes back from the public participation process, it is more reflective of communities that are wealthier. These are factors to the divided nature of the protest, because a lot of the time people cannot get a place where they can go and raise the issues and even when there are platforms which are available for them to have their voices heard, they cannot participate because they cannot get there.

And even if they were there they couldn’t keep up with the conversation nor make the relevant inputs because simply they cannot understand the information that is being shared. And so the likely hood of there being a person who does not understand to stand up and make their voice heard goes down to virtually zero, which has implications down the line for the greater community.

And so, if we imply that in order for communities to alleviate a lot of their challenges, they need to interact with policy and participate in the democratic system we need to then look at how it is that we can then facilitate and environment where many of these communities that aren’t able to participate are able to participate.

Of course, as is always the case financial resources are a very big determinant of who gets involved and how they get involved, because many instances of public participation the depth is determined by the financial resource that is available. So when it is not available, the objective is to just get public input and so the lowest hanging fruit is what people take and what decision makers take and use that as a basis in making their submissions or at least following the process.

So we find then that as a result of this it is not likely that a community would find success in alleviating their problems through the democratic system, purely because they are economically unable to participate and information wise limited which inhibits the ability to participate effectively. Which then results in planning documents that do not reflect the direct needs of many of these communities.

And so, It is something that Is very widespread in South African society and in South African communities as well. And so it requires then that organizations and agents such as Project 90by2030 and others to come into paly a very important role in trying to remove some of the jargon from this information and try to get the core of what some of these documents are saying an possible the possible impacts that these decisions are going to have on these communities, so that a person can make a better informed decision.

You know if the way that things are presently rolling out – you know 1994 mean that South Africa finally had achieved political inclusion, marginalized peoples were able to participate in the decisions of this country, however to a lesser extent they were able to participate in the economic decisions. Therefore after 1994 basically people who did not know about democracy in any way shape or form were left to their own devices to try and figured their own way out about how to make the system work.

Right now we still find that many communities are still unable to find out how to get things done it they have a poor understanding of how the system works. Hence, you find that when meetings take place and public officials feel rather unsafe to attend these public meetings, because when they get to these meetings they feel bombarded and are sometimes lambasted by the participants in these workshops or meetings, because that is the only platform that they have to air out their grievances.

And yet many instances these platforms are the incorrect platforms for them to participate. When you look at Local, Provincial and National government all of these different spheres require that vital public participation when making a policy decision or decisions that is going to affect the populous of that area and often times that means moving out of you area and community and heading to parliament, heading to council chambers or heading to some hotel in some place with people who understand the topics and have had time to engage with them.

All of these things are things that haven’t been afforded to many of these communities and so just as a result to that, it is fair in my summation to say that there is an apartheid that is still taking place albeit of a different nature. The exclusion people are now facing is not direct or as overt as it was in the past – there are no signs that say certain people are exempt of participating or of enjoying certain amenities. What we find now is that it is a more subtle approach to it, a more sub verse approach. Where if an important document becomes technical it limits the amount of people who can comment on it and understand the information, who can really get a grasp of the impacts of the decisions.

And therefore, rely solely on those who can understand to work in their best interests for their communities. But as we can see that is not what is translating in terms of real-world experience. The Gap is widening. Those without are even more so without, communities that if we look again at electricity. Renewable energy versus the electrical grid through the lenses of public participation, what is happening is that because the utility is in a position that it is no longer able to provide that social service of electricity to the public because of the issue of mismanagement etc. the decision has been taken that renewable energy is going to be the alternative that we are going to use in order to meet our energy needs.

But of course, renewable energy carries with it a very high capital coast, which means that those communities that do not have much money or economic power are going to have to rely solely on the electrical grid. Now the more the middle to upper income households, the more they move off of the grid on to renewable energy, the more pressure that they put on the low-income households who are still connected to the grid and thus we will continue to see the price of electricity increase.

However, what we can also be expected to see is that these households that will be unable to afford electricity – even if electricity comes in from renewable energy- there will be a time when those people who do have the infrastructure into their home and access to electricity still cannot afford the electricity and so it become a white elephant or if not a white elephant you’ll find that there will be an increase in illegal connections as we are now in a society that needs electricity in order to survive.

However, people do not have the means to pay for the expensive electricity and so much of the advances that were made to get people on the electrical grid post 1994, during the 2000 – 2002 period, a lot of those positive gains had there are going to be removed because we are going to go back to a situation were people have access into their homes but cannot afford it and therefore sit in the dark.

This is already what we are beginning to see in these low-income households and so of the only way to intervene is at a policy level, realistically speaking on what I’ve just mentioned, what is the likely hood that a person living in a shack or in a township somewhere in South Africa is going to be able to have a significant influence on the direction that the country is going to be taking in terms of how it is going to be providing electricity for the country, electricity security. The very same interest for electricity security that the country has is the very same interest at a household level, it’s the same interest that each household has because of the society we live in.

In conclusion, it becomes critical then that we look at what it is we have at the public participation framework that we have at the moment to try and understand better, what the specific challenges are for those who are responsible for public participation planning , the speakers of the council whether that is at provincial or a national government level. Is the public participation framework allowing for many households, for those who have been previously disadvantaged, is it allowing for them to easily participate in the democratic system that they fought for? At the present moment its not and so long as it continues to not work we can expect with a fair degree of certainty that things are going to get progressively worse and the worse things get the more we can expect disgruntled citizens and things – as I said, will begin to regress. And so public participation is critical for a successful democracy and in South Africa at the moment it is just not getting enough attention.