Democratic deepening in South Africa: the effect of public-private contracts on local government service delivery and local citizen participation
Date
2009-04-23T11:58:59Z
Authors
Mottiar, Shauna
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Abstract
ABSTRACT
LOCAL GOVERNMENT in South Africa is well positioned to meet some
of the substantive challenges posed by the democratic deepening and
development discourses in new democracies. It is responsible for the
delivery of services to local citizens in a way that is ‘equitable, accessible
and financially sustainable’. It is also supposed to ‘develop a culture of
municipal governance that compliments formal representative government
with a system of participatory governance’. Democratic decentralisation in
South Africa does however have its limits in fiscal and institutional terms.
Furthermore the course of developmental decentralisation is affected by
levels of civil society activity and political will. Also, following the global
trend towards New Public Management and national pressure on local
government to be economically viable, various local authorities in South
Africa have opted to enter into public – private partnerships for service
delivery. These contract based arrangements significantly alter the way
basic services are defined and destroy the relationship between local
authorities and local citizens. Services become commodities as opposed to
rights, local citizens become consumers and local authorities cease to be
politically accountable. This thesis examines the effect contract based
service delivery has on democratic deepening in terms of local citizens
being afforded their rights to basic services and having meaningful
opportunities to participate in the affairs of their local authorities.