“This year marks the 20th anniversary of South Africa’s vision for local government. The White Paper on Local Government is regarded as a landmark policy, the purpose of which was to create a new vision for local government thereby rectifying apartheid inequities. Within this broad developmental vision, local government is tasked with an ambitious developmental objective of helping to create a better life for all. Through the years, achievements have been made towards improving municipal service delivery and governance, however, much still needs to be done to achieve the vision of a better life for all (CoGTA, 2016). Implied in the vision for local government is the notion of inclusivity, shown through the design of local government which includes the administrative arm, the political arm and communities (Sections 1 and 2b, Municipal Systems Act 2000).
Ward committees are a legislated participatory mechanism established to facilitate inclusivity of community groups and community structures in local governance. Furthermore, the intent and purpose with ward committees was for government to harness capacities and innovative ideas from citizens in local governance and to ensure that service delivery was targeted, addressing people’s needs and aspirations. A number of organisations have written about the effectiveness of ward committees as conduits for inclusive participation in local governance, arguing that ward committees are not as effective as they could be (McComas 2001; Collingwood & Reedy, 2012; Nabatchi and Amsler, 2014; Freedom House SA, 2017). These scholars, including ourselves, have largely focused on one function of ward committees, that of facilitating inclusive participation in local governance, particularly in decision-making. We argue that, in its design, a big role was crafted for ward committees that went far beyond its primary role of facilitating participatory decision-making, and that it is possible that while ward committees have dismally failed in this primary role, they may have done well in the other functional areas that are discussed below.
This paper seeks to assess the effectiveness of ward committees in its other functional areas. These areas include the following: initiating projects to improve the lives of people in the ward; supporting the councillor in dispute resolution; providing information about municipal projects and municipal operations to the ward community; monitoring the performance of the municipality; and initiating and driving community awareness campaigns (DPLG, 2005).
In this research, Afesis-corplan seeks to test the following hypothesis: research has shown that ward committees have failed to facilitate inclusive citizen participation, however, it could be that they are performing well in the other areas of responsibility, thereby contributing to the broad developmental goals of local government.
This research uses Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM) as a case study in investigating the extent to which ward committees contribute to the attainment of the developmental goals of local government. The relevance of this paper lies in that it offers input into present policy discussions around inclusive local governance with some (including Afesis-corplan) arguing for the reform of the ward committee system. Many have argued however, that there are other functional areas of ward committees that are less explored in research and that perhaps the ward committee may be performing well in these (Mkwanazi, 2013, Bendle and Holland, 2015, Mbhele, 2017). This paper focuses on the performance of ward committees in these other suggested areas with intent to engage these views.
This paper builds on the work that Afesis-corplan has done in the past (Ngamalana 2016, Ngamlana and Mathoho 2013, Ngamlana 2007). Afesis-corplan has largely focused on the primary role of ward committees in its research (that of facilitating inclusive participation of citizens in local governance) and did not look at other functional areas that are slightly outside of this primary mandate, i.e. to initiate projects to improve the lives of people in the ward. In this paper, Afesis-corplan will not be looking at ward committee effectiveness in the areas already written about, but rather will draw from this past work.”
A copy of the paper can be downloaded below.