CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 3: REVIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
3.4 DEMOCRACY AND DEVElOPMENT
By 1990 the movement had been severely weakened or de mobilised leading to the lament that:
"If the formal transition had begun in mid-1986, rather than early in 1990, the impulse towards a more participatory form of democracy would have been far stronger, for better or worse"
(Seekings, 2000, p.296). The contrast between developments in 1986 and 1990 marks, I would argue, the beginning of the de mobilisation process or lull in the latter year. Much later, a trade union leader who became the cabinet minister in charge of the short-lived RDP office, appears to corroborate this view:
In the process of tackling so many challenges, we robbed the country of an enormous contribution that all other sections of society could make. Government would give people jobs, houses, social security, schools and clinics and knew what was right for the citizenry. People who had participated in the fight for change now became passive bystanders" (Naidoo, 2010, p. 240).
It can be argued that the argument above proves less the (physical) demobilisation of the workers' movement than the pruning of its radical ideas and the quashing of the (creative) political ferment that appeared to grip wide sections of the population. If this is indeed true then I am willing to stand by that aspect of my argument that emphasises an ideological shift by the movement away from fundamental (counter-hegemonic) transformation into the present order, an outcome which the burgeoning protest movement suggests is far from satisfactory from the point of view of the majority of people in the country. Jacquin's (1999) study of the political dynamics in relation to the labour movement suggests a similar process whereby this component of the workers' movement had its radical-socialist aspirations and plans severely pruned and scuttled during the democratic transition. There was a decrease in the number of strikes that can be contrasted to the steady increase that began about the year 2000 and rising up to the 2010 pinnacle.
development and democracy. Development is a ubiquitous concept that derives some of its power from its "double meaning as process and outcome" (Barchiesi, 1996, p. 7). It is both a journey and a destination, and as such is capable of locking people in a permanent state of
"development". This is achieved by "developmentalism", that is, "the way in which the promise of development is utilised as a legitim ising device across a range of capitalist formations ... [it]
took an autonomous life, coming to constitute one of the many tools through which the
capitalist state could build consent, hegemony and acceptance" (ibid, pp. 8-9). Development is a contested terrain and developmentalism is an ideological construction that is deployed in the course of the class struggle.
The new democratic ANC government started off with a form of developmental "populism"
where promises of "people-centred" and "people-driven" development and state-led
redistributive policies prioritising basic needs were unequivocally made and codified in the RDP (ANC, 1994). Development was envisioned as a national project that required the participation of the people led by a government of national liberation with democracy seen as an essential aspect of development (Bond, 2000). The shift to a neoliberal developmental model
contradicted this approach in that capital and markets were now seen as the active and central ingredients in the development process (ibid). However, the problems did not just begin with GEAR in 1996, they were discernable already in 1994, during the heyday of the RDP, when communities were required to form local development forums which, from the word go, failed to live up to expectations of a truly "bottom-up development" process (Mi"er, 1996). The enthusiasm of the RDP office and working class communities notwithstanding, the new
government appeared ambivalent towards community participation in development processes
(ibid). A form of "anti-politics" (Ferguson, 1994) became an essential aspect of the process with development conceived largely as a technical process that required the application of the most efficient means to attain development targets - "delivery" supplanted the emphasis on
democratic "process" (Mi"er, 1996, p. 2). "Civil society began to lose its special place in the language of development" and was seen by those in power as a nuisance and even a threat because it "would delay service delivery" (Mangcu, 2008, p. 124).
Seekings (2000) argues that the participatory model of democracy developed by the UDF was not adopted by the new democratic government but aspects of it found its way into the RDP and other legislation, for example, local government is an avenue for the participation of the citizenry in government affairs according to the country's constitution (RSA, 1993).
Assessments that have been made of the actual operation of community participation processes and structures such as ward committees, IDPs (integrated development
programmes) and imbizos (large community gatherings), set up in line with the legislation governing the operation of local government (RSA, 1998,2000) suggest that they are more form than substance. Williams (2006, p. 3), observes that these formal democratic processes are "a limited form of democracy [that] give rise to an administered society rather than a democratic society" since there is no real debate of policy or of social programmes by the (working class) electorate and government officials and leaders. Another study concludes that these processes allow ordinary people "to demand accountability" from "their elected
representatives and sometimes quite senior officials" (Ballard, et 01. 2006a, p. 33). However, they are "consultative rather than participatory" and "invariably ... become conspicuous for the issues they leave out, and for the voices they did not hear" (ibid). The government itself has attributed the protests to the failure of these formal participatory structures to provide an adequate communication channel between the state and the citizenry (CoGTA, 2009a).
The failure of formal participatory mechanisms has led some commentators to question the vision of the participation model proffered by the modern state to the people. It is suggested that these "invited" spaces of participation are constrained by the dominant developmental discourse that pertain therein which presents people with limited choices because they are within the framework of the state's preconceived neoliberal plans (Miraftab and Wills, 2005;
Sinwell, 2009a). The very idea of service "delivery" is seen as suggesting a passive populace in the face of an active state. It is for this reason that people form their own "invented" spaces, such as social movements and community organisations, where they discuss and develop their own approach (Miraftab and Wills, 2005; Miraftab, 2006). Social movement activity, including protest action, is thus a form of "invented" space that should be understood not as disruptive but constitutive of participatory democracy because it represents a form of contesting power
and exerting influence (Hemson, nd). "Community participation in South Africa is informed by the memory of community struggle - a radical form of participation - against the racist apartheid State" (Williams, 2006, p. 4). The implications of the apparent demand for "a radical form of participation" raises the issue not only of the model of democracy but of the content of the decisions that would be made if such weight were given to ordinary people over matters of governance, that is, the type of developmentalism that would be espoused and its implications for policy. Would it be trapped within the strictures of capital accumulation or would it be a (potentially) counter-hegemonic form that challenges the primacy of capital in the social metabolism? Sinwell (2009b) observes that it is not a given that invented spaces will generate radical developmental ideas, he bemoans the fact that when some social movements and community organisations fail to question the structures of the system and operate within, for example, given official budgetary constraints, the result is a zero-sum game of competition among different sections of the community. On the other hand, it is sometimes possible for critical ideas to be generated in the context of official invited spaces (ibid). But it can be argued that the "radical form of [democratic] participation" (Williams, ibid) developed in the South African townships in the 1980s was counter-hegemonic in relation to the then existing sociopolitical and economic order.
3.5 PROTESTS, THE DEVELOPMENT OF OPPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND COUNTER-