CHAPTER 5: INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT PLANNING IN THE EASTERN CAPE
5.2 Negotiated Local Democracy and the Integrated Development Plan
democracy are undermined by the on-going existence of traditional authority. In particular he draws attention to the exercise of traditional power in the allocation and administration of land and the view that this practise has and continues to be corrupted.326 Ntsebeza shows that government's concessions to the role of traditional authorities had resulted in irrational forms of rural local governance and have irreparably set back basic principles of gender equality for example.327 Ntsebeza ascribes these concessions to a resurgence of conservative sentiment within the ANC, mirroring other neoliberal influences that resulted in the adoption of GEAR.328 He also allows however that there might also be a concern for the possible alienation of chiefs and their support base with the risk that this brings for serious civil and ethnic conflicP29 Ntsebeza also notes that there is a significant, but misguided argument that traditional authority may be no less legitimate or more corrupt than elected local representatives.
The roots of the Stutterheim initiative would appear to lie in multiple causal factors. The most immediate and pressing one being the endemic political
violence and tension which characterised the town in the 1980s (Magwangqana,
pers. Com., 1996) Clashes between the black communities and the police, riots,
strike action, a consumer boycott and business closures marked the last years of the 1980s and the first months of 1990 (Grahamstown Rural Committee, 1990; July, pers. Com., 1994). It was out of this negative environment that the Stutterheim Forum developed from what for all intents and purposes was the figurative ruin of the town. It would seem that the suffering and economic hardship had become so intense in all communities, both black and white, that both sides realised that the situation had to be defused or the town's entire future was in jeopardy (Tandy, 1993; Nel, 1994a).331
Given the political experience with disingenuous 'political compromise' and various reforms that sought to perpetuate apartheid local government in different forms, the recently unbanned ANC was initially wary of allowing these forums to become a joint negotiated locus of government and administration and sanctioned their operations in terms of negotiating improved services and infrastructure only. Thus the UDF and the ANC aligned civic movements in the Eastern Cape were prepared to endure government by apartheid structures for a few months longer, rather than allow locally negotiated power-sharing options to emerge, where the relevant power balances may have favored the existing state.
Nel suggests that the local leadership in Stutterheim were sufficiently mature and far-sighted enough to pursue cooperation towards an " improved urban environment" while other towns got bogged down in the question of party-political sanction for participation in the negotiating forums.332 In retrospect, some might argue that this hesitancy in endorsing local leadership's efforts to find workable, albeit temporary solutions to local government, was a warning of the dominant parties tendency exercise power and control from the centre. Suspicion of the negotiating forums stemmed in part from a rather complex strategy by ANC aligned organisations which allowed participation by allegedly non-political structures like the South African National Civics Association (SANCO) whilst withholding party members from such forums. This despite the fact that the SAN CO strategy was clearly determined by the ANC.
The South African National Civic Organisation's (SANCO) General Secretary has confirmed that his organisation would not be contesting the local
government elections. He indicated that SANCO would be supporting the African National Congress, as they did in the April 1994 national elections.333
Having participated in the negotiating forums with the blessing of the ANC some SANCO leaders were by-passed when it came to formal nomination as an ANC councillor. This caused tension between the ANC and SANCO in many Eastern Cape towns. Splits occurred within SANCO itself as some individuals questioned the link between SANCO and the ANC and opted to stand as independents despite the ANC's warning against this strategy. Stadler describes the longer-term effects of these events:
It (SANCO) had backed the ANC in the local elections in 1994(sic) and after ... However its relationship with the ANC is problematic, the national
leadership having lost any identity separate from the ANC, and the grass roots organisations pursuing diverse objectives.334
Similar problems of internal conflict were also experienced in other provinces.
Stadler goes on to describe how in Mpumalanga for example, the ANC was divided after the 1995 elections by SANCO who used 'populist' strategies like resistance to service payments to mobilise opinion against ANC councillors.335 In other instances like Leandra, the SANCO Mayor and the ANC chairperson of the Executive
Committee allowed their personal and organisational animosities to disrupt the functioning of council.336 There were also instances where ANC councillors have come under pressure from municipal labour for seeking material benefits over the interests of workers. These accusations from the labour movement were accompanied by " ... references to fat cats and gravy trains".337 On the other hand SAN CO had also come to the assistance of the ANC. Stadler cites instances where SANCO, through overlapping membership and joint intervention with higher level ANC leadership, seems to have succeeded in marshalling 'disruptive elements' back to conformity. These events may be well documented but they are rarely analysed in any depth within a theoretical framework of pluralism and relations between civil society and state. 338
What becomes clear in retrospect is that this reversion to factionalism and games of power, in the Eastern Cape (and to a lesser extent in other provinces), often with the sole objective of personal advancement, do little to lend credence to the new policy frameworks with their notions of healthy democratic competition and a civil society untainted by political intrigue. As already suggested in past chapters this was in part a response to strategies by the National Party, the officialdom of the Provincial Administrations and the white municipalities who all played an equally complex game of trying to create multiple 'establishment' groupings, each with its own power-base to confront and limit the non-statutory (ANC) grouping. Thus Black
Local Authorities, the white municipal councils with their 'puppet' coloured and Indian partners, the CPA and even the municipal administration often all claimed equal and separate representation on the negotiating forums in their efforts to match the mass support of the civics. Stadler notes that conservative and militant right-wing groupings went as far as forming alliances with black township residents associations in an effort to curb the power of the ANC.339 The emergence of anti- ANC vigilante groups or militant opposition groups (frequently manipulated by the apartheid security forces or Bantustan governments) was particularly pronounced in the Eastern Cape.340
These forays into cynical forms of Machiavellian politics were seen as anomalies in the political culture of the time, which stressed the building of a politic based on consensus and universality. Graham Gotz's detailed observations on the build- up to the 1995/ 1996 election on the other hand, suggest an emerging state that rapidly calculated how 'sufficient' consensus would have to be in order to govern effectively. Gotz compared the behavior of different politicians from various parties and concluded that the new generation of local politicians were prone to putting the interests of their party over that of the citizenry as a whole.341 These observations proved to be prophetic in the emerging Eastern Cape municipal system. In contrast to growing cynicism, Nel suggests that Stutterheim's unusual progress resulted from local leadership figures who were " ... prepared to get on with other business while waiting for facilitating mechanisms to be introduced at national level to permit the institution of one-municipality initiatives."342
By way of example, in the case of the Joint Negotiating Forum set up in
Grahamstown in 1991, the non-statutory civic movement was assisted by the local office of the Black Sash and negotiated only with the white Grahamstown City Council and the Cape Provincial Administration (CPA) thereby depriving the puppet
BLA, the Rini Town Council of real status and credibility as a political opponent.
In many cases the 'shadow council' role of the forum reflected not so much the inadequate will to take power and run the municipality but a strategic decision by the non-statutory grouping not to give credence to reformist models that fell short of a democratically elected local council.343
In most Eastern Cape towns and cities, white councillors and their bureaucrats, confronted with the prospect of being removed from power through non-racial, democratic elections, used their political experience and municipal knowledge as well as the nationally agreed concessions in the Local Government Transition Act, to win privileges from what was widely referred to as the "mass democratic movement". There was little indication however that this effected the credibility of
the process. In a 1995 public opinion survey Idasa found that in the Eastern Cape 94% of respondents said they were registered to vote while only 80% reported as such in the North West province. The Eastern Cape had the lowest expressions of the intention to abstain (4%). Nearly 70% agreed to some degree that there was 'great value' in voting in the 1995 local elections and only supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) had a significant portion (27%) who felt that voting would be a waste of time. This, in broad terms is not a picture of a populace too disillusioned and apathetic to take the first municipal election seriously.344