CHAPTER 3: POST·LlBERATION SOUTH AFRICA AND THE RISE OF lOP
3.7 NGOs, Planning and Modernity
Participation was seen as a safeguard not just against the dominance of middle class and business interests but a way of avoiding the more extreme shortfalls whereby planning became simply a matter of technical rationality - yet another ill- advised pursuit of modernity. To avoid this, the lOP programme readily embraced methods of participatory workshops, rapid rural appraisal and other community- driven information gathering techniques that acted as a check on the techno- science approach of conventional town and regional planning. To understand the broader dialectical context for this concern it is necessary to briefly return to the theoretical. Underlying these reservations was the concern of analysts who had become skeptical about the technical and social benefits of Western-led modernisation and the extent to which these provided relief to the problems of the developing world. Arturo Escobar, for example, argued that:
Generally speaking, the concept of planning embodies the belief that social change can be engineered and directed, produced at will. Thus the idea that poor countries could move more or less smoothly along the path of progress through planning has always been held as an indubitable truth, an axiomatic belief in need of no demonstration, by development experts of most persuasions.225
Escobar suggests that planning conventions introduced into the developing world during the post-World War II period have been unable to escape their cultural and historical origins:
When deployed in the Third World, planning not only carried with it this historical baggage, but also contributed greatly to the production of the social-economic and cultural configuration that we describe today as underdevelopment.226
The South African IDP programme tried to reverse this by explicitly using planning as a means of reducing social and economic inequality. Planning now came with it's
own, frank political agenda.
They (Integrated Development Plans) require municipalities to weigh up their obligations and systematically prioritise programmes and resource allocations.
In a context of great inequalities, IDPs serve as a framework for municipalities to prioritise their actions around meeting urgent needs .... 227
Indeed South African planning policy was anxious to demonstrate that it was alert to the link between poverty, underdevelopment and marginalisation and those commodities and services that formed the focus of planning.
They (IDPs) help municipalities to develop a holistic strategy for poverty alleviation. Poverty is not just about low household income. It includes other aspects of deprivation such as a lack of assets to help households cope with shocks and stresses, a lack of the resources or contacts necessary to secure political advantage, a lack of access to education, health care and emergency services, and the lack of safe, secure and adequately sized housing with basic services.228
Although integrated development plans were supposed to provide a vehicle for
framing the local governing manifesto of a municipality, the challenges confronting
all municipalities were already defined in considerable detail in an all-embracing national policy framework, principally the White Paper. Any concept of embedded autonomy would therefore have to be understood against the backdrop of the White Paper which prescribed a number of challenges facing South African municipalities, some of which directed municipal action directly towards particular manifestations of inequality and underdevelopment, "Extreme concentrations of taxable economic resources in formerly white areas, demanding redistribution between and within local areas."229
Huge backlogs in service infrastructure in historically underdeveloped areas, requiring municipal expenditure far in excess of the revenue currently available
within the local government system.230
Great spatial separations and disparities between towns and townships and urban sprawl, which increase service provision and transport costs enormously.
Most urban areas are racially fragmented, with discontinuous land use and settlement patterns. Municipalities in urban areas will need to develop strategies for spatial integration, while managing the continuing consequence of rapid urbanisation and service backlogs.231
While the impetus for decentralisation and increased local autonomy existed and could theoretically be served by both the process and product of municipal integrated development planning, the central state nonetheless retained the primary responsibility for defining the objectives of planning and prescribed how these should be tackled by local municipalities. Accordingly, the 1998 Local
Government White Paper, held out the integrated development planning system as a neutral, technically superior vehicle for more efficient local planning.
Integrated development planning, budgeting and performance management are powerful tools that can assist municipalities to develop an integrated perspective on development in their area. It will enable them to focus on priorities within an increasingly complex and diverse set of demands. It will enable them to direct resource allocations and institutional systems to a new set of development objectives.232
What is omitted is the fact that these development objectives and the means of reaching them were already largely prescribed by the central state through comprehensive and over-arching policy as outlined above. Some of this policy addressed itself to the mechanics and procedures of planning. Integrated Development Planning's actual planning products i.e. what had to be produced on paper, for instance was regulated nationally through the Municipal Systems Act, the Development Facilitation Act and the Local Government Transition Act (2nd Amendment). In addition there was a host of provincial level regulations, the Eastern Cape's provincial gazette number 274 of 24 October 1997 Land
Development Objectives in Terms of the Development Facilitation Act for example, which prescribed procedural aspects within the province.
In 1999 the Foundation for Contemporary Research tentatively pointed out this problem in a rare criticism of the over-arching national framework for planning:
This centralisation is evident in the policy framework, not only in the directive for municipalities to "be developmental ", but also in the different avenues
through which national and provincial governments have trespassed on
municipal planning autonomy. While national policy specifies planning outputs, the provincial policy regulates planning processes, albeit less formally. With both inputs and outputs pre-specified municipalities have little discretion to behave "strategically" in responding to need. Indeed, it is the more powerful or independent municipalities (who can afford to challenge or ignore the policy framework) that have behaved more strategically in the planning process. 233 More importantly a broad and interlocking national policy framework had virtually pre-determined a comprehensive set of social and economic objectives for
planning, neatly and somewhat glibly bound up in the notion of 'developmental local government'. National planning policy and guidelines prescribed at least three social/economic objectives of planning which it clearly felt needed to be 'drummed home'to municipalities. These became the focus of extensive training and briefing sessions directed to municipalities with the assistance of NGOs, the private sector, para-statals like the CSIR and foreign donors, principally the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ)
Spatial restructuring: undoing the spatial manifestation of apartheid was a national government priority that called for local implementation via municipal integrated development plans. Laudable as this objective was, it sought to replace one form of social theory with another:
Integrated development planning is a mechanism to restructure our cities, towns and rural areas.
Apartheid planning entrenched the ideology of separate development in spatial development patterns. Integrated development planning will redress these spatial imbalances and promote integrated human settlement through:
• Ensuring a shared understanding do spatial development opportunities, patterns and trends;
• The localisation of spatial development principles that promote integrated and sustainable development;
• The formulation of specific strategies aimed at the spatial restructuring of cities and towns; and
• The formulation of a spatial development framework that provides a spatial overview of planned public and private sector investmenP34
Social justice: given the history of the state in South Africa and the new
government's determination to be seen to overcome this legacy of inequality and racial privilege, planning was obliged to become a vehicle for social transformation:
Integrated development planning is a mechanism to promote social equality.
The planning process is participatory in nature and allows for local processes of democratisation, empowerment and social transformation. The integrated development planning process is designed in such a way that all role-players and stakeholders have a voice in the issues affecting their lives.235
While these promises of social equality may seem necessary and authentic, it would also be prudent to recall the warnings of Escobar who likened the activities of planners in the developing world to their 19th century counterparts serving a bourgeoisie who were struggling to cope with the pressures of a new urban modernity. Escobar noted the state's efforts via science, technology and planning to cope with social problems like health, education and unregulated economic activity.
In sum, the rise of the social made possible the increasing socialisation and subjection of people to dominant norms, as well as their insertion into the machinery of capitalist production.
And;
... those very operations and forms of social planning have produced governable subjects. They have shaped not only social structures and institutions, but also the way in which people experience life and construct themselves as subjects.236
Economic equality: A further social function which lOP policy claimed to perform was to tackle South Africa's vast problem of economic imbalance. The basic premise being that municipalities and indeed the state in general, had hitherto favored a range of commercial and middle-class interests over the interests of the poor.
Integrated development planning is a weapon in the fight against poverty.
Integrated development planning should address severe social and economic imbalances such as the urban Irural divide as well as adverse conditions
affecting marginalised groups on the grounds of race, gender, age or disability.
The Constitution requires that: a municipality must structure and manage its administration and budgeting processes to give priority to the basic needs of the
community and to promote the social and economic development of the community. The strategies, projects and programmes that are generated through the integrated development planning process must be assessed in terms of the extent to which they assist in empowering and improving the living conditions of the disadvantaged.
The holistic, integrated and participatory nature of integrated development planning allows poverty alleviation to be addressed in a multi-faceted way. The lOP can do this through:
Focusing on areas of greatest need;
Prioritising projects that focus on the plight of the poor and the marginalised; Addressing landlessness through implementing appropriate land reform initiatives;
Promoting local economic development; and
Preparing spatial frameworks that mainstream the poor into the economy.237 These are just some of the vast social impacts that government promised of its lOP programme - the implication being that the plans would deliver miracles if municipalities would only properly implement them. Other social benefits anticipated from lOPs included: creating wealth by attracting new investment partners for government, ensuring more sustainable and effective development strategies, building the community by creating a shared vision and ownership of the municipality, creating a public "arena" for mediating different interests and getting consensus on priorities, improving municipal governance, providing a framework and guide for decision-making, aligning financial and human resources with the municipalities aspirations and ambitions, transforming the municipal institution itself and enhancing political accountability and improving cooperative governance.238 Indeed it seemed that every imaginable quality in the realm of governance and public administration was theoretically achievable through the lOP.