LIST FIGURES
3. Understanding of Participation
Participants were in general not in a position to define citizen participation as such but had views that were permeated heavily by their political consciousness, their negative and positive experiences of previous participatory process involving the present municipality and previous administrations, and most critically, by a widespread perception of local government as the 'deliverer of developmental goods'. The issue of whether citizens should engage in public participation for the sake of it or for the benefit that can be derived remains crucial. Some people feel that participation is only meaningful when one can derive economic benefits in the form of participating in a project. However, the most common understanding of participation is that of citizens being able to participate in development initiatives started by the state.
The meaning attached to the notion of 'citizen' and citizenship' by most participants was that of understanding citizens as being those living within the confines of the municipal boundaries.
Participation is also seen as the best way of ensuring community ownership of development processes. Community participation is seen by many participants as different
from political participation in that community participation involves'community structures' and 'citizen participation'.
Political participation on the other hand is seen as taking place through political parties.
There is a general feeling that this kind of participation is not the best. It is argued that 'formal parties in development might hinder the development issues'. This means that politics are likely to get into the way of development if not controlled. The involvement of politics in development remains problematic hence the feeling that 'politics must be differentiated from development'.Itwould seem that most people do not have confidence in political structures as a means through which they can participate in local government issues. In order for participation to take place there is need to avoid the interference of politics in development.
However, there is also an acknowledgement of the role of political parties in the development process. The issue here is that political parties are fine as long as they do not promote their own political agendas. When political parties are involved in communities there is need for them to 'interact with them' [people in the community] in decision-making and not to favour people who belong to their parties. Alternatively some communities feel that instead of communities being represented by political parties, communities can appoint their own representatives in the form of 'community liaison officers'.
Some of the meanings attached by participants to what they understood by citizen participation were:
Firstly, there is a need to understand citizen participation as a process of engagement that should not be reduced to a narrow set of project outcomes or products. Participants felt that much participation exercises were where communities required to comment or participate in isolated planning processes, or in processes where the key decisions were made elsewhere. In this regard participants made a strong claim for participation to be seen not as isolated consultation processes but as a process of buildlnq long-term relationships and partnerships between the institutions of local government and communities. In this regard some participants were of the opinion that participation is not a one-way process of citizens being empowered but that it would also be empowering for
Secondly, some participants felt that the way participation was conducted many times by the municipality made the buildinq of genuine partnerships difficult because they tended to be conflictual because of feeling by communities that the municipality was undermining them.
Thirdly, there were strong feelings raised about the need for participation processes to recognise and make use of the wealth of knowledge and strategies that are present in communities.
Fourthly, that citizen participation has vastly different meanings to different people. For many participation is simply an extension of their political activism at a community level, others saw participation as a means to having their immediate needs addressed.
Fifthly, many participants tend to confuse participation with interactions between themselves and their local councillor. This means that many participants reduced participation to the times that they interacted with councillors. At the same time this comment must be qualified by the fact that many of the participants were extremely critical and unhappy with what they perceived as the lack of delivery and accountability of their local councillor
Sixthly, citizen participation is about local empowerment of people who were doing things for themselves with very little resources, access to resources and support. In this regard the issue of capacity building featured very strongly. The feeling of participants was if government wanted citizens to participate more effectively and to 'do things for themselves' then, local government has to playa role in creating an enabling environment though providing capacity building for citizens. There was a strong set of opinions that argued for citizen capacitation processes.
Seventhly, participation is about developing in local citizens and understanding of their rights, obligations and responsibilities as citizens and about their rights as citizens to be meaningfully involved in the activities of the local government
Eighthly, many participants raised the key element of resourcing as a key element of citizen participation.
Ninthly, there was a series of comments about the need for citizen participation to also be about providing the enabling conditions for building local leadership beyond that of local party political interests, putting structures in place that facilitate real participation and that participation is about buildinq democracy in order for people to participate in local government.
Lastly, there were also comments made about the process of participation in relation to interactions between the municipality and local communities. Some of the viewpoints raised in this regard were:
i. The need for participation to be more than a notice on a notice board, an advert in a newspaper or a letter or document in the post. One interviewee felt strongly that participation processes in relation to municipality initiated processes such as spatial planning needed to be more than the public being required to react to initiatives.
In this regard the feeling of the interviewee was that participation processes needed to involve communities at all stages of the project cycle - it should not 'begin and end with needs and issues identification'.
ii. There was a feeling that most such processes were more about information dissemination (much of which, it was said, was inaccessible to the citizens in any case because it was mostly in English and via thick technical documents).
4. The role of the Municipality in facilitating and enabling environment for