Books and Book Chapters (School of Government)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10566/1561

Browse

collection.page.browse.recent.head

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The politics of social change and the transition to democratic governance: Community participation in post-apartheid South Africa
    (Juta, 2008) Williams, John J.
    Community participation, i.e. the direct involvement/engagement of ordinary people in the affairs of planning, governance and overall development programs at the local or grassroots level, has become an integral part of democratic practice in recent years (cfJayal, 2001). In the case of post-apartheid South Africa, community participation has literally become synonymous with legitimate governance. In this regard, for example, the Municipal Structures Act, Chapter 4, subsections (g) and (h) state respectively that the 'executive mayor [should] annually report on the involvement of community organisations in the affairs of the municipality' and 'ensure that due regard is given to public views and report on the effect of consultation on the decisions of council' (RSA, 1998c). Yet it would seem that most community participation exercises in post-apartheid South Africa are largely spectator politics, where ordinary people have mostly become endorsees of pre-designed planning programs, often the objects of administrative manipulation and a miracle of reconciliation in the international arena of consensus politics, while state functionaries of both the pre- and post-apartheid eras ensconce themselves as bureaucratic experts summonsed to 'ensure a better life for all'. Consequently, the process, visions and missions of a more equitable society operate merely as promissory notes issued every five years during election campaigns. In this course of endless rhetoric and multiple platitudes, the very concept of community participation has been largely reduced to a cumbersome ritual—a necessary appendix required by the various laws and policies operating at the local government level.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Dynamics of building a better society: Reflections on ten years of development cooperation and capacity building
    (SUN Media, 2014) Tapscott, Chris; Slembrouck, Stef; Pokpas, Larry; Ridge, Elaine; Ridge, Stan
    The modern world is an environment of rapid change. Per Dalin points out that we are experiencing an unprecedented ten revolutions occurring simultaneously. There are revolutions prompted by globalisation and the population explosion, revolutions in knowledge and information, in the economy, technology, ecology, culture, politics, aesthetics, and values. Dealing with change on this scale requires a paradigm shift of the kind last experienced when science began to deepen its challenge to other forms of knowing in the 17th century. We have to learn to know and see differently. That is not easy. With this in mind, the philosopher Manuel Castells points us to a combination of global knowledge, networks and communication as our fundamental means of dealing with the challenges of the 21st century. We need to work in partnerships. There can be no going it alone. Learning to see and understand differently is still the primary challenge in South Africa’s ongoing transition to democracy. 20 years ago, emerging from the apartheid past with a mission to engage with apartheid’s terrible ongoing legacy, UWC knew that it needed partners to face Dalin’s ten revolutions in their local incarnations. Transformation of the kind that enables people to move beyond apartheid’s authoritarian certainties requires a profound paradigm shift from both oppressor and oppressed. This shift is inseparable from a global challenge. New perspectives and new knowledge are required to respond to the non-linear, persistent and ubiquitous changes, both social and natural, that are now beginning to impact on humans across the world. It is in partnerships across cultures and nationalities that we are most likely to gain these perspectives and find this knowledge. And it is in partnerships that we find the assurance and the social conviction necessary to make the new knowledge and perspectives available and ultimately unavoidable. This understanding lay behind our response in 2002 to the panel interviewing us as shortlisted candidates for the VLIR-UOS institutional university cooperation programme. The panellists expressed profound doubts about our choice of the Humanities and the Social Sciences above the Natural Sciences as the main thrust of the programme. We explained that our vision and mission led us to believe that we must try to create a sense of co-responsibility amongst all humans if we are to confront successfully the already threatening changes to our physical and social environment. We argued that our future as a species would depend essentially on the success of our collaborative relationships with other humans globally. This called for a caring and open perspective. Clearly, our vision was convincing. We were selected. A decade of partnership with Flemish universities has been a major factor in the rapid advances that UWC has made in that period. The programme, co-created by UWC , VLIR-UOS and four Flemish universities, has focused on “The Dynamics of Building a Better Society”. In caring about how change takes place and being open to its complexity, we strove together, with signal success, to build capacity, stimulate research, and on the strength of actual achievements to create Research Centres in 5 strategic areas: The African Centre for Citizenship and Democracy The Interdisciplinary Centre of Excellence for Sports Sciences and Development The Centre for Research in HIV and AIDS The Institute for Water Studies The Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research This book tells the story of how we did so. It is a celebration of people from two cultures learning to work together in the interests of humankind, and doing so successfully.