Imperfect transition – local government reform in South Africa 1994-2012
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Date
2012
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Publisher
SUN Press
Abstract
Local government is a mirror of the larger political and economic forces, cleavages and
problems that are shaping South African society. It is these deeper fault lines in society,
rather than the Zuma government’s turnaround strategy or the 2011 local elections result,
which will drive future policy and determine its effects. This is the first lesson of local
government reform in all four terms of national government examined in this chapter.
In each term, national policy reforms were moulded by shifting political and economic
circumstances and larger national interests, not simply by the unfolding logic of the original
blueprint for local government in the 1998 white paper. The outcome of eighteen years
of policy reform, however, was not the new society imagined in the white paper, but an
imperfect transition that is local government today: where peaceful electoral competition
coexists with violent public protests, racial group areas endure in fact, even if not in law,
pockets of good governance survive amidst systemic corruption and mismanagement, and
national policy goals consistently exceed local government’s capacity to deliver them and
the economy’s skills base. The second lesson flows from that reality – due to the fact that the
problems of local government are so nested in the broader problems of our society, further
local government policy reform and sweeping national turnaround strategies are likely to
have imperfect impacts on ‘the problem of local government’ in South Africa.
Description
Keywords
Local government, Local government elections
Citation
Powell, D. (2012). Imperfect transition – local government reform in South Africa 1994-2012. . In S. Booysen (ed). Local elections in South Africa: parties, people, politics. Bloemfontein: Sun Press, pp 11-30