LOCAL. ELECTio IN SOUTH AFRICA PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS LOCAL SUSAN BOOYSEN LOCAL ELECTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA EDITOR PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS

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1 PEOPL POLITICS LOCAL IN SOUTHPARTIE AFRICA ELECTio LOCAL IN SOUTH AFRICA PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS focusing on how local electoral politics interfaces with local government and the socio-economic base of society. The time from local government election 2011 onward into 2012 was an evocative period in which to take stock of South Africa s politics of the local. It was here that issues of development and poverty, social injustice and deficient governance came to bear most tangibly on the relationship between citizen and government. Serial and often unconvincing national government initiatives to turn around local government fuelled local discontent. Simultaneously, political parties thrived, survived, stumbled or faltered, often with little bearing on actual performance on the ground. What happens in the local is not predetermined to grow into a national phenomenon. In many cases timely warnings and matching political action prevent local problems from evolving into national judgements. Yet, the local signals what may follow, or what may be realised if nurtured or not circumvented. The book dissects both the local signals and their potential to change South Africa s political landscapes. The book s collection of research and analyses aims to close a substantial gap in LOCAL ELECTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS Local elections in South Africa explores the politics of local government elections, PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS systematic analyses of local politics, elections and government in South Africa. This book s 20 authors represent the perspectives of many of South Africa s most ISBN EDITOR heart of politics in South Africa. SUSAN BOOYSEN accomplished scholars. The collective project sheds valuable light on the local, the EDITOR SUSAN BOOYSEN

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5 LOCAL ELECTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS Editor Susan Booysen

6 Local Elections in South Africa: Parties, People, Politics Published by SUN MeDIA Metro under the SUN PReSS imprint For Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Rights Reserved This publication was commissioned and made possible by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Copyright 2012 Authors and SUN MeDIA MeTRO This publication is protected by copyright law. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying or recording, without prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN Designed in Adobe InDesign CS3 Set in 11/12 Chaparral Pro Cover and text design by Obakeng Moroe Text layout by Christine van Deventer Produced by SUN MeDIA Bloemfontein 59 Brill Street, Westdene, Bloemfontein,

7 CONTENTS Acknowledgements... i Section 1: Local Elections and the Politics of the Local, circa Chapter 1: Sideshow or heart of the matter? Local politics and South Africa s 2011 local government elections... 1 Susan Booysen Chapter 2: Imperfect transition local government reform in South Africa Derek Powell Chapter 3: Further from the people bipartisan nationalisation thwarting the electoral system Laurence Piper Chapter 4: Their vote is not unconditional development, devolution and local-provincial dynamics Janet Cherry Chapter5: Municipal structures and finances predicaments and performance challenges Werner Zybrands Section 2: Party Politics through the Lens of Local Election 2011 Chapter 6: Trends in participation and party support in the 2011 municipal elections Collette Schulz Herzenberg Chapter 7: The ANC s performance in the 2011 local government elections Zaid Kimmie Chapter 8: A party for all the people? The DA and the 2011 local elections Zwelethu Jolobe Chapter 9: IFP versus NFP opening new spaces in once-no-go KwaZulu-Natal Ndwakhulu Tshishonga

8 Chapter 10: COPE grandiose entrance and micro-status Dirk Kotzé Chapter 11: Small parties and independents from also-rans to kingmakers Cherrel Africa and Garth van Rooyen Chapter 12: Trend-breakers in local election 2011 case studies of local interest parties Peter Schmitz Chapter 13: Fourth estate or fifth column? The media on the 2011 campaign trail Franz Krüger Section 4: Representation and Participation Chapter 14: Community life and securing participation beyond elections Imraan Buccus Chapter 15: One step forward, one step back women and local election Shireen Hassim and Kirsty Smith Chapter 16: Subduing local voice public participation and ward committees Rama Naidu Chapter 17: The ballot and the brick enduring under duress Susan Booysen Section 5: Projections and Conclusions Chapter 18: The predictive power of by-elections Ronesh Dhawraj Chapter 19: Voter movements between elections linking the 2011 and preceding election results using cluster trend matrices Jan Greben Chapter 20: Conclusion Susan Booysen Authors Index

9 Acknowledgements This collection originated in the invitation I received from the Konrad-Adenauer- Stiftung to conceptualise and edit a collected volume on South Africa s local government elections of With cognition that there is a multitude of studies of national-provincial elections in South Africa, yet a paucity of studies of local elections and the politics of the local, I accepted. The challenge was especially to unpack local politics at the interface between citizen and government, to understand the complex party political dynamics that make citizens relate to issues of political loyalty and local government in conditions of imperfect delivery and continuous poverty, unemployment and inequality, as these affect selves and others. This was to be a daunting but exciting task. I identified and recruited topnotch established and emerging specialists and authors that would fill the slots in the roadmap I designed for the volume. I am particularly thankful to the authors that were bold enough to step beyond their immediate areas of specialisation and apply their expertise to the focal areas of this book. To all contributing authors, thank you for embracing this project as part of your research. Thank you for the original research that was conducted and presented in this volume. With your contributions the politics of the local in South Africa will be understood in hitherto unsurpassed ways. I also wish to single out the two then-anonymous reviewers for bringing their insights and eyes for detail to bear on this project. To Keith Gottschalk, University of the Western Cape, and Albert Venter, University of Johannesburg, your detailed assessments of the manuscript, wise overall advice on fine-tuning and concurrence on the need in the literature for a book of this nature made a huge contribution. The priority time you gave to the project was impressive. My thanks equally goes to the anonymous supplementary reviewer who stepped in with invaluable reviews on a few of the highly specialised thematic areas. My profound thanks goes to Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung for the belief in this project, and for offering the financial backing and administrative support to execute it. The two workshops, pre- and post-local election 2011, in own right were analytical events of note. Our chapters benefited from the collective insights. In particular I wish to note the role that Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung South Africa Resident Representative, Dr Werner Boehler, played in persuading me to be the editor. Konrad-Adenauer- I

10 Stiftung s Nancy Msibi s consistent and persistent support for and facilitation of all phases of this project had no mean role in ensuring the conclusion of the project. Susan Booysen Editor March 2012 II

11 Section 1 Local elections and the politics of the local, circa

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13 Sideshow or heart of the matter? Local politics and South Africa s 2011 local government elections Susan Booysen INTRODUCTION Local politics in South Africa is where variance and dissidence are displayed long before these phenomena register on the national scales. The local is the experimental field where new trends in party support are identified, where warning signals rise about communities responding to issues of governance. The local is the incubator, the hothouse, the wind tunnel, often the site of first sighting of things to come. Yet, what happens in the local is not predetermined to grow into national phenomena. In many cases timely warnings and political action prevent local problems from transferring to the national arena. Yet, the site offers the signals of what may follow, of what may be realised if nurtured, or if not circumvented. One of the strongest expressions of the local in South Africa is the concentration of politics around local government elections. Local elections are the lens through which it makes sense to view the politics of the coalface, the interface between citizen and government. Local government election 2011 and its aftermath in the rest of 2011 into 2012 was a profound moment to take stock of the politics of the local. It was here that issues of development and poverty, injustices and continuous deprivation, and deficient governance came to bear most tangibly on the relationship between citizen and government. It is in this local space that the South African government is most 1

14 LOCAL ELECTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA: Parties People Politics tangibly not doing very well. Serial initiatives by national government to turn around the local have had modestly positive results at best. In addition, representation by and accountability of the municipal councillors have been sources of local revolt, often by means of community protest. The world of party politics often fails to express the levels of dissatisfaction on the ground there is a cushioning effect through direct people-governing party (mostly ANC) engagement. The discontent evidenced in local party politics often does not make it to the top of the pyramid of national party political standings. The ANC, despite in all probability being beyond its peak in political power, remains extensively hegemonic and dominant by a wide margin especially when measured through the national lens. Provincially, it retains its edge, with some exceptions. Locally, we observe a wide range of contests, challenges, lapses and even defeats in as far as other parties and processes undermine (or subvert parts of) the ANC pedestal. South African politics is by now known for the fact that voters are often in direct engagement with their ANC, expressing discontent and protesting against the ANC in government, and then following through by voting for the ANC. Election time in South Africa, for the bulk of the voters, remains the time of uniting ranks against a party political enemy of choice. Opposition party support is not nearly the only way to express unhappiness with (mostly ANC) government performance. The relationship between government performance and voting on the local government level in South Africa is not one-to-one, yet it is a closer, more direct and exposed, relationship than what exists on the levels of national and provincial elections. Party politically, voting on the local level is somewhat less constrained by central party hegemony, ideology and sanction. It is in the local where the hearts and minds of the people of South Africa are shown to a larger extent albeit far from wholly than in comparable national spaces. There is more space for political-electoral dissent and rebellion, despite these elections in many respects being projected as national events referenda on the state of government, or a mid-term check on the state of the parties. The local derives space for political deviance and structural exceptionalism, compared with the national-provincial, from factors such as: Higher visibility of weaknesses in government, especially in terms of corruption and maladministration; More direct exposure of public elected representatives, and to some extent the bureaucracy, to the electorate; 2

15 Sideshow or heart of the matter? Local politics and South Africa s 2011 local government elections Being the target of protests that expose and try to hold to account local political and bureaucratic representatives; Standing as evidence of institutional underdevelopment and lack of sufficient human capacity; Bearing responsibility for flaws and mistakes of the national and provincial governments; and Provincial and national party leaderships manoeuvres to manipulate (or improve) the local representatives. Thus, election results only tell a partial story the story of electoral democracy, but not necessarily the story that emerges out of the bulk of the people of South Africa relating directly to their ANC in a democracy that runs parallel to the electoral version. For now incremental opposition party progress the Democratic Alliance (DA) that has had modest support gains has fallen far short of capturing discontent with ANC governance. As national government struggles to get local government off the ground, and as local government struggles to operate and deliver, trust is eroding. Opposition parties are incrementally gaining ground. The DA, modestly sized, but nevertheless the predominant opposition party circa 2011, is not the only beneficiary. There is also some movement to community and left-activist parties, which are ideologically and politically diverse. Some were distinctly to the left of the ANC, and not at a point of challenging the DA for the status of predominant opposition. The biggest of the socalled community parties are mostly parties with specific grievances against the ANC, such as provincial border demarcation, and remain out of capture range for both the DA and the activist left. The central focus of this book s collection of essays is the politics of local government elections, as local electoral politics interfaces with local government (and government in general) and participation in South African politics. Amongst others, the chapters link the local (with regard to the specific chapter theme) to the national and provincial, specifically because it is the local that helps us better understand the provincial and national. The chapters incorporate select (back to 1994) historical overviews to help create multi-dimensional analyses. The book presents the dynamics of local politics and local government elections (in particular those of 2011) in the context of national and provincial politics. The parts of this bigger picture emerge as the chapters roll out a case of the whole of the analyses of local politics being greater than the sum of their parts. This introduction presents the outline of this whole. 3

16 PEOPL POLITICS LOCAL IN SOUTHPARTIE AFRICA ELECTio LOCAL IN SOUTH AFRICA PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS focusing on how local electoral politics interfaces with local government and the socio-economic base of society. The time from local government election 2011 onward into 2012 was an evocative period in which to take stock of South Africa s politics of the local. It was here that issues of development and poverty, social injustice and deficient governance came to bear most tangibly on the relationship between citizen and government. Serial and often unconvincing national government initiatives to turn around local government fuelled local discontent. Simultaneously, political parties thrived, survived, stumbled or faltered, often with little bearing on actual performance on the ground. What happens in the local is not predetermined to grow into a national phenomenon. In many cases timely warnings and matching political action prevent local problems from evolving into national judgements. Yet, the local signals what may follow, or what may be realised if nurtured or not circumvented. The book dissects both the local signals and their potential to change South Africa s political landscapes. The book s collection of research and analyses aims to close a substantial gap in LOCAL ELECTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS Local elections in South Africa explores the politics of local government elections, PARTIES, PEOPLE, POLITICS systematic analyses of local politics, elections and government in South Africa. This book s 20 authors represent the perspectives of many of South Africa s most ISBN EDITOR heart of politics in South Africa. SUSAN BOOYSEN accomplished scholars. The collective project sheds valuable light on the local, the EDITOR SUSAN BOOYSEN