Abstract
This thesis assesses the assumptions about participatory governance that are embedded in international and South African development policy against how political participation is understood and practiced by ordinary citizens in a poor peri-urban community in South Africa. It argues that if democratic participation is understood as a process by which the voices of all members of society, including those of the poor and marginalised, are included in public decision making, then many of the programmes promoted by donors and government, such as participatory forums, a variety of technical participation mechanisms, civic education measures and certain types of civil society support, fail to stand the test of enhancing democracy. Where others have attributed this to faulty implementation, this thesis focuses on the theoretical assumptions embedded in donor policy, which provide an epistemological grid that fails to consider how unequal power relations within the post- colonial societies assist affect the participation of the subaltern. Building on the critique of post-colonialism and democratic theory, the thesis develops a theoretical framework to assess how power, citizenship and participation intersect in post-colonial societies. On the basis of this, concrete elite assumptions, as they are expressed in pertinent donor policies about cause and effect in participatory governance are assessed and challenged. In a detailed case study of a peri-urban South African township in the Mpumalanga Province, the thesis then proceeds to describe and analyse local power structures. I argue that these transcend political power, and intersect with economic, social and cultural forms of power. Economies of survival, patronage, patriarchy and networks of dependency serve to differentiate citizenship and militate against the possibility of citizens to organise collective interests and to hold the local state to account, a state on which the livelihoods of many citizens depend. This is exacerbated by the fluidity of class formation that relies on a multiplicity of networks with shifting insiders and outsiders. Such fluidity and heterogeneity prohibit the development of class identity and mutual trust that are at the basis of collective organising. Subaltern members of society are very much aware of both, their democratic rights, and of the prevailing unresponsiveness, lack of transparency and corruption in their government. Yet, they are constrained in their options to participate democratically by a sense of powerlessness. That is why they resort to very diverse, and sometimes contradictory repertoires such as clientelism, insurgency, forms of everyday resistance and strategic evasion of the state alongside democratic forms of engagement, such as voting or protesting peacefully...
D.Litt. et Phil. (Political Studies)