A core component of the Constitution
of the Republic of South Africa is
the commitment to ensure public
participation in governance, aimed
at giving effect to the principle of
a representative and participatory
democratic state, with sections 59, 72
and 118 of the Constitution calling
for public involvement in legislative
processes. Central to the Constitution
are values of non-racialism, equality and
protection of individual and societal
rights. Consequently, South Africa has
established a number of channels aimed
at giving effect to enhancing citizen
engagement in governance and through
which the Freedom Charter clause ‘the
people shall govern’ may be realised.
In spite of these channels for active
citizen participation, effective
communication between the state
and its citizenry remains a challenge
for policy-makers (DoC 2015). This
undermines the objective of the
Freedom Charter to ensure participatory
democracy and governance. Indeed,
post-1994 South Africa has seen
increasingly violent protests for diverse
reasons. Although violent protests
in themselves are a form of active
citizen engagement, they highlight the
ineffectiveness and low community
infiltration of ‘created spaces’ for
public participation and channels of
communication between the state and
the citizenry (Smith 2000–2009).
Current policy-derived instruments
aimed at enhanced citizen engagement
face great challenges. For example,
newly created ‘spaces’ for public
participation are irregular and largely
reactive community meetings initiated
by local municipalities, traditional
authorities and councillors. They are
typically convened at short notice
without any broad or inclusive
communication strategy and are largely
top-down in approach. In some local
municipalities, ‘mayoral hotlines’ have
been established. However, these
convey compliments and complaints
from constituents rather than forming a
bidirectional avenue of communication
about local government plans and
intentions. Even the Comprehensive
Rural Development Programme
(CRDP), initially formed in 1994 on
the principles of participatory and
inclusive development, has failed in
terms of promoting increased citizen
engagement through participation,
paying little more than lip service to
the ideals and principles that originally
underpinned its formulation and
acceptance (Hart et al. 2012; Jacobs and
Hart 2014).