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Mail & Guardian March 9 to 16 2012 37
International Public Participation Conference Advertorial
36 Mail & Guardian March 9 to 16 2012
An internationalconference tohelp governmentfind ways to
encourage publicparticipation saw specialists sharing
best practices fromacross the world
How can government get
people to participate
more in how their coun-
try, province and city are
run?
This was the question delegates at
the International Public Participation
Conference hosted by the Gauteng
provincial legislature (GPL) from
February 29 to March 2 at Emperor’s
Palace in Gauteng discussed.
Under the theme “The People Shall
Govern: Public Participation Beyond
Slogans” the conference aimed to
share key insights and knowledge
on improving citizens’ meaningful
participation governance processes.
The conference also hoped to build a body of knowledge on public partici-
pation and civic education to benefit
the legislative sector.
Uhuru Moiloa, chairperson of the
oversight committees of the GPL
said it was significant that people
had gathered “at the venue where
our Constitution was negotiated to
share experience in the world and
our own nation to uphold the princi-
ples of the Constitution.”
Peter Skosana, secretary to the GPL,
said the first international confer-
ence of this nature was held in 2006
in Birchwood and that, six years
down the line, there was “a need to
review the work done since then,
look at best practises and help to
enhance Gauteng’s own public partic-
ipation strategy, which was launched
Wednesday [February 29 2012].”
Skosana said there was a real need
for a mind-set shift regarding public
participation. “We must value the
input people make. It’s about giv-
ing a sense and a reality to people
that they are being listened to and
responded to and given feedback.
“There is also a real need for an invest-
ment in education among citizens
around public participation – it will
work if they see value to their inputs.”
Skosana said the presence of so
many participants, from non-govern-
mental organisations, international
guests from Nigeria, Kenya and
Scotland as well as the International
Association for Public Participation,
has “created a platform of people
who can share their views and trans-
late their resolutions into actions”.
“If we can walk the talk [of this
conference], we stand a better
chance of enhancing our democ-
racy,” Skosana said
Presentations to the 300 or so
delegates from across the world
addressed solutions used in Ireland,
in other developing countries,
such as India and Brazil, as well as
local examples from Western Cape,
Gauteng, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal
and Eastern Cape. Participants also
had access to a number of academic
papers and break-away sessions.
Inert populations spell
disaster
Keynote speaker Dr Sydney
Mufamadi started the conference
by saying that the aim of public
participation processes was to turn
inert populations into active partici-pants in governing. He identified the
early signs of an inert population as
including a reduction in voter fig-
ures, non-participation in public
hearing processes and a general
disinterest in government reports.
He said these could indicate that a
certain sector of the population was
considering contracting out of its
social agreement with government,
which he described as potentially
“disastrous”.
The challenges legislatures face in
achieving high levels of public partic-
ipation were highlighted by Neliswa
Peggy Nkonyeni, speaker of the
KwaZulu Natal (KZN) legislature,
laid the groundwork for discussions
by providing an historic overview
of the role of public participation in
government.
She outlined the differences
between the three sectors of govern-
ment (executive, legislative and judi-
ciary), saying that all were charged
with ensuring public participation
in some way or another. Nkonyeniexplained that the Constitution
avoids the concentration of too much
power at any one level of govern-
ment (executive, legislative, and judi-
ciary) and sets out different duties
for each, which impacts on the level
of public participation in each level.
She explained that the executive arm
(comprised of individual MECs) rep-
resents the people and suggests law
reforms, while the legislature (parlia-
ment as a whole) makes laws and the
judiciary (courts) deals with uphold-
ing those laws. Both the executive and
the legislature are responsible to the
people, but the judiciary is only subject
to the law and the Constitution.
She said the challenge lies in avoid-
ing tyranny on the one hand and
anarchy on the other hand.
“As a society we must never return
to an enslavement of humankind by
humankind. Legislators must con-
duct business in open manner,” she
said, stressing that it is a constitu-
tional injunction.
“Participation of the public is inte-
gral to service delivery and there is
a need to invest in our democracy in
a manner that ensures its sustain-
ability to safeguard our hard-earned
democracy.”
Constitutional requirement
“The Constitution makes it very
clear that all citizens must have
a chance to say what they believe
should be included in laws. All legis-
latures must facilitate public involve-
ment in its processes.”
Nkonyeni explained that while the
most obvious way of participating
is through elections, they take place
only every five years. Therefore true
public participation is only achieved
when, between elections, citizens
choose to become involved in the
processes of government.
Nkonyeni identified a number
of ways in which public participa-
tion had evolved in KZN, including
through sector parliaments, sym-
posia, public education campaigns,
public hearings, petitions and legis-
lative tours.She shared the results of a study
conducted by the KZN parliament
in conjunction with the EU govern-
ment, which identified basic guide-
lines for effective public participa-
tion. These included proactivity,
inclusiveness, shared responsibility,
access, transparency and continuedevaluation.
“We can still do more as the legis-
lative sector of SA. Beyond consider-
ing and guiding the sector, [a con-
structive strategy to promote public
participation] must ultimately be
outcome based and gear our people
to transforming,” she said.
Lessons from Jozi
The execut ive mayor o f
Johannesburg, Parks Tau, shared a
case study from the Johannesburg
Metro on how local municipalities
can involve the public in integrated
development planning (IDP).
He said that Johannesburg had
chosen to link its 2006 IDP (which
covered the years 2006 to 2011) to
community-based planning, and
that there had been two iterations. In
the first, wards were allocated equal
budgets and ward councillors could
identify three projects for imple-
mentation by the municipality, with
a final decision on which project
would be implemented made by thecouncil. However, not all councillors
involved their communities in choos-
ing these projects, negating the pur-
pose of the exercise.
“Another lesson was that pretty
much a uniform set of projects
was being pursued,” he said. For
instance, around 80% of funds were
allocated to establishing community
facilities like swimming pools or
community centres.
“We also found it’s not always
practical to also include capital allo-
cations [in what communities could
choose as projects],” he said, “as they
do not always take into account the
operational requirements, and their
future budgetary impacts, like the
need for additional staff to man the
community facility.”
In the second iteration of the 2006
IDP the council allowed the same
amount of money per ward but with
different criteria. The amount per
ward was not uniform, but depended
on the challenges faced by the par-
ticular ward. This created the oppor-
tunity for the ward councillors of
Alexandra, for instance, to pool their
resources for a broader solution for
Alex rather than using the money for
smaller projects in individual wards.
Together is better
“The overriding principle is
‘together’,” Tau said. “We can’t do
this on our own as government. It’s
not simply about voting every five
years but about empowering ordi-
nary citizens.”
Planning beyond these two IDP
iterations has led to an extensive
public participation process, under
nine themes: livable cities, resource
sustainability, health and poverty,
governance, transportation, commu-
nity safety, environment, economic
growth and smart city. Thematic
weeks of discussions at ward level
culminated in the 2025 GDS launch
held in October 2011, the result of
15 000 people participating in local
government planning around infra-
structure development.
Tau said public participation comes
at a price. “As government, you can’t
say you can’t afford the hall for the
meetings. Also, the timing is criti-
cal to ensure you deliver on citizens’
needs within a reasonable time after
they’ve raised their concerns,” he said.
International solutions
Tau identified two international
examples where governments
actively involved the public in infra-
structure development. In Kerala,
India, government has devolved 35%
of the state’s development budget to
local communities where local people
can determine and implement their
own development priorities. In Porto
Alegre, Brazil, communities are con-
sulted and budgets allocated but each
local community vote on the final
projects that are implemented. This
means those who support a particu-
lar project essentially have to lobby to
get votes for their project. The process
goes beyond the normal voter’s roll, in
that anyone who has a direct munici-
pal account qualifies to vote for the
project of their choice.
“We have a joint responsibil-
ity to build a responsive and caring
organisation, communicate with our
citizens, build a sense of confidence
through our actions, give voice to
the voiceless and respond when they
speak, and bring new energy and
new ideas into the kind of society we
want to build by 2040,” Tau said.
GPL hosts internationalconference on public participation
Can participatory budgetingtravel beyond Brazil?
Prof Brian Wampler – Associate Proffessor, Deparment of Physical Science, Boise Sate University in Brazil –
suggested that governments who are considering participatory budgeting programmes should ask themselves the
following questions;
1. Is there sufficient discretionary funding to allow citizens to select specific public works they’d like to see
implemented?
2. Is the government prepared to delegate authority in this regard to citizens?
3. Will participatory budgeting programmes subvert traditional patronage networks? Does the government
want to subvert them?
4. Can participatory budgeting help the government to establish new bases of political support?
5. Is the government willing to try to reform the local bureaucracy?6. Are civil society organisations prepared and willing to participate?
Hon. Speaker of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, Lindiwe Maseko,providing an opening address at the Public Participation conference.
Make budgets work with the people
The second day of the conference
was focused around case studies from
across SA and the world about how
communities have been involved in
governing, with particular reference
to budgets and petitions.
Prof Brian Wampler, Associate
Proffessor, Deparment of Physical
Science, Boise Sate University in
Brazil , shared the knock-on effects of
the participatory budgeting Tau had
mentioned. He said there are now
thousands of participatory budgeting
programmes across the world mod-
elled after Porto Alegre’s pioneering
case. In Brazil itself, the participa-
tion has grown from 134 communi-
ties in 1992 to 201 communities in
2008. There are more than 200 cases
in Europe and thousands in Latin
America, Africa and Asia, he said.
He suggested that the key types
of participatory budgets for govern-
ments to adapt are in relation to urban
public works, housing, health care,
social service and through online vot-
ing from a pre-selected menu.
He said that civil society organisa-
tions (CSOs) played in a key role in
these initiatives by holding their
own meetings to discuss government
proposals and then mobilising their
members to attend public meetings.He said that more sophisticated
participatory budgeting programmes
are more likely to use the quality of
life index to determine how to allocate
resources. The quality of life index aims
to create a more equitable distribution
of resources. It works on the principle
that the lower the degree of access to
basic services within a region per cap-
ita, the higher the degree of per capita
resources are allocated to the region.
This is informed by demographic and
infrastructure data such as the number
of schools or the distance to the closest
health care clinic, basic GIS mapping
and functions on both a regional and
micro-regional level, to incorporate
small communities.
Wampler used the capital and
largest city in the Brazilian state of
Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, as a
case study for participatory budget-
ing, where between 1994 and 2008,
roughly 10% of all discretionary
spending was controlled through
participatory budgeting. Even its
shantytowns are now required to
have a global development plan, and
only public works that are included
in those plans can be included in the
participatory budgeting process.
He said the advantages of adopt-
ing participatory budgeting pro-
cesses include:
• Government enhances its policy
and political legitimacy by allow-
ing citizens to influence specificproject selection
• Projects are better targeted to
meet citizens’ key needs and
pro-poor criteria reach into
shantytowns
• Citizens are engaged and
empowered through participa-
tory processes
• There is less corruption dur-
ing project implementation due
to an interested and engaged
citizenry
• The small size of many of the
projects provides contracts for
small local companies.
• Wampler identified limitations
and risks of participatory budg-
eting, as follows:
• Participatory budgeting deals
only with a small portion of the
budget and focuses on small
public works projects
• Participants are dependent
on government officials for
information
• There is limited policy knowl-
edge among participants
• Long-term planning has an
ambiguous role
• The amount of policy learning
among citizens is unclear
• It tends to engage leaders more
than individual citizens
• There is a fine line between co-
governance and government
control or co-optation
He suggested a number of ques-tions governments can ask them-
selves to decide whether a partici-
patory budgeting programme will
work for them [See Can participa-
tory budgeting travel beyond Brazil?,
elsewhere on this page], and con-
cluded his presentation by challeng-
ing governments to spend scarce
resources to implement selected pro-
jects to allow increased opportuni-
ties for participation.
Enabling systems and organi-sational culture
The third day of the conference
concerned itself with the impact of
public participation and enabling
systems and organisational culture
that promote public participation,
with presentations from the IEC and
the Public Affairs Research institute.
Dmitri Holtzman, director at
Equal Education Law Centre in
Cape Town, said that there is a very
important distinction between con-
sultation and participation. “Public
participation itself should be mean-
ingful and legitimate.”
He identified two basic require-
ments for legitimacy: (1) People
must be aware of what the process
is before the process begins; (2) The
outcome of the process must be justi-
fiable and justified.
The conference concluded with a
delegates’ declaration on how to take
public participation across the world
one step further.
In response to a question fromM&G on what he would most want
his own son to take away from a
conference such as this, the GPL’s
Moiloa said that “he must begin to
concern himself with the issues in
his community, whether it be access
to higher education, potholes or
streetlights that aren’t working. He
should contact those who have been
elected and follow up with them to
keep them accountable.”
He said that he would, in his role as
oversight of all GPL committees “very
soon” share his framework for com-
mittees of the GPL to follow to ensure
they engage the public in their delib-
erations and processes, with key per-
formance areas indicated in line with
the PEBA oversight model.
Moiloa challenged young people to
concern themselves with how their
country is being run, saying that chil-
dren who grow up in affluent suburbs
with educated parents and strong edu-
cation themselves would have found
this conference just as relevant as
children from impoverished commu-
nities with little access to basic educa-
tion. “It impacts their future security.
They have to ask: is government doing
enough to ensure that all young peo-
ple have access to allow them to get to
where I am able to get? This is about
nation-building, about ensuring the
security of our democracy and creat-
ing conditions that are favourable to
the development of all people.”
All papers and presentations from
the conference are available on www.gpl.gov.za.
Public participationbeyond slogans
The participants in the InternationalConference on Public Participation atthe end of the conference declared theirintentions as follows:
We re-affirm our
unyielding com-
mitment to the
basic tenets of goodgovernance and
transparency through the active par-
ticipation of all people irrespective of
political affiliation, nationality, eth-
nicity, gender, race and creed.
We are committed towards
ensuring that public participation
becomes a living reality, moving
beyond mere rhetoric and slogans to
meaningful citizen participation.
To this end, we need to create an
enabling environment for everyone to
participate on key policy issues affect-
ing their lives.
Drawing from the creative energies
of communities we commit ourselves
towards ensuring that public par-
ticipation drives policy and legislative
processes of the Sate.
We believe that public participa-
tion is essential to good governance
and human developments. The ulti-
mate objective of public participa-
tion is to improve the livelihood out-
comes of the people.
We strongly believe that an
involved and engaged community can overcome obstacles to develop-
ment. To this end, we need to insti-
tutionalise and create a culture of
meaningful public participation.
Therefore, we need to reassert the
necessity and the importance of
meaningful involvement of the citi-
zenry in governance processes. This
can be realised through exploring
various avenues of effective public
participation in governance.
We strongly believe that civic edu-
cation and literacy are fundamen-
tal to effective public participation.
Moreover, building a body of knowl
edge on public participation will
improve the capacity of communities
to engage on policy and legislative
issues.Essential to effective public par-
ticipation, we believe, is the need to
accommodate all official and other
languages for ease of meaningful
engagement and understanding. This
recognises the importance and appre-
ciation of plurality, diversity and dif-
ferent voices in our communities.
We are mindful of the fact that
citizen participation must be clearly
defined and parameters to participa-
tion outlined for purposes of manag-
ing public expectations.
Moreover, we are sensitive to evident
contradictions between representative
and participatory forms of democracy.
In this respects, effective public partici-
pation mechanisms will reconcile these
anomalies.
Of importance in public partici-
pation is the crucial role of citizens
in the planning and budgetary pro-
cesses of the state. In this regard, we
are of the view that public participa-
tion processes must be aligned to
planning processes.
We are also mindful of the needfor adequate funding for public par-
ticipation. Thus, we urge all civic-
minded public institutions to allo-
cate sufficient resources in order to
institutionalise public participation.
Related to this is the need for contin-
uous capacity-building programmes
for public participation.
Ultimately, the underlying objec-
tive of our vision is to entrench the
ethos and values of meaningful pub-
lic involvement in government and
democratic processes. To this end,
we are determined to push the fron-
tiers of public participation forward.
Ms Laura Graham from the University of Aberdeen in Northern Ireland, shar
Chairperson of a Standing Committee on Petitions at Gauteng Provincial Legislature, Hon. Jacob Khawe,presenting on effective petition systems.