South Africa – assessing public participation strategies in low-income housing
assessing public participation strategies in low-income housing within government administration is set out in Chapter 10 of the Constitution (South Africa, 1996} which states that “people’s needs must be responded to, and the public must be encouraged to participate in policy-making.
Public participation processes are encapsulated within various legislative mandates such as the Integrated Development Plans, the White Paper on Local Government (South Africa 19980), and the White Paper on Transforming Public Service.
Public participation is critical to the success of sustainable development. Therefore South Africa should justifiably “promote public participation, including through measures that provide access to information regarding legislation, regulations, activities, policies and programmes” (United Nations, 2002:71). The strategies implemented to produce what can be considered successful public participation is an aspect not thoroughly considered in the development process. For this reason, this study delves into the various facets of public participation and the environment it operates.
To emphasise the importance of implementing the correct, context-appropriate public participation strategies, this study uses the Mamre low-cost housing project as a case study to demonstrate how the lack of appropriate public participation strategies can fail in sustainable development. Having considered all of the above, several recommendations are made which can be considered when embarking on a project similar to this one. In the case of Mamre, an opportunity for improvement still exists, as the project is yet to be completed.
The recommendations are based on categorising the public participation strategies Blaauwberg Municipality employed throughout the Mamre low-cost housing project according to the public participation model presented in chapter 3. The recommendations incorporates the lessons learnt from Cupido and suggests a pre-project strategy and pre-project planning workshops, which explains, among other things, .what authentic and empowering public participation actually is. The research results indicate that if a more structured approach is applied to existing strategies, the public participation process can be rendered authentic and empowering. Therefore, further recommendations are aimed at improving the strategies already utilised by Blaauwberg Municipality, to optimise the public participation process.
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