Community meetings seldom lead to significant change in urban policies, and have been accused of being sterile, sedative, or manipulative. This book starts from a simple question: why do people then continue to participate in these meetings, sometimes massively, and on a regular basis? Authors from a variety of disciplines explore the multiple roles of these �invited� spaces of participation. From consolidation of individual social status and networks, to the construction and framing of the local �community�, the display of political or group loyalties and maintenance of clientelist exchange, access to information, rumors or gossip but also forms of education on who and what is the state, invited spaces of participation are also, crucially, places of emergence of collective awareness, through shared expressions of frustration, that can lead to political mobilisation and other, less institutionalised forms of participation. This book, unpacking community politics and rethinking the complex articulations between ��invited� and invented� spaces of participation, is of relevance for international and national audiences interested in urban governance and local democracy.
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Figures and tables
Introduction Politicising and politicking community participation in urban governance 1
Claire B�nit-Gbaffou
Part 1 Politicising spaces of participation
Chapter 1 From party-state to party-society in South Africa: SANCO and the informal politics of community representation in Imizamo Yethu, Cape Town
Laurence Piper
Chapter 2 Against ourselves � local activists and the management of contradictory political loyalties: The case of Phiri, Johannesburg
Boitumelo Matlala and Claire B�nit-Gbaffou
Chapter 3 Social movements, mobilisation and political parties: A case study of the Landless People’s Movement, South Africa
Luke Sinwell
Chapter 4 Ritualistic spaces? Re-examining invited spaces of participation
Obvious Katsaura
Chapter 5 Constructing communities in public meetings: Local leaders and the management of xenophobic discourses in Yeoville
Claire B�nit-Gbaffou and Eulenda Mkwanazi
Part 2 Beyond invented/invited spaces of participation
Chapter 6 Uncooperative masses as a problem for substantive and participatory theories of democracy: The cases of
‘people’s power’(1984�6)and the ‘xenophobia’ (2008) in South Africa
Daryl Glaser
Chapter 7 Participation, neoliberal control and the voice of street traders in Cape Town:
A Foucauldian perspective on ‘invited spaces’
Marianne Morange
Chapter 8 Meetings in Vosloorus (Ekurhuleni): Democratic public spaces or spaces for grievances?
Philippe Gervais-Lambony
Chapter 9 ‘Bringing government closer to the people’? The daily experience of subcouncils in Cape Town
Chlo� Buire
Chapter 10 Contesting the participatory sphere: Encountering the state in Johannesburg and Cape Town
Alex Wafer and Sophie Oldfield
Chapter 11 Beyond invented and invited spaces of participation: The Phiri and Olivia Road court cases and their outcome
La�la Smith and Margot Rubin
Postscript Viewing South Africa’s urban governance from an ‘Indian’ perspective
Glyn Williams
Contributors
Index
