Local Governance and Public Participation in Southern Africa Regional Chapter for Logolink Southern Africa By Laurence Piper, with input from Mirjam van Donk (May 2011) 1. Introduction This chapter surveys the state of public participation and local governance in southern Africa, more specifically in the countries of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. This is no easy task, and not simply because of the number of countries, but also because of their substantial diversity in demographic, political, and socio-economic terms. Further, to speak meaningfully of the state of citizen engagement with local governance it is not enough to speak of what CoƌŶǁall ;ϮϬϬϮͿ teƌŵs the iŶǀited spaĐes of paƌtiĐipatioŶ – that is, the government created and/or donor-driven opportunities for engagement between local state and society, but also to ĐoŶsideƌ the sigŶifiĐaŶĐe of iŶǀeŶted spaĐes of paƌtiĐipatioŶ, ǁhiĐh aƌe iŶitiated aŶd driven by citizens, or more accurately, civil society organisations. Indeed, Gaventa et al (2007) argue that effective public engagement requires not just new empowered institutions, but the political will by politicians and officials to make them work, and the mobilisation and organisation of citizen by civil society to make use of these spaces. Hence, to meet these twin demands, the methodology of the chapter has been to examine both the state-driven processes of decentralisation and public participation, and the society- driven response, particularly through examining the size, scope and orientation of civil society, and the character of local state-society relations down time. This has been done for every country (see Appendix Two). From this survey some general lessons are observable, including that stable and effective governance is necessary but not sufficient for decentralisation and local democratisation; that formal liberal democracy is necessary to generalise favourable conditions for public participation in local governance; that local state-building and local democracy-building can be mutually reinforcing; that time helps to improve public participation practices; that not all civil society is good for public participation; and that independent and community-based civil society is central to making participation work. However, to avoid either generalising too glibly across the region, or retreating into local particularity in understanding the nature of public participation in local governance, a distinction has been made between three kinds of regimes in the region, which share roughly similar political and socio-economic standing, and thus have similar contexts for public participation in local governance. These are middle-income flawed democracies (Botswana, Namibia, South Africa), low-income hybrid regimes (Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania) and low-income authoritarian regimes (Angola, Swaziland, Zimbabwe). Based on the political categorisation of regimes in terms of liberal-democratic institutions and practices, these types loosely correspond to socio-economic divisions, but not necessarily other social divides like urbanisation.