Localising democracy on an uneven playing field: the roles of ward councillors in the City of Cape Town

• Main Author: Vinothan Naidoo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: UTS ePRESS 2021-06-01
• Series: Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance
• Subjects: South Africa, ward councillors, Cape Town, local democracy
• Online Access: https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/cjlg/article/view/7065

The democratic transition in South Africa was accompanied by large-scale institutional re-engineering at all levels of government. This was an extremely complex process in local government, where a racially fragmented system of municipalities underwent extensive reorganisation. Despite this, historical patterns of settlement based on race have entrenched socio-economic inequalities and highly uneven experiences of local democracy. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates the differing roles of ward councillors. It examines a stratified sample of low-, mixed- and high-income wards in the City of Cape Town, and finds general yet qualified support for a view that ward councillor roles are conditioned by the socio-economic character of the areas they represent. In broad terms, councillors in low-income wards play a service broker and conflict mitigator role; councillors in mixed-income wards act as reconcilers and integrators; and councillors in high-income wards perform a placeholder and maintainer role.