Summary: | This study seeks to determine whether the conflict between the City of Cape Town (CCT) and the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) is resulting in positive or negative outcomes from the perspective of the residents concerned. In principle, engagement, between civil society and local government should lead to an improvement in terms of the meeting of needs or wants for those communities whose interests are being contested, or at the very least an improved understanding of the plans and challenges faced by both. Further, the engagement and/or conflict between local government and civil society, if positive, should ideally lead to greater understanding between all stakeholders and the strengthening of relations between them government, civil society and the relevant community interests. The motivation of this study is to explore the unanswered issues such as, whether the SJC has gone beyond the use of acceptable tactics associated with responsible and effective civil society actors and whether it would be justified if they have; if the SJC’s actions have resulted in an actual improvement in the accelerated realization of the socio-economic rights of the communities whose interests they purport to represent; whether the communities ‘represented’ by the SJC see them as their effective advocate for the interests and concerns ; if the issue of sanitation is the primary issue for the residents concerned as claimed by the SJC; if the residents of the communities concerned feel the same animosity to the CCT that the SJC does.
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