Civic Associations in Transitional Local Government Structures in South Africa

In: Critical sociology, Band 22, Heft 3, S. 113-134

Abstract

This paper examines the participation of civic associations in transitional local government structures in three South African cities. It concludes that as legitimate political structures evolve through a democratization process, those social movements that strive to influence policy-making discover they must access those structures through political party allies or become political parties themselves. Such associations abandon their social movement status and grow less autonomous than when they formed protest movements to mobilize disenfranchised citizens. This paper suggests that civics found their autonomous influence eroding as two imperatives, one external and the other internal, affected them. The methods the civic movement used to demand reforms of the apartheid government became less effective and less attractive to civic supporters. Their internal imperative to seek engagement in the political system forced the civics to respond to this new environment by sacrificing their autonomy.