Difficult but Not Impossible: The ANC's Decentralization Strategy in South Africa

As the neo‐liberal project has spread across the globe, decentralization has been a key component of it. In South Africa, the neo‐liberal macro‐economic strategy of the African National Congress (ANC) involves support for fiscal and administrative decentralization partly as a way to bring the private sector into basic service delivery and supposedly to make local government more efficient and effective. However, the ANC also sees decentralization as a way to empower the historically disadvantaged black population. Community‐based public–private partnerships have been one of the chief initiatives in this regard. In the metropolitan municipality of Port Elizabeth, small black contracting companies have been hired and trained to dispose of waste, construct roads and build houses. While not free of tensions and problems, this approach to decentralization has fostered a form of democratic development. This article uses examples from the Port Elizabeth experience to test and reflect upon a number of issues which are raised in the literature on decentralization.