How endemic violence and racism filter into local development

The date for municipal elections has been announced, which means we can expect a turbulent and highly contested environment in pursuit of a spot on the list of potential representatives.

We have also seen people losing their lives as a result, service delivery protests will become more frequent and violent, and public infrastructure will be destroyed.

The reasons for this will be varied, but the consequences of this “rage against the system” is understandable.

At a fundamental human level, the evidence is that we, enablers of government programmes for development, seem to contribute towards the disbelief in our social contracts with communities.

Worse, we turn this failure on to communities, and they turn on each other in unexpected ways with consequences which perpetuate the devastating cycles of institutional, situational and social violence we see play out in the painful headlines in our daily media.

Given that the rage against the system leads to increased violence, threats of violence and actual death threats, the question is, should the Mandela Bay Development Agency (MBDA) be spending public money in areas where there is a chance of infrastructure being destroyed or provided at great personal risk to the agency employees?

Like every public institution, especially municipalities, infrastructure provision is often hampered because of local interest groups operating outside established processes.

They wield gangster-like authority to ensure that if they do not get the work, no-one else will.

Our experience has been that, despite open democratic processes, local skills development and local employment investment, many people will still muscle their ways into extracting undeserved entitlements.

As a result, though the MBDA has improved its performance in recent years, it would be able to deliver more if conditions in the areas it works in were less threatening.

Elected and other community leaders should take responsibility for ensuring the integrity of democratic processes, but when they themselves are subjected to threats and violence, something deeper is amiss.

UCT vice-chancellor Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng recently addressed the topic of “the wounded leading the wounded”.

Black leaders, especially women, carry the same scars as the people they lead in institutions which are not cognisant of the trauma of the past in the present.

Black leaders who are themselves from wounded pasts, lead people and institutions which are also wounded, while dealing with the effects of those social wounds as they aim towards a better society.

This is what most local government leaders experience and it informs the context in which discussions take place at the MBDA.

Our social and economic networks are embedded with fragments of the past which form the backdrops of our engagements.

Though the past affects everyone differently, we still bear the scars of a violent past, but it does not justify a few people holding communities and democratic processes to ransom.

Communities are locked into pockets of underdevelopment by those who seek to profit through forcing public expenditure into particular directions.

Phakeng further explained the challenges of our wounded country to “build back better”, which requires leaders to understand the impact of the past on the present if they are to make mid-21st century SA a better place.

This requires a measure of “dreaming backwards”; going back to understanding the cumulative effects of dispossession, occupation, colonialism and apartheid on postapartheid communities.

“Building back better” requires us to comprehend conditions in local communities in a much more nuanced manner.

The challenge is how we grapple with the wounds holding back development.

Despite our willingness to face the challenges of providing physical infrastructure, should the MBDA not rather explore alternative paths to development?

Development is a broad term that means improving the human condition with targeted interventions.

This includes employment, skills and education, health, social support and physical infrastructure.

It also means working closely with communities to overcome impediments to human growth and advancement.

“Building back better” is difficult for local government because planning processes and budget expenditure are defined annual process where specific performance is expected.

Yet, impactful outcomes will not be achieved without empowered, informed and committed communities engaged in the process of their own learning and development.

The question within the MBDA is whether the provision of physical infrastructure is the best way to overcome underdevelopment, and if there are no other alternatives we could be exploring which are less harmful and which do not cycle the past into the present.

Our work in the field of psychosocial services with youth, women and skills development has been quite successful.

If we continue to ignore the impact of endemic violence and racism on local development, we will continue to take the past into the future.

Perhaps the opportunity is to focus on building pathways towards desired futures by finding ways to heal the wounds in the communities we work in.

Such approaches will result in public infrastructure being an outcome of empowered communities co-operating towards common goals and where opportunists are isolated.

Simultaneously, public representatives and community leaders could explain that public funds cannot justifiably be spent if it is known that what it is spent on will be destroyed.

Notwithstanding the wounded leading the wounded, we must find alternative ways for the future based on “building back better”.