Party politics, the poor and the city: Reflections from the South African case

Abstract

Local democracy and ‘spaces’ of citizenship and participation are at the core of much contemporary research focusing on cities (Barnett and Low, 2004). This is the case both for researchers interested in issues of urban governance and social and spatial justice, around for instance the notion of ‘right to the city’, and also for those focusing on urban social dynamics and local identities. This is because local citizenship can be an important dimension of such identities and group formation, and local identities can profoundly impact the lived experiences of citizenship. Local democracy indeed, while not necessarily equivalent to deeper democracy or greater justice at the more general level (Purcell, 2006), at least opens avenues for the engagement of urban residents in debates about their immediate environment, including on issues dealing with the distribution or design of urban goods (housing, services, access to space). Notably absent from the literature focusing on local democracies on cities, and maybe more especially in African contexts, is the importance of party politics in the construction of local debates and urban citizenship. This is the gap that this themed issue begins to address.