Public participation in the preparation of Port of Durban expansion development plan : back of port project, Ethekweni municipality.

Abstract

This study examines public participation and the ensuing conflict in the preparation of Port of Durban plan. The Back of Port project is used as a case study. This included the factors that influenced the expansion of Port of Durban and its impact. This study adopted a qualitative research approach. Both primary and secondary sources of data were used. Interviews were conducted with key informants and the Community of Clairwood. The study revealed that public participation particularly in the post-apartheid era enjoys a high level of support across various sectors. However its practice is fraught with conceptual and practical difficulties. It was found that the extent of public participation that was undertaken in the Back of Port project plan was unsatisfactory and ineffective. The flawed public participation is the results of conflict of interest between the developers that support infrastructural economic imperatives to maximise economic development and local residents that advocate for effective public participation and bottom up development that would create local jobs, manufacture locally instead of exporting goods from other countries. The study recommends the need for collaborative network paradigm for citizen participation; where public participation works as part of a network ; where government, development, professional actors are many and varied individual public entities; and where interest based entities rather than only interacting with the public entities but encouraged to interact with all citizen and also assist them to further interact with one another in the Back of Port project.