Politicised and contested environmental governance in local government in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Abstract

Environmental sustainability and governance are critical aspects of local municipal development planning and implementation globally and in Africa. The transition towards a more environmentally sustainable mindset is becoming normative in the local government sector, especially in the global South. On a Southern African scale, local government in South Africa (SA) shares an intimate connection with communities, especially in terms of service delivery and environmental sustainability. The South African constitution promotes effective local Environmental Governance (EG) and a clean and healthy environment for all, but there are diverse political factors that influence local EG such as political instability, power relations, neopatrimonialism, factionalism and cadre deployment, amidst contemporary political alternation and incumbent decline. In depth, grounded research in SA that focuses on the political influence on the local environmental sector in the contemporary context is lacking. The study aims to identify and explore diverse political dynamics and influences on effective local environmental governance, environmental service provision and environmental-based neopatrimonialism on labour dynamics and incentivisation in the Endumeni local and uMzinyathi district municipalities in the KwaZulu-Natal province of SA. The theoretical framework consisted of a combination of the Political Ecology Approach (PEA), the Moral Economy Approach (MEA), and the Practical Environmental Governance Framework (PEGF). The research methodology was guided by a pragmatic and grounded research philosophy that included both inductive and deductive research approaches. The findings were obtained using both qualitative and limited quantitative data. The qualitative methods consist of key-informant interviews, observation, focus groups and meetings. The quantitative method consisted of a community questionnaire. A combination of purposive, non-probability and snowball sampling were applied to identify the most relevant stakeholders. The findings indicated that political dynamics, power relations and inter and intra party factions both enabled and constrained progress towards local EG and environmental service provision depending on political leadership within the council, the control of political power and the access to municipal resources. Essentially, the environmental sector was politicised and used as a political tool for securing political power over municipal leadership and resources. However, neopatrimonial relationships were sometimes enabling of environmental governance and justified by respondents from a utilitarian redistribution standpoint based on providing livelihood support to competent and impoverished cadres from the majority of the previously disadvantaged people of SA. Rather than liberal notions that neopatrimonialism and cadre deployment represent mere moral failings or underdeveloped citizenship, a moral economy approach suggests that, in contrast to ‘grand’ corruption, petty forms of patronage are embedded in moral economies of survival and relationships of ‘nested dependence’ that are more structural – persisting across political party orders and supported by their respective voters. This research contributes to an emerging body of research on municipal environmental governance, contested local politics and coalition councils in SA and provides a deeper understanding of politicised local environmental governance, environmental sustainability and the moral reasoning dictating the distribution of environmental-based incentives and opportunities in South African LG. The findings highlighted the complex, transitional nature of political theory in SA and point towards a multifaceted and delicate integration of environmental governance in post-apartheid local state democratisation.