“Raising the Citizens’ Voice in the Regulation of Services” is a public education initiative by the national regulator in South Africa. It supports a bottom-up approach to water services regulation by actively involving citizens in local monitoring of water and sanitation services. It aims to empower citizens through:

• Training them about their rights,
• Setting up user platforms that hold monthly meetings between the municipality and the community for solving problems reported by civil society.

The first Citizens’ Voice pilot began in Cape Town in 2006 covering four townships and demonstrated its value through reduced water losses, increased payment levels. It was so successful that it was scaled-up in Cape Town and spread to other municipalities.

Government and civil society working together

Four spheres of government and civil society are working together in the Citizens’ Voice initiative:

1. The national Department of Water Affairs and Energy provides 1 million Rand (Eur 110,000) per pilot.
2. Each Provincial Department of Local Government seconded 10 Community Development Workers (CDWs) to help train communities in water and sanitation issues, setting up executive committees and user platforms.
3. The municipal water department implement the scheme and provide training of trainers for the CDWs.
4. Civil society organisations act in an advisory role or as partners in implementation.

Success in Cape Town

In the first pilot in Cape Town citizens demonstrated more effective oversight of water provision. The City found the pilot so successful that it took over the funding from DWAF to continue the user platforms in the four pilot areas and, from 2007, scaled up the programme to new low-income areas. Water Services hired 22 community facilitators to assist user platforms to track service delivery problems.

As Citizens’ Voice becomes more widely known in Cape Town it is becoming more demand-driven. Some ward councillors have asked for their constituencies to be included when the programme expands. On the basis of this success the national regulatory body decided to support pilots in other municipalities. In 2008 DWAF funded a pilot project in the Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipality, in Gauteng province and the Msunduzi local municipality, in KwaZulu-Natal. A team from Ekurhuleni visited Cape Town to see for themselves how the user platforms work.

The eThekwini metropolitan municipality (Kwazulu-Natal) has also taken great interest in this initiative, and has framed and funded its own version in partnership with the Durban office of The Mvula Trust. Dr. Laila Smith, head of the policy unit at Mvula Trust, developed the Citizens’ Voice methodology and has helped guide implementation in the municipalities.

Key lessons to make user platforms work

Key lessons include:

• Secure political support at the outset,
• Keep momentum going,
• Ensure citizen ownership of users platforms.

In both Cape Town and Ekurhuleni pilots started before officials sought Council resolutions to endorse the pilots or to consider funding the programme in the longer term. Delays in getting Council resolutions made it more difficult to get political support at the community level so that pilots could be sustained over time.

Key challenges

Some challenges are political in nature:

• The user platforms can be very easily be used to become public relations vehicle for relaying council decisions on water and health.
• Cape Town Water Services uses the platforms to promote devices that restrict water flows in the household, which is controversial among users and civil society organisations. This threatens to undermine the reputation of Citizens’ Voice among the general public.
• There are tensions between elected councillors and community development workers who take on a public profile by training communities, and who are at times seen as community leaders, which conflicts with the roles of the councillors.
• Community facilitators who represent the municipality have sometimes dominated user platforms which are meant to be community-driven.

Based on: WIN-SA (2009). Public Accountability through Citizen’s Voice: City of Cape Town shares good practice, Lessons Series 20, WIN- SA, Pretoria, South Africa, and on a discussion with Dr. Laila Smith in Lesotho.

Dick de Jong

Tags: africa, capacity development, governance, participatory management, sanitation, water supply