Smart Technology: A Strategy to (Dis) Improve Inclusive Participatory Democracy for Sustainable Service Delivery in South Africa

Description

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21885515

Nsizwazonke Yende, Vuyelwa Magagula, and Busisiwe Mahlangu (Department of Development Studies, University of Mpumalanga, South Africa)

Unlike during the apartheid era where participation in government affairs was limited to specific racial orientation, post-1994 democratic government has acknowledged it as a human rights and a sustainable approach to address service delivery discrepancies. This was cemented through the adoption of legislative frameworks that makes participation mandatory for any development initiatives, especially in the local sphere of government. Also, to keep up with time, the local government has ventured into smart interventions such as information and communications technologies (ICT) to enhance inclusive participation and leverage service provision. The literature identifies ICT and other smart interventions as critical strategies that also improve transparency, inclusivity, and efficiency in providing basic services. Despite this, South Africa continues facing persisting service delivery discrepancies, often leading to violent protests. Therefore, the paper explores the significance of smart interventions adopted in South Africa to enhance service delivery through participatory democracy. It adopts a secondary research method, where the existing literature such as books, legislative framework, and journal articles, will be reviewed. It employs open government theory as a framework to interpret the emerging findings from the literature review. The paper concludes that smart interventions are essential in the era of the internet to enhance participatory democracy to improve service delivery. However, given South Africa’s digital divide and unequal access to technological resources, these interventions risk further marginalizing the voices of the poor in the context of service delivery.