It was not so long ago that the vast majority of South Africans were completely excluded from political decision making – we could not vote or participate in decisions that impacted our lives. Because of this history, the ability to participate, not only in elections, but also in decision making is particularly valuable and important in this country. Public participation is a cornerstone of our democratic project and looking around, it certainly appears that there are no shortages of opportunities for the public to participate in consultation processes.
On any given day, you’ll find hearings, working groups, commissions, task forces and advisory bodies in every sector busily engaging the public on critical decisions. If recent media reports about the budgets for certain processes are to be believed, we devote considerable time and money to these activities. Exactly how much is spent on public consultations each year is not disclosed, but judging by the level of activity, the investment is significant. With so much consultation going on, we would expect to be reaping all the benefits associated with participatory decision making, in particular the strengthening of public trust in institutional decision making. Instead, we encounter the opposite. Despite all the resources being devoted to public consultation, the level of public trust in institutions is in steady and steep decline. Surveys report that dissatisfaction with government is growing and leading to increased risks of major social instability. Alongside declining trust, we find rising support for “hostile activism”, a term used to describe aggressive forms of engagement that include attacking people online, threatening or committing violence, intentionally spreading misinformation, or damaging public property. The Edelman 2025 Trust Barometer report that 4 out of 10 South Africans now support the use of hostile activism to drive change should be of deep concern to all of us.
It seems young people are particularly affected. In survey data, South African youth report feeling marginalised and excluded from formal decision making, particularly on the big issues that affect them. With roughly 21 million young people in the country, this is our largest demographic block and commentators have long been raising alarms about their progressive disengagement from formal processes, as evidenced by behaviours like declining participation in elections (many will know that the turnout of young voters in the 2024 election was the lowest since South Africa’s democratic transition). We should not be too quick to write this off as apathy, anyone paying close attention to the recent wave of Gen Z protests that have been rocking the globe will know that young people have not disengaged, they have moved to alternative, digital spaces to discuss, debate and organise on civic issues. In these spaces, they are very active - joining online communities, engaging with topical issues, collaborating with other creators and organising protest action. Their platforms of choice are social media, but this shift has its own dangers. The use of algorithmic rankings, coupled with the lack of moderation and widespread misinformation on these platforms, poses a real risk that young people will be further marginalised by socially divisive content.
The question is this, if we are spending huge amounts of time and money on consultations, supposedly for the purpose of engaging the public on the issues that impact their lives, then why are outcomes so poor and hostility so high? I’m not the first to ask this question and there is some consensus emerging. The explanation put forward most frequently is that public participation has become purely performative, an elaborate show staged for the public to create the illusion that they are part of a decision making process. All the many gatherings that are being convened to engage the public are either talk-shops with no authority or box ticking exercises to comply with legal requirements. This is view is expressed by many different commentators, most of whom conclude that protest action has become so violent and destructive, because South Africans feel they have no other options, having lost all faith in the prospect that constructive engagement and participation might actually effect change. It is a damning indictment of our attempts at participatory decision making, but can we dismiss this assessment outright? It certainly goes some way to explaining how high levels of formal consultation have somehow delivered radically declining levels of participation and increased reliance on hostile action.
We have become a cynical lot and not without reason, but we should guard against the danger that our cynicism provides an excuse for not trying to change what is so clearly broken. We need to rescue public participation, for a multitude of historical and constitutional reasons, but right now, simply to restore some trust in the viability of constructive engagement. An attempt at doing just this is currently underway on a national level, but I’m more interested in the small wins. For instance, where can we find or create spaces in the current governance practices of our institutions to enable meaningful participation by the public? Our approach to public participation has remained largely unchanged for decades and this is an area where innovation is long overdue. As one example, consider our ongoing fixation with in-person discussion. We can all appreciate that this is an incredibly rich format, but cost and time constraints mean that there is always a limit on who can participate. In most processes, organisers try to curate participants to ensure that diverse constituencies are represented, but inevitably in-person meetings favour big business, organisation leadership and subject-matter experts. The end result is that ordinary citizens are unable to participate, remain excluded from decision making and the cycle of distrust perpetuates.
Why are we not piloting any of the incredible software tools that allow civic engagement to happen online? As of 2025, approximately 50.8 million people in South Africa have internet access, representing 78.9% of the population. Online deliberation is not a remote fantasy, but offers a viable way to deepen engagement. There are tools available right now ( many on an open-source basis) that have been specifically designed for public participation. These are not polls or focus groups for measuring public opinion, but digital platforms that enable large scale engagement, in real time, on specific proposals. The magic of these tools is that they combine public input with statistical analysis to show where there is consensus or division on particular issues and support a constructive engagement on finding solutions. These tools are also not untested, having already been used by countries like Taiwan, Canada, UK and Brazil to enable consensus building on a national scale. This is just one example of innovation in the public participation space that could really start to move the dial.
It is hardly headline grabbing, but restoring good governance will mean working on continuous improvements to transparency, accountability and public participation, regardless of who is in power. The risk is that by constantly waiting for big bang changes to be initiated from the top, we neglect initiatives that could enable change from the bottom. Let’s start collecting small wins by supporting innovative projects and pilots that will begin to drive much-needed transformation in the area of public participation.