Integrated Development Planning (IDP) is a legislated and compulsory process that requires municipal governments in South Africa to guarantee the participation of local citizens in all decision-making processes related to local development planning. If it is found that there was no community participation as prescribed in section 4 of the Municipal Systems Act, then the municipality can be dissolved (See South Africa, 2000). However, as Williams (2006) and Molale (2019) have found, citizens do not always enjoy active participation in decision-making as they are treated as mere ratifiers of pre-planned ideas held by development managers and officials. The problem arguably lies in the theoretical misconception behind how participation is understood in practice, given its buzzword status (Cornwall, 2007; Leal, 2007), utopian nature (Eversole, 2003; Williams, 2004) and sociological interpretation (see Carpentier et al. 2019). Thus the kind of institutionalised participation that is prescribed (and practised) is inconsistent with what meaningful and active participation is, from a political perspective (see Arnstein, 1969). Essentially, participation in IDP is about ensuring that citizens democratically engage in discussions and decision-making about local development and have the latitude to hold their leaders accountable (see Msibi & Penzhorn, 2010), thus making the implementation of IDP an inherently political affair. This political orientation of participation provides sufficient justifications why participation in the municipal IDP process should be approached from the participatory communication perspective in line with communication for development and social change.
In support of this argument, this paper will, with examples from an empirical study, demonstrate how active and genuine participation cannot merely be about inviting people to a public meeting where they outline what they wish for, and not empowering them with any decision-making power. This, as various studies have shown, is merely cosmetic and does not necessarily translate to genuine participation as defined in the literature on communication for development and social change (see Manyozo, 2017; Mefalopulos, 2008; Melkote & Steeves, 2015; Tufte & Mefalopulos, 2009; Tufte, 2017). However, a loophole to this argument is that decentralising decision-making power to communities so that they are on equal footing with municipal authorities (in order to achieve meaningful participation) is unrealistic and contrary to policies and regulations guiding how municipalities (in South Africa) should carry out their functions. This conundrum leads us to revisit the question recently posed by Carpentier et al. (2019): “why does participation matter?”. In addressing this problem, we are going to argue that since participation, from a political orientation, is ‘sine qua non’ to the IDP process of local government, there is a need for a redefinition of institutionalised participation as part of the “rescuing participation” effort.