ABSTRACT
Local government in South Africa is widely regarded as a sensitive and highly politicized issue which is critically important to the resolution or intensification of the wider South African crisis. Extrainstitutional opposition groups have identified local communities as vital units around which their struggle should be organized (Atkinson and Heymans 1988:155). State planners, on the other hand, see the reconstitution of local government as the basis for the subsequent reorganization of second-tier (regional) and first-tier (central) structures. They are starting at the bottom in this way because they fear that to start by reconstituting central government institutions would provoke the mobilization of significant right-wing White opposition to ‘power-sharing’, as well as head-on confrontation with extra-institutional forces which have already proved their ability to undermine the reform process through boycott action (Swilling 1988).
