Restructuring the local state in South Africa: Regional services councils and crisis resolution

Abstract

This paper focuses on the current crisis in South Africa and the State's attempt to defuse it by restructuring the local state. Central to the discussion are the new metropolitan Regional Services Councils (RSCs)—first established in 1987. The paper explains the rationale to incorporate the disenfranchized conservative black majority at the local level of decision-making. It also assesses the State's claim that the RSCs are designed to devolve power to the lower tiers of government. A brief exploratory case-study is made of the response of the KwaZulu homeland government to the introduction of the RSCs. The paper utilizes Poulantzas' dialectical structural view of the State and its apparatus in explicating the apartheid State. The inadequacy of the process of local state restructuring in dealing with the fundamental contradictions giving rise to the current crisis in South Africa is addressed.