1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The central problem addressed in this study is to analyse and describe the relationship between how citizens engage the state and the condition of service delivery they encounter in their everyday lives as residents of Khayelitsha. Incessant so-called service delivery protests across South Africa grabbed media headlines in 2005, many which turned violent. A number of diagnosis were put forward for this rather abrupt manner of remonstration against government especially immediately after the 2004 election which the ANC won a resounding majority of nearly 70% of the votes cast. While the protestors across the country were united in anger against what they said was slow or inefficient service delivery and state accountability to the citizens, government meanwhile pointed to the existence of a third force bent on undermining the state, and the stability of the young democracy. Fearful of the growing sense of instability of democracy, and perhaps rash given the size of unmet needs of a majority of South Africans who continue to live in squalor, government activated the intelligence agencies to track such third force.
Then president of the country, Thabo Mbeki commented that while these demonstrations did not pose an immediate danger, there was a possibility that ‘if they took root, gaining popular support, [they] would pose a threat to the stability of democratic South Africa (my emphasis) (SALRC, 2005: 37). The anxiety by government expressed here by the president highlights an acknowledgement, at least in part, of the role that protests played in undermining the apartheid state and the vulnerability of the young democracy, just 11 years after the end of apartheid rule. For Benit-Gbaffou (2008a: 5) ...
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...r water services in the selected study sites and relate this to the dominant forms of participation
• To determine the key determinants of attendance of community meetings and protests and determine the location of service delivery, if applicable, within such a matrix of variables
• To derive a causal path depicting the interaction of the key determinants of participation and in particular how service delivery variables interact to produce different forms of citizen participation
• To describe the politics of water service delivery in Cape Town in general and Khayelitsha in particular
• In order to achieve the above objectives, the study begins by providing a theoretical review of literature on water services delivery, policy relating to water services delivery in South Africa, citizenship, participation and protests to underpin the rest of the thesis.