With the ballot and the brick

Abstract

South Africa's March 2006 local government elections in many ways assumed the character of a de facto referendum on service delivery. Leading into this election were two years of grass-roots protests against both the quality of service delivery and public representation of the grass-roots' service delivery needs. Contrary to public expectations that the protests were signals of a systematic revolt against the ruling African National Congress (ANC), surveys in the run-up to the election indicated that protest and voting were rated equally as mechanisms to attain improved levels of service delivery. The analysis explores these survey findings and the local government election results. The election results confirmed the initial survey indications, showing that turnout was maintained and support for the ANC increased. The grass roots were involved in a multifaceted series of direct engagements with their party to simultaneously keep it in power but also pressure it for advances in service delivery.