Community politics and NGOs: The dynamics of development in rural South Africa

Amidst attacks on NGOs from the right and the left of the political spectrum, this study asks how the interaction between NGOs and local communities affects socio-political change in rural, autocratic areas of Africa--independent of the delivery of development goods and services. It considers how the impact of NGOs on local socio-political change differs depending on their location along a social change- technical continuum. Findings are based on qualitative research drawing on ethnographic techniques conducted in four autocratic areas of rural KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.;This study found that NGOs working in rural areas affect socio-political change in the process of implementing development projects, regardless of their intentions. Through their interactions with local communities in autocratic areas, NGOs can build "empowered society" and open up the power structure, with the later typically resulting in conflict. It is not the type of NGO, but the presence of a social foundation for change, that affects their ability to affect socio-political change in autocratic areas. A social foundation for change is comprised of individuals who perceive that they have a capacity to engage themselves in development and that the hegemony of an ideology incompatible with openness, in this case a legitimating ideology of tradition, is weakening. Future research is needed to confirm the preliminary finding that the difference between technical and social change NGOs is potentially significant to their ability to contribute to building a social foundation for change. In any case, NGOs remain important change agents, even if their nature is becoming increasingly technical.;These findings challenge those of existing studies in two ways. First, in the context of KwaZulu Natal, this study shows that Traditional Authorities are not "decentralized despots" by their very nature, but can continue to play an important role even in participatory areas. Second, development does have unintended consequences as well as a political effect. However, in the case of NGOs, its political effect is to expedite the pace of local socio-political change or put it into motion. In this way, the direction of change has everything to do with what is happening at the local level.