M.A. (Sociology) / Prior to 2012, ward committees (WCs) were elected informally and with very little regulation. Ward Councillors were instructed to convene public meetings during which community members were nominated and voting was done by a raise of hands – this dissertation refers to these as “first generation” WCs. Over the last decade this process became problematic as politically motivated ward councillors, were found to manipulate the WC election for their own benefit. In 2011 public revolt ensued on a national level, and as a result it was decided that all municipalities had the option of utilising the IEC to ensure the 2012 election process would be more transparent – these will be referred to here as “second generation” WCs. Two municipalities in Gauteng province opted for this alternative; one of them was the City of Johannesburg (COJ). This dissertation looks at the relationship between a “second generation” WC and a social movement organisation (SMO) in the COJ. Since the late 1990s the South African state has placed a large emphasis on the restructuring of local government, and the creation of WCs was one outcome of this process. Simultaneously there has been a rise in social movements which serve to represent the needs of the poor and marginalised, who have seemingly been ignored by the state’s neoliberal policies. This dissertation focuses on the WC of Ward 8 and the Thembelihle Crisis Committee (TCC) as a SMO, within the context of the Thembelihle informal settlement. The former is an “invited participatory space” which has been created by the state to invite residents to participate. The latter is an “invented participatory space” created from below by the grassroots, through which residents assert their agency as active community members. Many scholars have conceptualised these participatory spaces as separate and distinct. Faranak Miraftab (2004) applied this analysis to understand the South African context, which proved valuable at the time. Subsequently, “invited spaces” were labelled as pseudo-democratic, state controlled, and hence there was the suggestion that they should be abandoned, while “invented spaces” were perceived as more accurately reflecting the views and needs of the poor in South Africa (SA). More recently, scholars such as Luke Sinwell (2012) and Claire Bénit-Gbaffou (forthcoming) have begun to argue that the binary of invited and invented is too simplistic. They have urged that we need to look more closely at the relationship between these two spaces as opposed to setting them apart. Bénit-Gbaffou claims that “invited spaces” remain important and should not be abandoned. However, scholars have not sufficiently investigated the interface of the “invited” and “invented”. By drawing on various sources, including in-depth interviews, non-participant observation, surveys, literature and informal communication, this dissertation attempts to fill this gap in the literature by presenting a concept which I refer to as “contesting space”. The concept will be used to extend beyond the invited/invented binary, and hence more accurately analyse what is taking place at the interface of the two. By analysing where the WC and TCC meet, we begin to see what happens when a powerful SMO inserts itself onto the invited space of a “second generation” WC.