Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / Post-apartheid local government in South Africa has significant responsibilities in terms of redressing the socio-economic imbalances of the past, including basic service delivery and fostering local economic development. In meeting the socio-economic and material needs of communities, local government is also required to be democratic by enhancing various forms of public participation in governance and through the election of community representatives for local decision-making. So far as participation is concern, Cornwall (2002), distinguishes between two forms of mechanisms for public participation to include; ‘invited spaces’ (authorized participation) and ‘invented spaces’ (unauthorized participation). In the context of local government in South Africa, invited spaces include elections ward committees and public consultation around the annual budget and integrated development planning (IDP) process. While, invented spaces include protest, civil society engagement with the state and social movement activities. However, the last ten years has revealed that, the promise of effective, responsive and inclusive local governance has not been fulfilled. Rather local government has proven to be unresponsive as revealed by increasing protests over poor service delivery, as well as formal assessments of local government performance. In this context of poor state performance and unresponsiveness, substantial literature points to civil society as a source for deepening democracy and active citizenship. This thesis explores one version of this idea by examining two civil society programmes in the impoverished and gang-ridden community of Manenberg in Cape Town. More specifically this thesis examines the security programme of the Proudly Manenberg Organisation (PMO) and the infrastructure development programme of the Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading Programme (VPUU). Contrary to the claim that civil society is a source for enhancing democracy and service delivery, this thesis has found that neither of these programmes has yielded much in terms of fostering democracy and service delivery. In interrogating concerns regarding forms of representation, accountability and participation, it may be argued that in terms of both representation and accountability, the PMO represents and accounts to a certain minority only. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that participation in the safety sector activities reinforces rather than challenging the coercive rule iii of gangs (drug lords) in Manenberg. With reference to VPUU, failure to implement the programme has frustrated many potential community allies. Furthermore, inclusion in the VPUU project in Manenberg was only accorded to two NGOs (notably PMO), despite the fact that there are two hundred and thirty NGOs conducting activities in Manenberg. This has limited participation in the first stages of the project to those groups. While, the VPUU project has delayed in Manenberg, its representatives have also been seen to be unaccountable to the community. In short, with reference to Manenberg, the notion that civil society can solve or model alternative solutions to democratic development remains farfetched.

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The study is shortly presenting the urbanization-saga and the human settlement progression. It then proceeds to identify different types of tenure and the pertained definitions as such. The thesis will review and assess the strategies for Secure Tenure provided by UN-Habitat on an international and national level, as well as analyze the implementation tools brought forward. Diverse tenure policies and tools will be evaluated with an anchoring in the case study of Malawi and its National Land Policy and the implementation of the same.

Magister Commercii - MCom / The aim is to deepen the South African democracy at all levels of government. However, as local government is “the closest to the people” it is regarded by government as the most appropriate sphere to implement participatory democracy mechanisms. Pertaining to this, ward committees were introduced as the main participatory vehicle of local governance and in addition, the government has also implemented alternative instruments such as izimbizos and the integrated development planning (IDP) process to engage citizens in local governance.

As a mega-city and the most populated city in Africa, Cairo is characterised by a high birth rate, escalating rural-urban migration and where the socio-economic services are centralized and overwhelmed, these generally poor migrants have no choice other than to create and develop their own informal shelter in the outer city areas that lay farthest from the reach of the authorities and from where they then search for better job opportunities. The expansion of these slum areas places an extra burden on the already deteriorated natural and unplanned urban environments. No government or public sector mass production housing units . inherited from the former socialist system . have been able to cope with the magnitude of housing demand nor is the private sector interested in investing in a non-profitable market. At this juncture there is an urgent requirement for new ways of thinking that address the realities of the situation and consider integrated socioeconomic long-term solutions for the informal settlements. Under the Egyptian-German Cooperation, GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit) proposed the Participatory Urban Upgrading Program as a possible means of addressing the problem which is based on stimulation, promotion and effective participation of local communities in the upgrading process. The Participatory Urban Upgrading Program operates at two levels, (i) the local level: through .Demonstration projects. to be applied to a limited geographical area. Ezbet Bekhit Demonstration Project is the case of the present study and (ii) the national level: the experiences gained through several .Demonstration Projects. will give substance, and thereby prominence to the participatory approach, so that the Program has an increasingly beneficial impact on the national policy. The experiences gained from Ezbet Bekhit Upgrading Project will offer the opportunity to examine the main concept expressed by the Program and increase the prospects of having an impact on the urban upgrading policy at the national level. The current study attempts to develop and assess the overall Participatory Upgrading Programme and Ezbet Bekhit Project within a framework of benchmarks extracted from the program concept. At the Project level, the focus of thesis analysis is based on aspects that explain the Project’s approach to solving basic problems. Attention is placed on the involvement of local inhabitants in the solutions at the planning and implementation levels. A Model of Community Participation is proposed for application in a selected upgrading component. The Model is based on the .Community Action Planning., which has been developed by Hamdi and Goethert as an appropriate planning tool that can stimulate and organize a non-cohesive community type. At the Program level, recommendations are presented in this study, which have been extracted from the main pillars of the Program concept and characterized the driving forces influencing the main objectives and orientating the goals of the upgrading projects. It is contended that an in-depth understanding and analysis of the specific socio-economic conditions and the community profile of the selected informal settlements; together with an explicit governmental policy supporting the Participatory Urban Upgrading Approach will enhance the success of Participatory Projects.

The ashwaiyat or informal areas in contemporary Egypt are vast residential areas built during the last several decades without any means of regulation or following principles of physical planning. They gradually came to existence because of the continuing migration from the countryside to cities and by natural population growth. The newcomers, who were not able to find adequate housing in accordance with their economic possibilities, started to build their houses on private agricultural land which was not intended for building purposes, or on state desert land, to which they had no legal tenure rights. Any infrastructure in such areas was constructed relying solely on self-help. Despite the fact that the ashwaiyat phenomenon has grown substantially, it has not been addressed nor treated officialy until recently. Firstly, the formation and growth of the informal settlements with a focus on Egypt's capital, Cairo, is discussed. Further analyses are made regarding the hardships and poverty endured by its inhabitants using tangible evidence to illustrate specifics and everyday reality in some of Egypt's ashwaiyat. It shows that the informal areas are not homogenous and that they represent various living conditions. The purpose of this paper, aside from summarizing the development, is to potentially...