This study unpacks the role played by government authorities in stimulating citizen participation in local development. Citizen participation, being the core to sustainable development, has been of interest among development practitioners and scholars alike, with varying degrees of attention in its scope and how participation can actually occur. One of the observed trends is the critical role played by both local and national government authorities. Development planning is closely tied to citizen participation under clearly defined roles of the officials involved. The participation of citizens in local activities is not a voluntary process but a deliberate action of the authorities through various measures such as creating an environment in which everyone is equally important in contributing to change in the communities they live. The role of local and national officials has been on spotlight in developing countries, including Zimbabwe and in marginalised areas such as Murewa District of Zimbabwe. The Murewa District of Mashonaland East Province has been cited as an area in which citizen participation has remained low. The objective of this paper is to therefore examine the extent to which local authorities in Murewa District encourage citizen participation and the bottlenecks that undermine this process. Data were collected through primary data sources, including questionnaire surveys and interviews with selected local authority officials. The results of the study indicate that in Murewa District most citizens have never had the opportunity to propose policies to the council, individually or collectively as part of the local community due to the prohibitive role played by the local authorities. The study also established that citizen participation cannot be separated from the role of local and national public officials who should provide leadership and guidance to the development process and create the required democratic culture by implementing the decentralisation agenda, as stipulated in the Zimbabwe 2013 Constitution and through the adoption of participatory policy at all levels of government.
Local governments are the bedrock for sound public administration because of their role in promoting bottom-up socio-economic development. Although Zimbabwe has made strides in ensuring citizens’ participation in local government processes, local authorities and other stakeholders still rely on the top-down approaches, marginalising the needs of the local citizens. The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors that affect the active participation of citizens in local governance in the Murewa District in Zimbabwe. Based on a multistage sampling approach, involving purposive sampling and stratified random sampling, interviews were conducted with 30 local government officials, while a questionnaire survey was administered to 396 citizens in four wards within the district. Complementary data were collected through focus group discussions and field observations. Thematic analysis was employed on data generated from interviews, focus group discussions and field observations, while the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (Version 16) was used to analyse quantitative data from the questionnaire survey. The results show that more than 50% of the residents in the district felt that local government leadership side lined them in development planning. Some citizens reported that officials used development planning meetings to further their political agendas. The study recommends enhancement of citizen participation through citizen empowerment programmes such as educational and political leadership training programmes that transform the marginalised communities into autonomous communities that are capable of determining their own destiny.
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