Community leaders as intermediaries: How everyday practices create and sustain leadership in five informal settlements in Cape Town

Abstract

<jats:p> Community leaders are expected to navigate different social and institutional contexts, but they must do so without the direction, authority or legitimacy available to leaders within formal organisations. In this article, we draw on qualitative data from a participation initiative to explore how community leaders get involved in everyday maintenance of public services in informal settlements in Cape Town, in order to understand how they fulfil this intermediary role. Applying the lens of leadership-as-practice, we identify four practices that connect the communities and city, and which facilitate access to public services. We unpack how these practices emerge in and are shaped by the service maintenance system and material conditions of informality. We argue that community leaders fulfil their intermediary role through everyday improvisations to find ‘what works’, and in the process, they also create and sustain relations of dependence and interdependence that reinforce those very roles. </jats:p>

Orientations toward community leadership

“…As an intermediary between formal organizations such as governments and more informal civic or social groups, community leadership rarely can draw on titles or institutional rules for clarity. Vivier and Sanchez-Betancourt (2020) establish that "community leadership is situated between the structures and policy directives of formal organizations (e.g., government), and communities' more informal ways of organizing." While navigating such space, "they must do so without the clear direction, authority or legitimacy provided to leaders within organizations."…”

“…As an intermediary between formal organizations such as governments and more informal civic or social groups, community leadership rarely can draw on titles or institutional rules for clarity. Vivier and Sanchez-Betancourt (2020) establish that “community leadership is situated between the structures and policy directives of formal organizations (e.g., government), and communities’ more informal ways of organizing.” While navigating such space, “they must do so without the clear direction, authority or legitimacy provided to leaders within organizations.” Therefore, community leadership must develop and draw on networks of relationships. Ultimately, in community settings “power and authority flow horizontally to leaders who can articulate and coordinate the common will, increasing the autonomy of citizens, rather than flowing downward from a position of dominance and limiting the autonomy of subordinates” (Schweigert, 2007: 328).…”

“…Understanding leadership through the lens of complexity is particularly applicable in communities. As Vivier and Sanchez-Betancourt (2020) detail, without clear titles or organizational authority, community leaders must operate in a liminal space between social groups. Additionally, because community leadership resides in the inclusive collaboration of people with divergent interests and ideas, it cannot possibly solve problems.…”

Civic‐Led Banishment in South Africa: Punishment, Authority, and Spatialised Precarity

“…Because settlement-level governance exists below the bottom tier of representative governance in South Africa, there is no "pre-ordained hierarchy" between the different organisations that exist within particular settlements (Spinardi et al 2020:540). Therefore, the representation and negotiation of people's everyday needs is undertaken by diverse organisations, ranging from religious institutions to political parties; from social movements to street and section committees, which form part of the rich associational life in different neighbourhoods (Vivier and Sanchez-Betancourt 2020). It is, therefore, always crucial to define public authority from the ground up.…”

‘You can’t Google everything’: the voluntary sector and the leadership of communities of place

“…This conceptualisation has some similarity to the ‘bridging and bonding leadership’ described by Karsten and Hendriks (2017) in that it operates behind the scenes and independently of politics. Like community leaders, locally based voluntary sector actors enact leadership in an ‘in-between’ space between communities and public agencies, and through social interaction with both of these groups (Vivier and Sanchez-Betancourt, 2020). Unlike the community leaders described in that paper, we add a structural understanding of these actors as positioned within organisational and sector structures that situate their leadership practice.…”