Multi-Stakeholder Dissonance in the South African Water Arena

The ambition of this chapter is to explore South Africa’s endeavours in implementing Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSPs). This is achieved through analytical presentation of lessons emerging from specific case studies undertaken in three different parts of South Africa, where stakeholders are striving to respond to a government mandate to engage in partnerships in developing strategies for managing their own catchment water resources. South African experience illustrates the dilemmas a state may face; when the emergence and functioning of Multi-Stakeholder Platforms is pursued from the perspective of the state, as a democratisation and/or decentralisation process, rather than from the perspective of the stakeholders themselves, as an endogenous social movement by local stakeholders who decide to take control of their natural resource management through institutions created by themselves for themselves, to better their own lives and livelihoods. Furthermore the chapter strives to demonstrate the complexity of achieving meaningful stakeholder participation among different stakeholders coming from extremely diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, who share little or no common livelihood goals.