Cape Town has been awarded the right to host the World Design Capital 2014 (WDC2014) against stiff competition from cities across the planet, in large part because of the Cape Town Partnership's bold and candid bid. The bid promised to use the year-long event to "deal with the vast imbalances that exist in our society", by focusing on "community cohesion" and "infrastructure development". The event is supposed to build partnerships and encourage productive critical debate around Cape Town's past, present and future design plans.
Unfortunately the City of Cape Town's recent announcement that it will lead the management and coordination of WDC2014 threatens this vision.
The City is one of the main providers of Cape Town's basic services including sanitation, water, electricity, roads, safety and (increasingly) housing. It also approves most design plans. As a service provider, whose leadership will always have re-election as a foremost concern, it should not be leading this process; it is a plain conflict of interest. The city has too much vested in promoting its own way of doing things to the exclusion of critics.
This is not a specific criticism of Cape Town's leadership; the same argument would apply in any city. Government leaders - be they local, provincial or national - are reluctant to admit when they have made mistakes or when policy needs to be changed. They worry that publicly admitting mistakes reflects poorly on them politically. Rather, there is a growing tendency to mislabel difficult questions and necessary criticism as politically motivated attacks.
Government across the country also has a dismal track record when it comes to meaningful engagement with communities, often adopting a "my way or the highway" approach. This often causes poor communities and the organisations that represent them to feel ostracized and services to fall short of their needs.
Government's inability to accept criticism and facilitate dialogue was highlighted in the recent vociferous debate about whether Cape Town is a "racist city". The phrasing of the debate is unproductive, but the truth is that there are few cities in South Africa where our nation's divided past is so stark.