Despite South Africa’s constitutional commitment to cooperative governance, rural development remains hampered by fractured relations between traditional leaders and local government authorities. The relationship between these two governance structures is often fraught with power struggles, unclear roles, and mutual mistrust.
This policy brief synthesises key findings from the Centre for Mediation in Africa’s working paper titled; Reimagining Relational Co-Governance: Mapping Institutional Interfaces to Strengthen Collaboration Between Traditional Leaders and Local Government Authorities. It maps institutional interfaces, policy frameworks and relationship dynamics to identify structural, policy, and practice gaps that leave traditional leaders feeling peripheral to decision-making, especially compared to elected officials.
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