The city of long journeys

South Africa’s first Climate Citizens’ Assembly is looking for ways to create a fairer transport system – and confronting the enduring legacy of apartheid along the way.

Solving transport problems and tackling climate change

91 people have been asked to consider how a major city can solve its transport problems while also tackling climate change. Not transport planners, political parties or interest groups, but a group designed to reflect Cape Town’s diverse population. Since August, South Africa’s first climate citizens’ assembly has been meeting there – a democratic experiment in a city where transport is inseparable from the history of apartheid.

Over six Saturdays, the Cape Town Assembly on Climate is addressing a question that at first sounds technical: How can Cape Town create a fair, reliable and affordable transport system while reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions? In reality, much more is at stake. Where people live and work, poverty and prosperity, safety and time – and the extent to which apartheid-era spatial planning continues to shape everyday life.

A city of long journeys

“Many of us have experienced this spatial disconnect,” said Jody Brown of the Western Cape government’s climate change directorate during the assembly’s meeting on 12 September. People often live far away from employment opportunities. The result is long commutes, hours spent travelling and high expenditure on petrol, taxis and buses.

It is also a climate problem. According to figures presented by Brown, transport accounts for around 62 per cent of Cape Town’s energy consumption. Road transport is particularly significant. A shift from private cars to public transport is therefore necessary. But Brown warned against an overly simple solution: as long as homes, workplaces and essential services remain far apart, transport will also remain a problem of urban planning.

Urban planning expert Kirsten Wilkins reminded the assembly that transport corridors were deliberately used during apartheid as boundaries between residential areas. Jesse Harber, a transport expert from the City of Cape Town, pointed out that the costs of transport cannot be measured in rands and cents alone. For people on low and middle incomes, the time involved and the insecurity and unreliability of public transport are crucial too.

Experts provide knowledge – others make the decisions

The process deliberately reverses the roles of a conventional policy discussion. Experts are there to explain problems, provide evidence and present different perspectives. But they are not supposed to draw the conclusions for the citizens.

Kira Alberts of Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Research on Democracy sees precisely this as one of the process’s particular strengths. The assembly, she argues, should not simply import a model developed in Europe or North America into South Africa. “We don’t want to just transplant this Global North idea into a Global South context,” she said during preparations. The process was therefore adapted to South African conditions over roughly a year and a half in collaboration with researchers, civil society and public institutions.

For Alberts, the recommendations at the end are not the only thing that matters. A process in which people are genuinely listened to and feel that their voices count can give them a sense of political agency and dignity. Well-facilitated deliberation can also demonstrate how people from very different backgrounds can develop common positions.

Who sits in the assembly?

This is a particularly challenging question in Cape Town. The city is marked by enormous social inequalities, different population groups and several languages. Conventional random-selection methods also encounter practical obstacles: postal delivery, internet access and reliable population data cannot be taken for granted everywhere.

The members were therefore chosen from those who registered to participate through stratified random selection. Age, gender, residential area and language were taken into account in an effort to reflect Cape Town’s population as closely as possible. Because not everyone selected agreed to participate, three rounds of selection were necessary.

The deliberations of the 91 participants take place in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa. Travel expenses are covered, meals are provided, participants receive compensation for their time and childcare is available where needed.

These measures are intended in particular to enable the participation of people who can easily be excluded from conventional public consultation. During the selection process, Meshay Moses of the University of the Western Cape said that attracting a larger and more diverse pool of interested people would make it possible to “better represent the full diversity of Cape Town” in the selection – particularly people who would not normally participate in political processes.

Climate policy as a social issue

The fact that transport was chosen as the subject of South Africa’s first Climate Citizens’ Assembly is no coincidence. Anna Taylor of the University of Cape Town explained to members that climate change is not simply an abstract question of rising temperatures. Heavy rainfall, storms and other consequences can damage roads and railway lines and prevent people from reaching schools, clinics or workplaces.

Kira Alberts puts the connection in even broader terms: “Climate touches everything and affects everything.” Climate adaptation in South Africa therefore cannot be separated from the country’s social problems. Talking about climate inevitably means talking about inequality, housing, mobility and living conditions too.

The Western Cape provincial government is also supporting the experiment. Goosain Isaacs, head of its climate change directorate, described the South African context as particularly challenging during the preparations. That, he said, was precisely why the government was enthusiastic about involving citizens and responding to them. Those involved hope to learn lessons from the experiment that could later inform similar processes elsewhere.

An assembly not commissioned by the city

Politically, however, the experiment has a potential weakness. The assembly was not convened by the Cape Town City Council. It is primarily being run by Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Research on Democracy and the Politics and Urban Governance Research Group at the University of the Western Cape. Public institutions and civil-society organisations are also involved.

That raises the crucial question even before the process has finished: What will happen to its recommendations?

Alberts herself has acknowledged this risk. It must not become “just another process with no tangible outcomes”. The organisers therefore sought to involve political institutions from an early stage. The recommendations are to be submitted directly to the City of Cape Town, while links have also been established with the Western Cape provincial government.

An experiment with greater ambitions

The assembly is therefore also a test of whether a model now used in Europe, North America and other parts of the world can work under very different social conditions. Jebi Rahman of the international Climate Group has described it as a process that places people “at the heart of the province’s climate conversation”.

For Alberts, the ambition goes further. Citizens’ assemblies can demonstrate that democracy is not a finished model that merely needs to be administered. It must continue to evolve, experiment with new forms and give people the sense that they are genuinely being heard.

The members of Cape Town’s Citizens’ Assembly will continue learning, deliberating and eventually developing joint recommendations until October. The final report is due to be published in November. Then the politically decisive part of the experiment will begin: the citizens will have spoken – and Cape Town will have to show how seriously it is prepared to listen.