Challenges of Public Participation in Promoting Good Governance in the Blouberg Local Government

The true nature of this paper is to examine the challenges of public participation in promoting good governance within the Blouberg Local Municipality. The paper was underpinned by the theory of deliberative democracy, which emphasises active citizen engagement, dialogue, collective decision-making, and mutual respect between citizens and government officials. Despite the existence of participatory structures such as ward committees and Integrated Development Planning (IDP) forums, several challenges continue to undermine meaningful public participation and good governance at the local government level. The paper utilised a qualitative research approach guided by the critical paradigm and an exploratory inductive research design. Purposive sampling was used to select ten participants, including municipal managers, IDP and LED officials, and community members who possessed relevant knowledge and experience regarding municipal participation processes. Data were collected through face-to-face open-ended interviews and analysed using Creswell’s eight-step qualitative data analysis process.