Many struggle activists and scholars tend to see a separation between the struggle itself and the ultimate goal of that struggle. In other words, there is often failure to conceive of struggle itself as an emancipatory moment when the oppressed consciously reject the constraints imposed on them by the oppressors and begin to work towards a new society based on new principles of social organization and governance. Thus the obsession with the moment of rupture leads many to fail to notice the significance of embryonic moments of social emancipation as they unfold during the struggle itself. However, the moment of rapture, whether it is ushered in through a violent revolution or peaceful negotiations, seldom lives up to expectations in terms of its emancipatory possibilities. What it achieves, instead, is to disarm activists and demobilize all those who, in their communities, workplaces, schools and organizations, were involved in building real utopias which gave meaning to their lives.

This proposition is developed in this chapter by tracing the origins of the participatory democratic tradition in the South African struggle and examining its emancipatory power and possibilities. Specific attention is paid to investigating the genesis of the participatory approach in two arenas of struggle during the 1980s and the early 1990s, namely, the trade union movement and the civic movement. The chapter then explains the decline of participatory democracy during the transition to a post-apartheid society.

Finally, it explores the emancipatory possibilities of participatory democracy and explains why it is central to any project of social emancipation. In this regard the expansion of citizenship and the ability of participatory democracy to include (rather than exclude) all in decision-making is emphasized. Although the national democratic dispensation offers opportunities for the re-emergence of participatory democracy, the neoliberal ideology creates a hostile environment for any set of ideas which seek to include rather than exclude. The chapter suggests ways in which the participatory democratic tradition could be reinvented in South Africa under these changed national and global circumstances.