Invited and Invented Spaces of Public Participation in South African Local Government: The Study of Community Engagement Practices and Service Delivery Protests

South African government operates under the cooperative governance model which seeks to bring all spheres of government together to promote people’s government. Public participation was introduced at the local government to improve efficiency, transparency, and public involvement in decision-making processes. However, the rise in public service delivery protests and unrest in South Africa demonstrates that the current community engagement mechanisms’ systematic design is failing to achieve inclusion in municipal decision-making processes despite an understanding of what public participation is and what is supposed to achieve. This chapter explored the opportunities and shortcomings of current invited and invented spaces of participation in local government and how social innovation and appreciative inquiry to inclusiveness in decision-making processes. Methodologically, virtual ethnography, document analysis, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data which was analysed using thematic analysis. The study discovered the issues that led communities to utilise the invented spaces of participation instead of the formal invited spaces of participation made available by the government.