EXPLORING INDIGENOUS GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS AND TRADITIONAL PRACTICES: A CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Contemporary grassroots challenges require authorities to draw on knowledge and expertise from various stakeholders, including custodians of indigenous knowledge and traditional practices. Colonialism in Africa relegated indigenous governance systems and traditional practices to the peripheries of social governance. In South Africa, the new democratic dispensation in 1994 marked a significant shift in state governance, public administration and national politics. This change introduced new actors in managing public resources and policy-making and marked a new beginning for millions of citizens formerly subjected to discrimination, little state protection, and limited avenues for legal recourse through the courts. This conceptual paper explores how Indigenous governance practices, such as traditional leadership, oral tradition, collective decision-making, community governance, collective ownership, and inclusiveness, which enabled communal self-governance, can be leveraged under the current governance framework in South Africa to solve challenges, particularly those affecting grassroots communities. The paper proposes a hybrid model that incorporates indigenous governance systems into South African governance systems to augment dominant Eurocentric governance models.