In the contemporary political landscape, marked by a rise in conservative mobilisation against democracy and inclusion, schools often become sites of political struggle. In South Africa, historic and ongoing battles over school control, reignited by recent changes to the South African Schools Act (SASA), provide a valuable avenue through which to investigate the contested nature of participatory politics. As Gerrard et al. (2024, p. 456) argue, participatory politics is often assumed to have an inherent commitment to democracy and inclusion, but this assumption “obfuscates the existence of conservative grassroots forces, that invoke and employ participatory methods”.

When SASA was finalised in 1996 after South Africa’s transition to democracy, the level of decentralisation introduced was unprecedented in the country’s history and in Sub-Saharan Africa. SASA established school governing bodies (SGBs) at the school level, empowered to make decisions on language and admissions policies, teacher appointments and school fee structures. These arrangements resulted, on the one hand, from the liberation movement’s commitment to democratising schools and ensuring grassroots participation. On the other hand, the outgoing Apartheid government saw decentralisation as a way for white-only schools to resist post-apartheid redistribution polices under the guise of local democracy. Since then, SGBs at formerly white-only schools have fought relentlessly to retain their decision-making powers, invoking participatory politics to preserve exclusionary practices. Recent legislative changes now aim to clarify government authority in schools, while local control continues to be staunchly defended as a democratic right.

Drawing on Taylor’s (2004) concept of ‘social imaginary’ (ideas and values), this paper investigates the contested imaginaries about public schooling, justice and democracy that help explain how school governance arrangements developed during the transition, and to make sense of continued power struggles in South African education. The study employed critical policy analysis of key policy documents, white papers, acts, submissions to Parliament, records of Parliamentary debates and archival documents from the country’s democratic transition process.

This research falls within the critical theory tradition as it is concerned with social justice, bringing about a more equal society and better understanding power relations (Diem et al., 2014; Lather, 2006; Scott, 2000). Within this approach critical policy analysis, also known as policy sociology (Ozga, 1987), will be utilised as the central methodology. Critical policy analysis is a useful tool “for questioning structures and systems within the policy field” (Diem et al., 2014, p. 1076). Policy documents provide important insights into the assumptions that underlie policy reforms (McCulloch, 2012). Therefore, key policy documents, white papers, acts, amendment acts, records of Parliamentary debates in the National Assembly as well as submissions to Parliament will be analysed to provide insight into the ideas and values that have informed policy making in South Africa and to provide a narrative of how those ideas developed over time. Data from these documents were augmented with data collected through two legs of fieldwork. During the first leg, data were collected attending public hearings held by Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Basic Education. During these hearings, held across the country, members of the public had an opportunity to make an oral or written submission to members of Parliament’s Education Portfolio Committee on their views regarding proposed changes to the South African Schools’ Act, which includes provisions on school governing body powers. During the second leg of fieldwork, semi-structured interviews were conducted. Interviewees were purposefully selected based on their direct participation in policy-making and public participation processes. This paper draws on analysis of the first leg of fieldwork as analysis of interview data is still ongoing. The focus of the data analysis is mainly thematic rather than linguistic. The policy analysis started with the selection of documents, debates and submissions. This served as an initial reading of the texts and allowed for certain themes to start emerging. The selected documents were re-read multiple times and hand-coded using a thematic analysis approach. Data analysis combines an inductive thematic approach with the use of sensitising concepts drawn from Taylor (2004) to map shifting imaginaries around justice and their relationship to evolving education arrangements.

The continued struggle for control of elite public schools in South Africa raise complex questions around decentralisation/participatory democracy and education. These struggles are enmeshed with conceptualisations of publics which strategically contest notions of marginality to serve parochial group interests. They also rely on contesting the meaning of democracy, foregrounding freedom from state involvement and downplaying the state’s role in ensuring equity. This work responds to Gerrard et al.’s suggestion that there is a “need for the normative presumptions held in the conceptualisations of, and research on, participatory politics to be unsettled” (Gerrard et al., 2024, p. 457).

Diem, S., Young, M. D., Welton, A. D., Mansfield, K. C., & Lee, P.-L. (2014). The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27(9), 1068–1090. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2014.916007 Gerrard, J., Goodwin, S., & Proctor, H. (2024). Participatory politics and education policy reform: publics and histories. Discourse, 45(4), 451–463. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2024.2330344 Lather, P. (2006). Paradigm proliferation as a good thing to think with: teaching research in education as a wild profusion. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(1), 35–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390500450144 Lauglo, J. (1995). Forms of decentralisation and their implications for education. Comparative Education, 31(1), 5–29. McCulloch, G. (2012). Documentary methods. In J. Arthur, M. Waring, R. Coe, & L. V. Hedges (Eds.), Research Methods & Methodologies in Education. SAGE Publications Ltd. Ozga, J. (1987). Studying Educational Policy Through the Lives of Policy Makers: An Attempt to Close the Macro-Micro Gap. In S. Walker & L. Barton (Eds.), Changing Policies, Changing Teachers: New Directions for Schooling? (pp. 138–150). Open University Press. Scott, D. (2000). Reading Educational Research and Policy. Routledge. Taylor, C. (2004). Modern Social Imaginaries. Duke University Press.