Community Participation and Geographic Information Systems - Chapter 18 ppsx

Implementing a community-
integrated GIS: perspectives
from South African fieldwork
Trevor M. Harris and Daniel Weiner
Chapter 18
18.1 INTRODUCTION
A conceptual framework for PPGIS has been well developed during the last
decade, and several crucial elements of both the public participation and
GIS components have been identified (Abbot et al. 1998; Obermeyer 1998).
Until quite recently, however, there were few examples to demonstrate how
the implementation of PPGIS might actually proceed (Craig et al. 1999;
Talen 1999). The purpose of this chapter is to identify one such approach
based on fieldwork undertaken in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. It
was in addressing the complexities of PPGIS implementation that we coined
the term community-integrated GIS (CiGIS), intended to represent a slightly
different mode of PPGIS implementation than that previously envisaged
(Harris and Weiner 1998). In this chapter, we briefly outline the basic con-
cepts behind CiGIS, and present an application in support of land and
agrarian reform in South Africa.
18.2 GIS, SOCIETY, AND PPGIS
Early thoughts about PPGIS implementation envisaged placing a GIS into
the hands of communities almost as a counterpart to the systems operated
by public and private agencies. In our fieldwork in South Africa, we quickly
rejected this approach as infeasible and shifted to a CiGIS orientation. To
provide some context for this conceptual and operational change, we now
identify several key issues raised in the literature on GIS and society, and
explain how they impacted our attempt to connect community participation
with a GIS.
First, and perhaps foremost, was the issue of how to address or overcome
differential access to hardware, software, data, and expertise. Much of the
discussion on this topic in the literature was strikingly played out during

our work in transitional South Africa (Harris et al. 1995; Weiner et al.
1995). Many communities in the case study area were struggling to acquire
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Implementing a community-integrated GIS 247
basic necessities of life such as water, shelter, food, and fuel. Most commun-
ities did not have access to electricity, and education had been deliberately
withheld. Despite the tremendous enthusiasm and desire of local commun-
ities to participate, the chronic and endemic problems of community access
to basic resources in Mpumalanga Province necessitated a GIS implemen-
tation strategy that drew upon GIS capability, support, and willingness
from outside the communities themselves. In this case, a project team from
West Virginia University (WVU), in collaboration with the South African
Department of Land Affairs, filled this role.
Second, the issue of structural knowledge distortion in post-apartheid
South Africa became of paramount concern in developing a community
response to land and agrarian reform. The major central government and
provincial agencies of the apartheid regime had fully embraced the new
technologies of GIS and remote sensing, and under government mandates
had operated them in support of an oppressive state regime. Digital spatial
data were available from these agencies, but they were unreliable and
expensive to purchase. Some of the data were also deemed confidential and
were not readily available. Some data simply had not been collected. For
example, land claims are a major component of the post-apartheid land
reform process, yet no official documentation of forced removals exists.
The overlapping tribal and community land claims that we encountered
suggests several phases of forced removals occurred, none of which were
officially recorded or documented. Thus, the data collected by the state, the
available geo-spatial databases, and their content were representative of the
goals of an apartheid state, and reflected the conceptions of space of an ‘elite’
(predominantly white) sector of society.

These factors highlighted a third area of concern frequently discussed in
the literature: the desire to complement ‘official’ and ‘expert’ digital spatial
information with local knowledge held by members of the community.
Seeking to redress structural knowledge distortion through the inclusion of
local knowledge held by members of black communities themselves thus
became a primary challenge of the project. Much of a community’s know-
ledge is heavily qualitative in nature and invariably based on oral history and
the experience of having lived in a place for some time. Capturing this
knowledge in a GIS that relies heavily on the spatial primitives of point, line,
and polygon and the quantitative ordering of information is no easy task.
These issues forced us to address both qualitative and quantitative aspects of
local knowledge acquisition, and the integration of this knowledge into a GIS.
Fourth, it is erroneous to think of local knowledge as homogenous or
uniform. In many respects, it would be better to use the term ‘knowledges’
as a way of recognizing that community information is varied and socially
differentiated (Mahiri 1998). In seeking to include local knowledge within
a GIS, the problems of identifying and incorporating the socially differenti-
ated perspectives of community participants had to be confronted. Doing so
© 2002 Taylor & Francis
248 T. M. Harris and D. Weiner
explicitly acknowledges the very real and constraining problem of differen-
tial access to information, and underscores that in many instances the focus
of PPGIS may well be to address and ensure that the varying perspectives
of community members are incorporated into a GIS.
18.3 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE SOUTH
AFRICA CiGIS
The South Africa CiGIS is guided by three broad conceptual principles: popu-
lar community participation; local, social and spatial differentiation; and
regional political ecology. Community participation has become a mantra in
development planning and field-based academic research. Unfortunately,

most participation associated with development planning is essentially
participation as legitimization. Community meetings are held, local input is
gathered, reports are produced, and top-down planning is maintained. In this
context, participation helps to legitimize decisions that are not necessarily
‘popular’ within impacted communities. In the academic world, participation
has come to designate a configuration of qualitative methods designed to
understand complex social processes better than conventional quantitative
or qualitative methods. Efforts to hear the voices of ‘ordinary’ people and
‘capture local knowledge’ are well intentioned, but in many instances these
are forms of participation for publication, in which academics under-
take research to produce books and journal articles while leaving the subject
communities with little (if any) tangible benefits.
Popular participation is an attempt to locate community participation in
the context of particular local configurations of power within civil society.
Participatory processes become part of the structures of everyday life, and
ordinary people are able to express their opinions as openly as possible. The
South African CiGIS has its roots in a participatory land reform project
initiated in 1991 during a period of intense political struggle and violence
(Levin and Weiner 1997). As a result of our participation in that project, we
are known in the community and viewed as friends and advocates of pop-
ular local causes. The participatory process is thus central to our work, and
the issues addressed in the CiGIS are community issues that have significant
local importance. CiGIS implementation assumes, therefore, that tangible
community needs are being addressed and that the project is political by its
very nature.
Our conceptual and methodological framework for CiGIS development
and implementation also assumes social and spatial differentiation. As sug-
gested above, communities are not homogenous and GIS can inadvertently
maintain unequal development. In the South Africa study, spatial differenti-
ation is represented by the inclusion of diverse forms of participant social

groups, including land reform organizations, peri-urban former homelands
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Implementing a community-integrated GIS 249
groups, farmworkers, large-scale (white) commercial farmers, and local
chiefs. Race- and gender-based forms of social differentiation are also included
in the South African CiGIS, and age, class, and other forms of difference will
be added to the analysis in the future.
The South African CiGIS is also guided by an appreciation of regional
political ecology. This conceptual framework helps researchers to analyse
the social histories and landscape politics of the participant communities,
and to reflect on their own academic interests in these areas. Our relation-
ship with these South African communities began in 1991 when community
elders explained how grand apartheid social engineering had dispossessed
them of land, water and biomass resources in their former Lebowa home-
land. The contemporary poverty of these groups was clearly linked to the
historical geography of forced removals and to the production of local and
regional apartheid geographies.
18.4 MPUMALANGA CASE STUDY
The Mpumalanga Province is a transitional area between the relatively cool
and moist highveld plateau (over 1200 m in altitude) and the hot, dry
lowveld (200–600 m in altitude). Mean annual rainfall ranges between 400
and 700 mm in the lowveld and between 1000 and 1500 mm on the escarp-
ment and parts of the highveld. These environmental features, combined
with the history of forced removals and forced urbanization under colo-
nialism and apartheid, have produced a landscape of extreme social and
ecological variation. The total population of the Province is over 3 million,
of whom one-third live in urban areas and almost half reside in the former
homelands. The case study area, the Central Lowveld subregion, is located
mainly within the Lowveld Escarpment District of Mpumalanga Province,
and includes a small portion of Bushbackridge to the north (Figure 18.1).

The latter is disputed territory in Northern Province, and includes portions
of the former Lebowa and Gazankulu homelands.
Intensive and exotic industrial forest plantations and large-scale commer-
cial fruit and vegetable farms dominate the western third of the case study
area. Some of these are located on highly arable land. Forestry companies
control large tracts of state land, and this raises substantive issues regarding
socially and ecologically appropriate land-uses. Forest plantations and large-
scale commercial farms thrive because of a highly skewed system of water
access. During the apartheid era, the social production of this watershed was
centred on a complex system of dams and tributaries that capture valuable
water for (mostly white) large-scale commercial farms (Woodhouse 1997).
The former homelands of KaNgwane, Gazankulu, and Lebowa are
located east of the agriculture and forestry plantations. These bantustans are
overcrowded and poorly serviced relics of grand apartheid. Land demand is
© 2002 Taylor & Francis
250 T. M. Harris and D. Weiner
high, water is in short supply, and the history of forced removals remains
fresh in peoples’ memories and imaginations. Historically, political struggles
have been connected to the decline in access to land, water, and biomass
resources (Levin and Weiner 1997). The Kruger National Park and several
private game parks occupy the eastern portions of the case study area. Since
1994, tourism has again become a growth industry, and visitors to the
Mpumalanga and Northern Province Lowveld are growing. The use of land
for game tourism has generated interesting discussions within the region
regarding the potential for community-based range management models.
Figure 18.1 The Central Lowveld case study area, South Africa.
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Implementing a community-integrated GIS 251
Many of the study participants, however, perceive limited personal benefit
from the adjacent game parks.

18.5 CiGIS IMPLEMENTATION
Populating the CiGIS database was a central issue in the South African
project. Acquiring spatial data is always a challenge for GIS practitioners;
however, in CiGIS, this challenge is compounded by the need to draw heav-
ily on local knowledge obtained from within communities. Developing the
CiGIS database thus focused on obtaining the more traditional GIS cover-
ages that detail the physical and cultural infrastructure of a region, and
obtaining qualitative knowledge from members of the local community.
Incorporating traditional data involved the familiar search for existing data
of sufficient quality, attribution, relevance, and scale to meet the needs of
the project. Digital spatial data were obtained from official government
sources and private data providers, and by scanning and digitizing existing
analogue maps. The digital data comprised both vector and image files.
Digital raster graphics were generated from the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000
topographic map sheets and were based on mid-1980s source maps. Built-
up and peri-urban settlement patterns were obtained in digital form from
private vendors and were based on 1997, 1:10,000 orthophoto imagery.
Data on land contour, hydrology and dams, roads, railroads, jurisdictional
boundaries, and state-owned lands were obtained in digital form from
government agencies at a scale of 1:50,000. Land-cover data were obtained
at 1:250,000, and land-type data were captured at 1:50,000.
CiGIS requires that traditional top-down ‘expert’ information be com-
plemented by information garnered from local community groups. In this
case study, the latter consisted of local groups within the former homelands
with various relationships to the government’s land reform programme.
These groups are characterized by a diversity of rural production systems
and relations of production, and include Cork Village and Nkuna Tribal
Authority; Friedenheim Farmworkers; Masoyi Tribal Authority; Masizakhe
Land Redistribution Project; Sitama Impilo Land Redistribution Project
(Figure 18.1) and six (white) large-scale commercial farmers in the area.

Where appropriate, each of these groups were further subdivided into
groups of men, women, and tribal leaders in order to capture the crucial
socially differentiated local knowledge each group held.
Community workshops were held to compile information from each
group based on five broad political ecology concerns:
1 the historical geography of forced removals,
2 identifying and comparing ‘expert’ and local understandings of land
potential,
© 2002 Taylor & Francis
252 T. M. Harris and D. Weiner
3 perceptions of socially appropriate and inappropriate land-use,
4 access to natural resources, and
5 community views about where land reform should take place.
Each community was contacted in advance to arrange the half-day work-
shops. Base topographic maps of the areas were created at a variety of
scales and brought to the workshops. The maps were overlaid with tracing
paper, and each group was asked to record their perspectives on the above
questions using colour-coded markers. Each group, comprised of approx-
imately eight to ten people, met separately, and included a facilitator.
1
The
resulting ‘mental maps’ were digitized, attributed, and incorporated into the
GIS database. In addition, photographs, video recordings, and voice record-
ings of the interviews were taken and georeferenced to the mental maps.
The core of the CiGIS process was to integrate this information into a GIS
database. As indicated, this represents a significant challenge because of
the qualitative nature of much of the information. Initial work focused
on embedding objects within an ArcView GIS, but an Internet-based
GIS replaced this system. The Internet-based system provided a more suitable
GIS environment within which to link quantitative GIS coverages with

qualitative voice, photograph, text, and video data. An Internet-based system
also permits ready access to other resources on the web. Perhaps most
importantly, an Internet-based GIS provides a means by which to overcome
some of the disadvantages of differential access. Although access to the
Internet is not widespread in Mpumalanga Province, it provides the poten-
tial for greater access to GIS resources in the future. With an Internet-based
GIS, maps and information can be downloaded using simple point-and-click
procedures. An understanding of GIS concepts or software is not essential,
removing another significant obstacle to communities having access to their
information. Although we do not wish to minimize the very real obstacles to
South African communities gaining access to the Internet, it is remarkable
how quickly the Internet is becoming accessible in these regions through state
agencies, the private sector, and community telecentres. We believe multi-
media Internet GIS is a central component in the development of CiGIS, and
that state agencies will have to take responsibility for providing access to
resources and technology in order for such a system to be developed and for
communities to be incorporated into GIS-based decision-making.
18.6 FIELD RESULTS
In this section, we focus on two examples to illustrate the type of informa-
tion generated from the fieldwork and some critical issues posed by CiGIS
implementation for land reform in South Africa. A more detailed presenta-
tion of the data can be found in Weiner and Harris (1999).
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Implementing a community-integrated GIS 253
Land types data obtained from the Agricultural Resource Council of the
South African Institute of Soil, Climate, and Water are presented in Figure
18.2. Based on the Institute’s soil classification and slope information, land
potential categories were established. In the study area, 43 per cent is clas-
sified as land of ‘higher’ agricultural potential, 17 per cent as ‘medium’
potential, and 40 per cent as ‘lower’ potential. This database of ‘expert’

knowledge about land potential was focused on the fertile river valleys
from which black South Africans tell us they were forcibly displaced. In
the course of comparing local knowledge of land potential with the official
coverage from the Institute, several anomalies were identified. In several
instances the mental maps of local communities, which included both
Figure 18.2 The multiple realities of land potential.
© 2002 Taylor & Francis
254 T. M. Harris and D. Weiner
black and white participants, differed from the Institute’s map. Specifically,
local communities identified several areas of land as higher-quality land
than was recorded by the Institute. The location of these areas is signific-
ant for their proximity to areas under scrutiny for potential reform. In
essence, the differences occurred as a result of contrasting scales of data
capture and differing perceptions of what constitutes high-quality land.
Large portions of land that have a slope sufficient to make them inappro-
priate for mechanized agriculture were deemed of low quality by the
Institute, but were considered very attractive by small-scale farmers who
use animals and hoes. We would expect an operational CiGIS in the region
to help locate viable high-slope areas with potential for small-scale agri-
cultural production.
In the second case study example, there was no ‘official’ data on forced
removals in the area. Braum Raubenheimer, former Minister of Water
Affairs and a member of cabinet under Prime Minister Verwoerd, was a
project participant, and he denied that black South Africans were forced
to relocate as a result of white settlement or the actions of the apartheid
government and police. A very different story emerged when this issue
was discussed with black South African participants. One-quarter of the
black population in the study area told us they experienced at least one
forced removal in their lifetime (Levin and Weiner 1997). This is why CiGIS
participants remain willing, even anxious, to talk about the historical geo-

graphy of forced removals.
White farmers, however, were reluctant to discuss issues of forced
removals. The mental maps of whites and blacks in the subregion are com-
pared in Figure 18.3. The maps suggest very different perceptions of subre-
gional landscape history. Forced removal mental maps for black participants
delineated an extensive area of removals especially in the southwest region
of the case study area. The white farmer mental maps acknowledged areas
of forced removals that were significantly smaller in size. Unexpectedly, the
white farmer responses also identified areas of white farmer removal, most
likely for homeland expansion. Furthermore, because the peri-urban black
settlement is located on higher potential arable land, black participants indi-
cated that the area of settlement located to the immediate south of Hazyview
is where the tribal chiefs removed blacks. This was done to enable members
of the tribal authority and local black businessmen to gain better access to
this high-quality land (Weiner et al. 1995).
Mental maps are qualitative representations that must be handled care-
fully. However, the mental maps were invaluable in representing the only
known record of forced removals and for identifying phases of forced
removals in which removed communities were subsequently relocated. These
complementary interpretations of historical dispossession have provided the
basis for understanding the existence of many overlapping land claims that
have contributed to the slow pace of land restitution.
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Implementing a community-integrated GIS 255
18.7 CONCLUSION
The literature on GIS and society has generated rich conceptual and polit-
ical questions for GIS developers, users, and practitioners about issues of
database development and use, visualization and representation, and the
power relations that affect system access. PPGIS is one outcome of such cri-
tiques and PPGIS efforts have, to date, been particularly concerned with

issues of community empowerment, disempowerment, and the integration
of quantitative and qualitative information.
Figure 18.3 The multiple realities of forced removals.
© 2002 Taylor & Francis
256 T. M. Harris and D. Weiner
The human, financial, and technical resources required for GIS develop-
ment and operationalization suggest that in-house community GIS are
unlikely to broaden access to spatial decision-making, especially in under-
developed regions and poor communities (Hastings and Clark 1991). Rather,
alternative mechanisms for data and GIS delivery that relieve communities of
much of the hardware, software, data, expertise, and maintenance costs will
most likely predominate. CiGIS seeks to address such concerns in GIS-based
decision-making. In the future, Internet-based GIS will be a core component
of such an access and delivery system, although the social context of Internet
access will vary significantly from community to community.
It is the integration of community viewpoints that has dominated our
work in South Africa. The reasons for this are perhaps more apparent in the
socio-political context of South Africa than in other parts of the world.
Under apartheid, official GIS data about communities was both selective and
distorted, and served to justify agency mandates in support of grand
apartheid social engineering. Addressing structural knowledge distortion in
this context entails integrating alternative forms of local knowledge with the
‘expert’ data of government agencies. ‘Capturing’ this knowledge is one of
the most challenging aspects for GIS practitioners, because local knowledge
is invariably qualitative and spatially imprecise. Effectively collecting cognit-
ive, visual, graphical, aural, and narrative forms of information and inte-
grating them within a GIS entailed the use of what Schiffer (this volume) has
called spatial multimedia. Furthermore, as demonstrated in this case study,
community knowledge is socially differentiated and this raises important
questions about how the final product might be used, and for whom.

The South Africa case study also demonstrates how a regional political
ecology conceptual framework can be operationalized with a CiGIS. The
mental maps depict local struggles for natural resource access, and an asso-
ciated social reproduction crisis for some participants. An indication of this
was the enthusiastic response of some participants, and their delight at sim-
ply being asked what they thought about their locale, historical geographies,
and future aspirations. Black participants’ consciousness about the land-
scape was formed though historical processes of dispossession, and many are
anxious to discuss local natural resource politics and power relations. Large-
scale commercial farmers, on the other hand, were much more reluctant
to draw maps and discuss configurations of power within the local and
regional landscape. It is important to note, however, that the Mpumalanga
CiGIS did yield some interesting and important areas of agreement among
the socially differentiated community participants.
A final point is that complementary knowledge acquired at differing
scales creates a rich, valuable contextual resource for decision-making. In
many instances the CiGIS incorporates information (such as the history of
forced removals) that was previously unrecorded and that would almost
certainly have been excluded from more traditional GIS databases. Spatial
© 2002 Taylor & Francis
Implementing a community-integrated GIS 257
decision-making using CiGIS remains a significant challenge, particularly
in the context of socially differentiated knowledge, perceptions about
landscape and uneven access to GIS resources. Nevertheless, there is con-
siderable interest in South Africa to link community participation with
GIS (Hill and Strydom 2000; Mather 2000). To achieve this goal it is crit-
ical for local agencies to interact with communities on a continual basis
and for GIS practitioners to seriously engage with the local structures of
civil society. CiGIS contributes to greater access to, and sharing of, valu-
able spatial information, and provides multiple representations of past,

present, and future landscapes. It also highlights the conflictual nature of
spatial decision-making and acknowledges GIS practice as both techno-
logical and political (Lupton and Mather 1996).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was supported by NSF grant # SBR-951511: ‘Integrating
Regional Political Ecology and GIS for Rural Reconstruction in the South
African Lowveld’, NCGIA Initiative # 19, and the WVU Regional Research
Institute. In South Africa, Indran Naidoo, Richard Levin and Rachel
Masango within the Department of Land Affairs provided critical institu-
tional and logistical support. Regina Dhlamini of Nelspruit was an effective
interpreter and Edward Makhanya of the University of Zululand helped set
up some of the field visits. Wendy Geary (former WVU graduate student),
Ishmail Mahiri (lecturer at Kenyatta University, Kenya), Heidi van Deventer
(lecturer at Rand Afrikaans University, South Africa) and Lloyd Mdakane
(Department of Land Affairs, South Africa) are highly valued members of the
research team. They have all contributed in important ways to this research.
Thanks also to Tim Warner of WVU who helped interpret land types data for
the land potential classification and Wilbert Karigomba (Geography Ph.D.
student at WVU) for helping with GIS data analysis and map production.
NOTE
1. White farmers were interviewed individually or in small groups.
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