Hybridising governance for resilience in a time of crisis: learning from community-based organisations in Cape Town and Cali

Through the lens of food security this paper explores how community-based organisations (CBOs) in low-income neighbourhoods in Cape Town (South Africa) and Cali (Colombia) responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. In understanding how they engaged with and operationalised governance in times of crisis, we are able to critically engage with hybrid governance practices in these contexts and explore their potential to support equitable resilience. The findings are based on 12 months of qualitative research in both cities, including interviews and focus groups with community leaders and weekly digital diaries with local residents. We show how CBOs were able to supplement the state, build partnerships through boundary spanning and act as mediators and brokers by leveraging their trust-based networks to support distributive, procedural and recognitional resilience in their neighbourhoods. We argue that in contexts of vulnerability and rapidly changing conditions, hybridising governance is a more appropriate way to understand these processes, which may result in contested rather than integrated outcomes. Moreover, we find that while CBOs are highly effective first responders in times of crisis, without effective state partnership – in other words, hybridity that includes the state – their potential for longer-term systemic, equitable resilience remains limited.