This article argues that the roots of the crisis in public policy performance in South Africa, post 1994, can be traced back to the fact that communities are endorsees rather than co-originators of policies that affect their lives. Hence the article argues that the dilemma of policy performance is the dilemma of the 'first instance' and this is about co-origination and co-authorship of policy issues with citizens and communities. The notion of 'co-origination' derives from Habermas' (Honig 2006:161) thesis that 'in a deliberative democracy, constitutionalism and democracy are co-original'. The notion of co-originality, adopted and elaborated in this article, underlines popular sovereignty in the workings of a democracy. In the context of this article, the argument is that the addressees of public policy should simultaneously be its originators and authors. This then becomes the condition for the legitimate