If you want to understand the reason for the heightened contestations at the precipice of internecine strife in political parties' nomination and list processes for 3 August 2016 local government elections, pick up this book: Patronage Politics Divides Us. It gives insight into what is at the core of interand intra-party rivalry as the elections are looming-patronage. The book is one of the research outputs of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)-a knowledge-based So ...

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2021-Jun-23 06:06:51

The South African government is committed to ensuring a 'better life for all'. It is for this reason that a local sphere of government is accountable for the timely delivery of services to the communities concerned. This notion is in line with the developmental mandate of local government as depicted in Chapter 7 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. In accordance with the National Development Plan 2030, there is a need to strengthen local government. The new info ...

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2021-Jun-23 06:04:03

South African developmental local governments have a policy mandate to prepare and adopt local strategies for addressing environmental issues, including climate change impacts, in their areas of jurisdiction. The local authorities have been encouraged to effectively plan for climate change through Integrated Development Planning, that is, as a five-year strategic plan prepared in consultation with local actors. This article argues that local government Integrated Development Planning is a key ...

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2021-Jun-23 06:01:37

The establishment of various former homelands with associated homeland towns and R293 towns was, to a large extent, a manifestation of a policy of territorial apartheid with the intention of redirecting black urbanisation into these areas. Winterveld, like many other R293 towns, is no exception. Following its inclusion into the former Bophuthatswana homeland in 1977, Winterveld was used to accommodate non-Tswana who were rejected on the basis of race and ethnicity by the South African and Bop ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:58:19

In South Africa, local governments are allocated municipal infrastructure grants to redress infrastructural imbalances inherited from the past. However, these grants are not fully spent and are returned to the National Treasury. There is a need to determine these trends of underspending. This article looks into this. It is based on the study that the authors undertook, which developed an operational framework that could assist local governments to spend the full allocation during the financia ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:56:04

Currently, South Africa's informal urban sector is marked by a plethora of migrants from peripheral rural areas in pursuit of socio-economic emancipation. Thus, understanding rural-urban sector dynamics in incipient economies such as South Africa's, which account for 60-90% of urban employment, is pivotal for any plan, programme and policy intervention aiming to alleviate poverty. Whereas the informal urban sector is renowned for its staggering capability to absorb the unemployed, uns ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:53:42

South African municipalities operate in an increasingly water scarce environment. This, coupled with the removal of apartheid-era barriers that regulated influx and residential movement, and the consequent urbanisation that has ensued, has placed them under severe pressure to manage competing demands for water and waterborne sanitation. This article is based on the findings from a study initiated by the University of Cape Town's Urban Water Management group, which sought to investigate th ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:51:18

Local Economic Development (LED) has increasingly emerged as an important policy imperative for local communities globally. The growing emphasis on LED has found particular traction in South Africa since 1994, as policymakers and local communities have grappled with how to address the twin challenges of redressing historical imbalances in service delivery as a result of apartheid with South Africa's increasing exposure to global macroeconomic factors. The LED literature emphasises the rol ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:48:34

This article attempts to answer a simple question: How do municipal employees rate their utilisation of work procedures as a critical driver of operations and performance? This question is imperative for service delivery, given the perennial poor performance of local government in the Eastern Cape as reported by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA). Noted root causes relevant for the research are weak municipal systems and processes, as well as a lack of appropriate controls towards com ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:46:06

This article is a presentation of research findings on the manifested strengths and weaknesses in organisational culture within the selected municipalities in the Eastern Cape. Diagnostic reports on local government such as the Auditor-General's reports and the Local Government Turnaround Strategy, have focused on broad assessments of financial management, leadership and governance. However, there is limited focus on institutional level mechanisms, in particular, examining embedded cultur ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:43:30

The article aims to establish the link between political will and performance in selected municipalities in South Africa. It is based on a study the authors conducted on this subject, against the backdrop of continued service delivery lapses in the country. The review of literature revealed that there was a paucity of substantial research linking political will and performance in local government in South Africa, as well as globally. The study, of which the results are now presented in this a ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:40:48

Before reverting to multiparty elections in 1991, there were no presidential elections in Kenya under one party dictatorship, an anomaly that elevated the president above the law'. The presidential behemoth, defined along tribal lines, became an impediment to democratisation owing to the absence of oversight institutions to enforce accountability, inequitable distribution of state resources and impunity through disregard for the doctrine of separation of powers. The Constitution, promulga ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:38:12

At the time of finalising this edition of the Journal of Public Administration, the euphoria of the 2016 August local government elections was at its peak, with political parties parading their manifestos, all in competition for a stake in the local sphere of government. Fraught with nothing more than platitudes based on data less empiricism, the razzmatazz was deafening. It blurred a vexing question: what does it mean to be a government in the 21st century? A reincarnation of the same questi ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:35:39