3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item “Not yet uhuru” : the usurpation of the liberation aspirations of South Africa’s masses by a commitment to liberal constitutional democracy(2018) Sibanda, SaneleAt the heart of this study is the idea of constitutionalism; its promise, conception and deployment in South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional discourse; and ultimately the need for its re-imagination if it is to be part of advancing a truly decolonising liberatory project. A core premise of this study is that there exists, in post-apartheid South Africa, a stark discursive disjuncture between what has emerged as a hegemonic liberal democratic constitutional discourse and the discourse of liberation that served as the ideological pivot of the anti-colonial struggles. Animated by this premise, this study asks why it is that liberation as a framing set of ideas has either played no part or exerted so little obvious influence on how post-apartheid South Africa self-comprehends and organises itself in constitutive terms? Recognising that the formal end of colonial-apartheid as a system in 1994 inaugurated a seismic shift in the country’s constitutional discourse as the notion of constitutionalism took centre stage, this study seeks to problematize this idea by examining its underlying assumptions, connotations and import as deployed in mainstream South African academic and public discourses. In doing this the study aspires to offer a novel perspective that shifts the fixity of the conceptualisation of constitutionalism by amplifying the point that how one chooses to conceptualise constitutionalism has profound implications for what one understands to be the function, scope, ambition and possibility of a constitution. Crucially, the study seeks to advance a historicised, yet non-ideological understanding of the emergence of modern constitutionalism. This, the study argues, is necessary if the real constitutive work and worth of constitutions of different types and thrusts is to remain open to critical engagement as well as fostering the possibility of constitutional imaginings of new, different forms of society or social ordering. As the study works towards responding to the core question it poses, it embarks upon a critical historiography of South African constitutionalism from the 1910 Union constitution to the present one. It does this in an attempt to demonstrate that some of the challenges faced by the current constitution are, profoundly influenced, if not directly produced, by legal, structural, cultural and economic continuities rooted in the past, with race being a central axis around which South African constitutionalism has been imagined, enacted, opposed and resisted. In so doing, the study seeks to demonstrate that despite the indisputable paradigmatic shift ushered in by the fall of colonial-apartheid, on current evidence that shift has been unable to displace nor disrupt the many continuities that remain stubbornly etched into the South Africa’s constitutive DNA inherited from earlier racially exclusive and exploitative constitutional expressions. Engaging South African constitutionalism from a critical historical perspective, the study turns its attention to the emergence and eventual ascendance of transformative constitutionalism as arguably the mainstream conception of contemporary South African constitutionalism. The study argues that transformative constitutionalism, whilst claiming radical far reaching means and ends, has established limited intellectual and programmatic horizons focused on litigation. From within this discourse, it is argued, there is little or no evidence of other work directed at inculcating institutional or structural power shifts or innovations beyond the courts and lawyering. Ultimately, the study argues that transformative constitutionalism is an inadequate framework through which we can begin reimagining South African constitutionalism and its attendant political, social and cultural dynamics in a more emancipatory and inclusive ways. Finally, in light of the discursive disjuncture identified earlier, the study concludes by turning its attention to the notion of liberation. It does this in an attempt to reveal liberation thought’s constitutive potentialities through its political, social, economic, and cultural dimensions that exist as the epistemic underpinnings of the visions of liberated societies and states as imagined and put forward by the like of Steve Biko, Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon amongst others.Item Examining bureaucratic performance of South African local government: local municipalities in Limpopo province(2016) Mamogale, Majuta JudasIn democratic South Africa, power regarding the provision of public goods and services is decentralised to local government level simply because municipalities are the coalface of service delivery and are closer to the people than national and provincial spheres of government. As a result, municipalities are assigned service delivery responsibilities by the Constitution. To discharge these constitutional responsibilities and functions in terms of public goods and service provision effectively and efficiently, municipalities are, firstly, expected to have high institutional capacity to deliver and be held accountable to their municipal councils and to behave in a fiscally responsible manner. Secondly, they are further expected to be characterised by strong and powerful municipal councils to exercise their formal powers of oversight function over municipal administration. Despite huge and continuous resource investment in terms of funding and capacity building and training interventions from the centre to build and strengthen the local government capacity to fulfil its public goods and service delivery responsibilities, South African local government, with specific reference to Limpopo local government, continues to be afflicted by persistent poor bureaucratic performance in relation to water and sanitation provision as well as financial management. In Limpopo Province, there are, however, a very few pockets of good performance (e.g. the Waterberg District Municipality) pertaining to financial management. Generally, manifestation of these governance problems is illustrated by high rates of negative audit outcomes, high levels of underspending, high levels of financial misconduct, high consumer debt and increasing sporadic community protests against poor municipal service delivery. Using a qualitative research approach and methods (i.e. interviews, observations, focus group discussions, questionnaire and document review), this study has explored the determinants of bureaucratic performance of South Africa’s local government with specific reference to Limpopo local government. A multiple qualitative case study approach, consisting of five municipalities (i.e. Capricorn and Waterberg District Municipalities, and Fetakgomo, Greater Tubatse and Greater Tzaneen Local Municipalities) was, thus, applied. This multiple case study approach assisted in enhancing the validity and reliability as well as replication of the study results to the entire system of Limpopo local government. Both purposive and random sampling techniques were used to sample the above mentioned five case studies and select the research participants. The added value of this study is, of course, the new dimension it has suggested such as theory of bureaucracy and the principal-agent model to explore and analyse the determinants of municipal bureaucratic performance in Limpopo Province. In effect, these two theories have rarely been tested together in analysing local government bureaucratic performance, but, in this study, they are used together to analyse the phenomena. In spite of their commonalities and variations, the study has discovered that not all bureaucratic performance failures within Limpopo local government are related to the lack of meritocracy, especially at managerial level. In effect, the level of meritocracy is very low at operational and implementation level in municipalities. The study, for example, has found that the percentage of the total municipal workforce with university or college qualifications at National Qualification Framework level 6 and above stood at 17 percent in the Greater Tubatse Municipality as compared to 58 percent and 76 percent in Fetakgomo and Greater Tzaneen Local Municipalities respectively. At the management level, the study, in contrast, found that the percentage of senior managers with professional qualifications at NQF level 6 and above stood at more than 80 percent in all the above-mentioned local municipalities. At the district level, the study further found that the percentage of total municipal workforce with university qualifications at NQF level 6 and above, as prescribed by municipal regulations on minimum competency level requirements and qualifications, stood at 7.4 percent and 59 percent respectively in the Capricorn and Waterberg District Municipalities in the period the study was undertaken. The study, however, has revealed serious paradoxes at management level regarding the possession of university qualifications by senior managers. For instance, the study found that the percentage of section 54A and 56 managers with professional qualifications at NQF level 6 and above in the Waterberg District Municipality was 86 percent as opposed to 33.3 percent in the Capricorn District Municipality. On the matter of the municipal council oversight function over municipal administration, the study findings confirmed the initial study proposition that strong and independent municipal councils, as opposed to weak or less-independent councils, play a vital role in determining bureaucratic quality or performance of municipalities. In effect, the study found that municipal councils or their council oversight committees in selected case studies were ineffective in exercising their formal powers of oversight. According to the study, the ineffectiveness of municipal council oversight committees was attributed to the following; institutional instability that characterised these municipalities between 2011 and 2014; the influence of political parties; or the prolonged and sustained single dominance of the municipal councils by one political party. Given the parliamentary governance system generally adopted by the South African state, the study further observed that municipal councils are effectively rendered inefficient by the fusion of both legislative and executive powers in the same person, being the municipal council. In contrast, this is, however, not the case in national and provincial spheres of government where the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive is clear and unambiguous compared with the local sphere of government. The study concluded that the persistent poor bureaucratic performance of South African local government, with specific reference to Limpopo local government, is as a result of none institutionalisation and none enforcement of a meritocratic recruitment culture at operational and implementation level as opposed to that at a management level. In addition, weak and less-independent municipal councils account for persistent poor bureaucratic performance of municipalities in Limpopo Province. If Limpopo local government is to become more developmental and meet the minimum service delivery expectations of communities, the study suggests that institutionalisation of meritocracy must be enforced by well-resourced and independent municipal councils vis-a-vis mayoral executive committees.