3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

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Participation and the politics of mediation :the case of the Thembelihle Crisis Committee
(2018) Lourenco, Marisa Lara
The government’s distaste for informality in the new South Africa despite the rights of public participation and the possibility of in situ upgrading enshrined in policy and legislated, has seen a severe disconnect emerge between the state and informal settlements. This can be observed in the Thembelihle informal settlement in Gauteng, which has seen residents mobilise to form the Thembelihle Crisis Committee to articulate their struggle and make their demands heard through numerous channels. Given the market principles guiding the public service sector through the adoption of New Public Management, it is worth a closer interrogation on how these misguide participatory processes in the South Africa, and how they can be understood and interrogated in the context of this grassroots organisation.
Local state practices of informal waste picker integration: the case of the Metsimaholo Local Municipality, Sasolburg
(2019-09-06) Guya, Maria Jokudu
Informal waste picker integration into formal waste management systems in South Africa is supported by the recognition of waste pickers as an important part of recycling in the National Waste Management Strategy (DEA, 2011a). Although informal waste pickers have gained government recognition, little research has focused on the challenges that municipalities and municipal officials face regarding their integration. While the responsibility for waste management is vested in local municipalities through the South African Constitution, policy instruments and tools that guide municipal practices are limited. This affects the practices of municipal officials in relation to the informal sector and the approaches taken to recognise the informal sector. The Metsimaholo Local Municipality which includes Sasolburg, an industrial town, presents a good case for the study of challenges faced by local municipalities. The case of Sasolburg is unique, in comparison to other South African municipalities, because the local municipality was not the key driver of integration. Integration was initiated by informal waste pickers seeking municipal recognition for their role in waste reclaiming (Samson, 2009). The literature threads I focus on include waste recycling systems in the global South and practices of local state officials. The aim of the research report was to understand the challenges that municipal officials face regarding the integration of informal waste pickers into the formal waste management system. The objective of the research was to understand the practices of state officials in the municipality. A key finding that emerged was that waste picker integration has been a challenge for officials because waste management in the MLM prioritises waste collection and disposal services with little guidance for the diversification of solid waste management to include waste pickers. In this context waste management officials’ practice is guided by an understanding of waste picker integration as the contracting of waste picker cooperatives, which results in an absence of initiatives to integrate the majority of waste pickers who work independently on the streets and in the landfills.
The relationship between governance and service delivery in the Makana Local Municipality
(2018) Nicholas, Adrian Christopher
The policy imperative derived from the legislative framework for local government is to deliver basic services, utilising a developmental approach in part, to address the legacy of the past through meaningful participation by the citizenry. However, the expectations from the local government sphere seem to be beyond the capacity of many municipalities in the country and the challenge can be linked to governance and service delivery. This assumption is linked to complexities at the institutional level fused with the political dynamics at that specific sphere of government. The challenges faced by municipalities are very different but they are all required by legislation and the citizenry to be responsive and responsible institutions. The Makana Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province is a case in which to explore what the effect is of both governance and service delivery challenges. This research sets out to explore and describe the relationship between governance and service delivery in the Makana Local Municipality by focusing on the delivery of water. Once a proud municipality and the recipient of various accolades, the Makana Local Municipality was on the verge of ruin in 2013. The municipality was faced with administrative instability and a lack of political oversight and, as a result, the ability to deliver services, particularly water provision was severely hampered. The research is premised on the theory of urban governance and utilises a multi-level urban governance analytical framework to study the dimensions of urban governance at the Makana Local Municipality through the application of qualitative research methods guided by the interpretivist paradigm. In terms of the key findings, the key actors identified in the decision-making realm are politicians and administrators both within and outside the municipality who lack effective and efficient oversight and accountability. Decision-making is not evenly distributed but straddles the different decision-makers internally, with an external bias towards the ruling party structures for crucial decisions to be made. There is a condensing of decision making power located internally within the nexus of the first Executive Mayor and the Speaker, as well as the nexus between the first Executive Mayor and the incumbency of the office of the Municipal Manager, but not discounting the external nuanced yet substantial decision-making power located within the regional and provincial structures of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC). A lack of leadership at both politician- and administration-level resulted in a lack of oversight and accountability, which exploited the situation for self-interest expediency and/or the lack of the capacity to execute the mandate of local government. The governance, and hence service delivery failure, with particular reference to the consistent provision of water, was attributed to the disproportionate power distribution in decision-making that did not allow for meaningful interaction and consultation with a range of decision-makers who were responsive to the needs and aspirations of the broader community of that specific municipality. This was compounded by internal divisions and fractured politics on a municipal level and had an influence on the governance processes. The fact that the municipality is both a Water Services Authority and Water Services Provider but does not have the capacity nor the capability to fulfil both these powers and functions, leads to a situation where old patterns of service delivery are reinforced and reproduced, in particular with respect to township communities. Notwithstanding the efforts by different spheres of government to address the situation at Makana, the weaknesses that were identified at the municipality skirt around the extent and depth of the governance challenges that affected the delivery of services. Governance requires more than just efficient and effective service delivery. Moreover, it requires a focus on the social structure and institutional norms that shape the ability of communities to influence their lives. In other words, there is a strong relationship between governance and service delivery.
The relationship between traditional authorities and municipal councillors and its impact on local development: A Case study of the AmaNdebele Ndzundza Sokhulumi community
(2018) Phakathi, Mpumelelo
This study explores the relationship between traditional authorities and municipal ward councillors, in a democratic South Africa. The conflict between customary law and the Constitution of South Africa. The focus of this study is to investigate how this relationship impacts on local development of traditional communities by observing different government structures within the community who are responsible to bring about local development and services delivery. The objective is to understand and observe the process of how different components within this community relate, looking at the obvious and imperceptible factors which interfere with the functioning of the institutions. The interest of this research is centred on understanding how the interface between traditional authorities and municipal ward councillors is expressed at local sphere of government. This study is based on detailed empirical work obtained through first hand research in KwaSokhulumi Traditional Community, using the case study design. This study is qualitative in natured and used in-depth, structured and unstructured interviews to collect data. This was beneficial to this study as it provided complex textual descriptions of how community members and leaders experienced the dual system of governance within their community. Further, providing information about the human side of an issues such as beliefs, emotions, behaviours, opinions and how they relate to these institutions. The methods used were effective in identifying intangible facts, such as social norms, gender roles, socioeconomic status, tradition and culture. This study found that the relationship between traditional authorities and municipal ward councillor is not good and it is complicated by the fact the Constitution and other municipal Acts do not stipulate what are the roles of traditional authorities in local government. Worsened by the overlap in roles of traditional authorities and municipal ward councillor. This study also found that legitimacy contributes to the tension because both these institutions understand legitimacy different. Lastly, Hierarchy, of who comes first or who has the mandate to develop the community was a stumbling block to local development and resulted in breakdown in the relationship. The impacts of this tension are obvious and can be seen/experienced in the community of Sokhulumi. There is a breakdown in trust between community members, traditional authorities and municipal ward councillor. This study found out that developmental projects are delayed because of this breakdown of relationship and contestation of power.
Municipal employees at the coalface of service delivery: Stories about electricity provision in Thokoza
(2017) Mpapane, Gugu Gloria
Municipalities are the face of the state at the local level. Municipal employees at the coalface of service delivery are an even closer representation of the state and its service delivery function at the community level. South Africa has experienced a spate of service delivery protests1 in its first twenty years as a democracy. Various studies have been conducted to assess factors responsible for the widespread service delivery protests which have grown in frequency and intensity over the last few years and yet the voices of municipal workers have remained glaringly absent in ongoing debates about what could possibly be the driving force behind this sweeping wave of protests. Municipal employees at the coalface of electricity provision in the Thokoza township of Ekurhuleni share their experiences in accounts that could lead us to newer understandings of how South Africa’s democratic state and frontline bureaucracy has occasioned itself twenty years after the country was declared a democracy. Perceptions of the municipal workers are of an immensely entitled citizenry. These perceptions are framed within the ideals of the good citizen and on the basis of official norms. Practical realities and the behaviors of residents, councilors and municipal workers alike destabilize this idealist mindset and make it necessary to investigate how practical realities and lived experiences of consumers, mediators and implementers of service delivery shape service-related behaviors in ways that are far from normative.
Losing its lustre - a narrative of the gold mining communities of the western Witwatersrand focusing on the impact of post 1994 legislation and its ability to transform these communities into flourishing towns or reduce them to ghost towns in the context of a declining gold mining industry
(2018) Breitenbach, Danette
South Africa became a democracy in 1994. The new government faced the task of transforming the country from one where the majority of the population had been discriminated against to one where everyone shares in the benefits of the country. One of the biggest culprits of discrimination pre-1994 was the mining industry. No more was this more evident than in mining communities. To change this, legislation was passed, specifically is the Mining Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) of 2002. At its heart it transferred ownership of mining rights to the State (previously mining companies owned mining rights). To be awarded a mining right, the mining company needs to satisfy a number of criteria, one of which is the submission of Social and Labour Plan (SLP) which addresses the socio-economic development projects the company will undertake and by when for mine workers and the host mining community not only during the life of the mine but also following mine closure. This “system” has been in working for 16 years. This research examines how that legislation has impacted mining communities, specifically in the West Wits region where gold mining towns were established as early as the discovery of gold. These towns experienced the heydays of gold up to the late 1980s. Today, however, the mines are a far cry from these glory days. It is in this context that the SLP as mechanism to mitigate years of a system that discriminated against most South Africans, including mining communities, is examined. The findings are a mixed bag of an amalgam of success and failure, and of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This report consists of two sections; the first is a narrative writing style presenting research in a long-form narrative. The second is the method document which sets out the academic research supporting this work, how the research was conducted and why.
Efficiency of South African local government: a comparative study of determinants using subjective satisfaction and conventional measures
(2018) Swanepoel, Jolandi
Efficiency analyses of local government structures are well researched and have provided important insights into local governance. Most of the existing literature uses observable and tangible output measures to calculate whether municipalities are efficient – this study broadens the literature by using residents’ subjective satisfaction levels with service delivery as the main output measure, using local municipal data from South Africa. This analysis uses Data Envelopment Analysis to establish how relatively efficient municipalities are to one another. In addition to this, this study assesses which municipal characteristics contribute to the efficiency of these municipalities using bootstrapped DEA and Tobit analysis. These relationships are also found for conventional models and a comparison is done to establish that using subjective satisfaction adds additional information that conventional models do not exhibit. This study shows that a number of municipal characteristics are correlated with efficient municipalities and the models using subjective satisfaction are correlated either with different characteristics, or in some cases, with the same characteristics, but in different ways. From this comparison, we found that efficiency with respect to satisfaction includes elements of quality of service provision and differing perceptions amongst people, while the conventional model only provided insight into access.
Implications of SPLUMA in areas under rural traditional leadership in Mpumalanga province : the case of Bushbuckridge Local Municipality and Dr JS Moroka Local Municipality
(2018) Sambo, Tinyiko Ntombifuthi
“Although the bantustan system was abolished prior to the democratic transition, a sizable body of academic scholarship has asserted that this geography has left a lasting imprint upon rural areas” (King and Mccusker, 2006:1) The South African colonial and apartheid planning laws influenced the landscape of rural areas through fostering segregation, under-development, restrictions to land ownership and the establishment of the permission to occupy land. In post-apartheid South Africa, the government has tried to make strides to repeal and reverse the imprint which colonial and apartheid legislations left on the country. Yet, the process has not been without challenges, with Chapters 5 and 6 of the Development Facilitation Act, Act No.67 of 1995 (DFA) being declared unconstitutional in 2010. The DFA also had loopholes as it did not repeal colonial and apartheid planning legislations. Thus, modernist planning approaches were retained and continued to influence segregated land use management after 1995. Furthermore, the DFA by and large focused on the management of urban areas and did not subject rural areas to formalised land use management; irrespective of these areas practicing certain forms of land use practices. In order to bridge the gap in planning law, the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act, Act No.16 of 2013 commonly known as SPLUMA in the planning fraternity was enacted and assented into operation on the 1st July 2015. The new planning law is tasked with the responsibility of ensuring spatial justice through the incremental upgrading of informal areas by means of encouraging the “progressive introduction of administration, management, engineering services and land tenure rights to areas that are established outside existing planning legislation, and may include any settlement or area under traditional tenure” (SPLUMA, 2013:8). In light of the above, the research report explores the implications of SPLUMA in areas under rural traditional leadership with focus on two case studies respectively Bushbuckridge Local Municipality and Dr JS Moroka Local Municipality in Mpumalanga Province. The research report aims to understand the manner in which land use management can be incrementally introduced to rural areas from a modernist and post-modernist theoretical framework. The research rationale does not seek to resolve existing challenges as the study scope is limited, but explores the application of planning theory and practice on land use management within rural areas. The framing theory is informed by social theoretical analysis from different perspectives of dealing with traditional leadership, since traditional authorities continue to be influenced by planning law directly and indirectly. The modernist theoretical framework draws insight from theories on functionalism, liberalism and Marxism. Whilst post-modernism a subjective framing theory is informed by constructivism. The research is based on a qualitative research method informed by five key pillars respectively: desktop research influenced by grey literature; case studies as a means to compare research findings; interviews and observation sessions as a means of drawing experiences and insight from planning professionals in the public and private sector; mapping and photography. The primary focus of the qualitative research was on the case studies, aided by research interviews with municipalities, provincial sector departments and organisations that have either written or undertaken incremental land use planning in one form or another. The research sample comprised of twelve interviewees of which traditional authorities were not part of the sample mainly due their contestation on the implementation of SPLUMA. The research findings illustrate that the implementation of SPLUMA expands the traditional planning scope from focusing on urban areas, but by also focusing on areas previously excluded by planning. More critically that the planning profession needs to undertake research on indigenous knowledge in order to merge traditional and modern planning approaches in policy, tools and systems. Thus, the responsibility of ensuring spatial justice within rural areas cannot be solely achieved through land use management, but also needs to be accompanied by other land administration matters such as land tenure. The concept on incremental land use management is considered to be broad and vaguely discussed in SPLUMA.Thus; indepth research should be undertaken by provincial and national government to unpack the concept of incrementalism and its‟ practical implementation in areas previously excluded from planning processes. Furthermore, municipalities require political support and should also consider establishing land use structures/committees that operate within the traditional authority offices, aided by educational programmes on spatial planning and land use management.
Protecting and promoting livelihoods of the excluded through the community work programme: a comparative case study of Munsieville and Bekkersdal
(2018) Masondo, Themba
The idea of the government acting as an Employer of Last Resort (ELR), commonly known as ‘public works’, has become a prominent feature of the ‘impulse for social protection’ in the global South. The dissertation focuses on a long-term ELR programme in South Africa called the Community Work Programme (CWP) – a distinctively and innovatively designed component of the orthodox Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP). Based on field research involving the triangulation of a survey questionnaire, in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic non-participant observation – this study adopts the comparative case study approach, imbued in the extended case method, to investigate the CWP’s potentialities in protecting and promoting livelihoods of the excluded in Munsieville and Bekkersdal—located in the West Rand region of the Gauteng Province, South Africa The central question posed in this dissertation is whether the CWP has other transformative potentialities beyond its ameliorative role. The dissertation advances three connected arguments. First, the dissertation argues that in addition to protecting livelihoods, the CWP possesses transformative potential in fostering development from below. The CWP participants in Munsieville tended to possess greater autonomous capabilities in adapting the CWP to respond to a myriad of local social challenges. Secondly, the dissertation argues that the mainstream theoretical approaches to livelihood promotion through the ELR tend to ignore cooperative development as a potential vector for promoting livelihoods of the excluded. In this respect, the dissertation presents the case of three nascent CWP-linked cooperatives in Munsieville to illustrate this argument. Lastly, the dissertation argues that the operationalisation of the Organisation Workshop (OW) methodology in Munsieville helps clarify the significant variance in the outcomes of the CWP in the two townships. Key words: community work programme, employer of last resort, organisation workshop, protecting livelihoods and promoting livelihoods.
Examining bureaucratic performance of South African local government: local municipalities in Limpopo province
(2016) Mamogale, Majuta Judas
In 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.

3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

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