3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Municipal employees at the coalface of service delivery: Stories about electricity provision in Thokoza(2017) Mpapane, Gugu GloriaMunicipalities 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.Item Exploring the role of the local state in the production and maintenance of space through the delivery of basic services and community responses: the case of N12 highway park, Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipality(2018) Mohale, NthabisengThis dissertation rests on the argument that spatial production in informal settlements is shaped by state planning processes and the practice of service delivery. The South African urban landscape has been characterized by increasing amounts of informal settlements and the continuities of harsh state responses to these settlements in the form of evictions and relocations. There is a large body of literature on the spatial consequences of informal settlements which is usually centred on poor people-state relations and elaborated through two dynamics. Firstly, the retaliation of residents of informal communities towards the state in the form of Holston’s (1998) insurgent citizenship and protests. Secondly, looking at state responses to informality through policy and clientalist relations, this limiting the attention to the personal experiences of residents living in informality. This ethnographic study explores the theoretical concepts of spatial production and meaning of place for people living in informality. It builds on the work of Henri Lefebvre and Yi Fu Tuan who attribute value to everyday practices and experiences in producing space. These concepts are employed to investigate how the community of N12 Highway Park in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality has produced space and made sense of place at the backdrop of their relocation and the kind of basic services the community has received. The study has made use of participant observation, in-depth interviews and focus groups to collect data from community members and state representatives. It describes state responses to informality in communities, with focus placed on the N12 Highway Park informal settlement. It further explores the identities forged by community members in relation to their own perceptions of space and the use of shared state provided facilities; methods behind individual shack renovations; and the establishment of social spaces. The research concludes that service delivery shapes the community’s perceptions of the state and of their lived environment. Furthermore, perceptions of space have shaped spatial production and finding a sense of place through forms of attachment and detachment by community members. This spatial understanding suggests that space is at the centre of people-state relations. Space is therefore shaped by various actors and in the case study of the N12 Highway Park informal settlement: space production as a concept and practice serves as a tool to understand how informal communities give value to their lived environment.Item The nature of participatory democracy practices in Madibeng municipality(2017) Sephai, Moyagabo LouisaThis report sought to determine the nature of participatory democracy practices in Madibeng municipality. In order to achieve the intension of this study, two research questions were formulated (1) what is the nature of participatory democracy in Madibeng municipality? (2) To what extent does the implementation of participatory democracy mechanisms influence municipal policy decisions? A hypothesis was formulated in respect of the second question that: The implementation of participatory democracy mechanisms in Madibeng is limited to compliance with existing laws and regulations. Data was drawn from two strata’s (population samples), [ward councillors and community members] from Madibeng municipality. A probability simple random sampling was used to collect data from a total list of 36 ward councillors, whilst a non-probability convenient sampling was used to collect data from 27 community members. In respect of ward councillors, the study targeted 26 respondents and only achieved 52% response rate, whilst a total of 11 respondent was targeted and 27 responses were attained, indicating 145% response rate in respect of data collected from community members. The general finding in relation to the first question is that participatory democracy practice in Madibeng municipality is characterised by the implementation of five mechanisms; IDP, Ward committee structures, Mayoral imbizos, Policy public hearings and Petitioning system. A revelation was made that communities prefer to participate in IDP and ward committee structures meetings than the other three mechanisms reflected in the report. However, it remained unclear as to how effective and efficient is the exercising of the two preferred mechanisms. The general arguments found in various literature sources, that the practice of participatory democracy in South Africa’s local municipalities seem ineffective and often do not often yield positive results, was also confirmed by this study. This conclusion was based on the revelations made from the contradicting responses given by ward councilors and community members. In general, ward councilors considered the implementation of available participatory democracy practices in Madibeng as effective and strongly believed such practices informs the municipal Executive Council’s policy decisions to a large extent. On the other hand, community members seemed unsure or inadequately informed about the influence, their participation in policy decisions has on the overall service delivery by the municipality.Item Leadership and management in the collection of revenue in Tshwane(2017) Jumba, TabileThe challenge of not collecting enough revenue has its origin from the apartheid regime. Today municipalities still face the same challenges without any solution. Unemployment, poverty, inaccurate billing and illegal electricity connections all pose a challenge in the local government of South Africa. The issue is that the municipalities have been following the same pattern of doing things without solving any of the problems that affect its performance. Perhaps it’s time for change? Leadership and Management are two separate concepts but they complement each other. The research suggests that for any organization to succeed there must be equal contribution from leadership and management. Municipalities operate in a dynamic environment where demand of services is high. Municipality therefore cannot adapt the same processes and expect different results. There is a need for change and balancing leadership and management will initiate that change. The balance of leadership and management begins within the municipality, where management works hand-in-hand with leadership. The municipality is dependent on the municipal revenue it receives from taxpayers. The research reveals that the ratepayers are dissatisfied with the quality of service they receive. The municipality is not motivating the communities to continue paying. Public confidence in the municipality has declined. This calls for a need for leadership to motivate communities to continue paying. The main purpose of the study is to therefore investigate the impact of balancing leadership and management in City of Tshwane. The theoretical and empirical data was analyzed to answer the questions that this study asks. The results show that there is imbalance of leadership and management in City of Tshwane. Within the municipality management is over-managing and under-leading. This demotivates the employees at City of Tshwane and ultimately production will decrease. The research suggests that in order for production to increase and municipality to improve its performance, there needs to be leadership that goes beyond managerial position.Item New directions for urban policy-making in South African cities: the case of Joburg 2040(2017) Ebrahim, ZaydThe City of Johannesburg has produced five iterations of its City Development Strategy over the last 17 years with the latest CDS Joburg 2040, launched in 2011. This dissertation argues that the City of Joburg’s leading role in negotiating for developmental local government paved the way for long term planning at the local government sphere. CDSs prior to Joburg 2040 were developed as technical documents prioritising the needs of the municipal institution over citizens. Formulating Joburg 2040 epitomised a combination of economic and political conflicts taking place in the city. Joburg 2040 attempted to break the path dependence of urban growth and development by re-envisioning the imperative of urban transformation. Thus, Joburg 2040 attempted to emphasise a political imperative of an incoming leadership that was willing to listen and engage with citizens by coproducing a long term vision for the City. As participation has being ineffective in facilitating active involvement of the citizenry, participatory processes have served the needs of the municipality rather than citizens. Joburg 2040 was a politically championed process of developing a CDS that attempted to change that status quo.Item Intraparty politics and the local state: factionalism, patronage and power in Buffalo city metropolitan municipality(2016) Mukwedeya, Tatenda GodswillThis thesis focuses on the everyday operation of the African National Congress (ANC) as a dominant party in post-apartheid South Africa. It examines the scope of intraparty politics, particularly the trajectory of factionalism in ANC local structures after 1994. Despite the dominance of the ANC in South Africa’s political field, its more recent political trajectory most particularly since it became a party of government in 1994 is much less well understood (Butler and Southall 2015: 1). The party has traditionally been studied using a top-down perspective and with a focus on elite level exchanges in which dynamics at the national level are viewed to reverberate downwards whilst drawing on information from party leaders. The contribution made by this thesis is that it offers a detailed qualitative focus on the operation of ANC intraparty politics at a local level drawing on evidence from Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality. The overriding aim of this study which is informed by theoretical expositions on the dominant party approach and on patronage and clientelism, is to understand how factionalism in the ANC has evolved in the post-apartheid era. The thesis observes that the ANC’s political dominance after 1994 saw the gradual conflation of the party and state partly through two processes related the party’s transformative agenda. Firstly, the state itself had to be transformed to reflect the demographic composition of the country and for the most part the ANC deployed its cadres into the state who could tow the party line. Secondly, the party relied on the state as a vehicle for redistribution and the transformation of the broader political economy to achieve equity and growth. Hence black economic empowerment, state preferential procurement and other policies to uplift previously disadvantaged social groups became stepping stones for the emergent African middle and upper class. Whilst these processes transformed the state, they also fundamentally transformed the party itself as it became a site of accumulation. Intraparty contestation intensified over the limited opportunities for upward mobility provided by access to the state. The thesis argues that factionalism increasingly became characterised by patronage as competing groups within the party sought to ring-fence their political power and the opportunities for upward mobility provided by the state. This was also compounded by deepening neoliberalism whose consequences of unemployment, poverty and inequality especially at the local level led to increased dependence on the local state and the development of factionalism based on patronage politics. The thesis then explores how patronage operates in everyday practice at the local level. It shows how patron-client relationships are not merely the exchange of state resources for political support but rather they embody a field of power relations (Auyero 2001). Evidence from Buffalo City offers an important insight into how patronage exchanges are preceded by complex relationships of power that are established over time and through various enactments. The thesis demonstrates how patrons, brokers and clients exercise various forms of power every day that inform inclusion or exclusion into networks for distributing scarce state resources. It challenges views that regard factionalism and patronage as elite driven practices.