Assessing the National Development Plan’s Progress in Addressing Poverty and Unemployment in Fezile Dabi Municipality

Abstract

In 2012, the South African government displayed its ongoing dedication to tackle many issues such as poverty, inequality, and unemployment by formulating and approving the long-term National Development Plan, also known as NDP Vision 2030. The National Development Plan (NDP) delineates South Africa's development plan to achieve a developmental state that is capable of providing a wide range of possibilities and addressing social problems. The framework provides a comprehensive and strategic guide for making crucial policy decisions and taking action at all levels of government. It has been eleven years since the NDP 2030 Vision was adopted, which set specific goals for areas such as poverty and unemployment. The NDP acknowledges the importance of empowering local governments and promoting coordinated cooperation among local economic actors to achieve the established goals. Therefore, without efficiently empowered local governments, it becomes significantly difficult to implement the NDP agenda and achieve the predetermined goals for reducing unemployment and poverty from the perspective of a local developmental state. The aim of this study was to review the extent to which municipalities are enabled to reach their developmental mandate of poverty and unemployment reduction under the auspice of the NDP through a case study of Fezile Dabi District Municipality in the Free State province. The study employed survey and in-depth interview data to assess the effectiveness of the NDP in reducing poverty and unemployment. The survey data was gathered with the purpose of doing both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The findings indicate that FDDM has not achieved significant advancements in its pursuit of the 2030 targets, namely in terms of eradicating poverty and maintaining an unemployment rate between 6% and 20%. The failure can be attributed to inadequate performance in key areas such as the promotion of universal primary education, infrastructure improvement, and bureaucracy reduction. The underperformance in these domains can mostly be attributed to a scarcity of proficient workforce, inadequate involvement of key stakeholders, budgetary limitations, and sometimes inability to stimulate small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs). The study recommends that local municipalities need to be encouraged to set clear targets for social and economic challenges that are identified as priority areas in the NDP. These targets are to be set in line with provincial and national targets. This will ensure that achievement of targets at a lower level necessitates and implies the achievement of targets at higher levels. Targets also allow continuous monitoring and evaluation and where possible the avoidance of losing track.