"People are the lifeblood of any organisation and the agents of reform and renewal in public administration. The knowledge, skills, values and attitudes of public servants are at the heart of state reform". If this statement is true, then the challenge facing the South African government, and other developmental states, in terms of building the human resources capacity of the state, is enormous. In particular, we need to harness and develop the capabilities of the public sector to m ...

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2021-Jun-12 10:37:00

Since 1994 there has been a strong public policy focus on drastically increasing both the quality and quantity of social service delivery. Although significant progress has been made in many areas, there is a growing sense of frustration within the public sector that too little has been achieved. This has resulted in a wide range of initiatives - all focused on improving "service delivery". Unfortunately, few have enjoyed widespread or sustainable success. This lack of success sugge ...

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2021-Jun-12 10:30:13

Municipalities in South African have become focus points for service delivery, economic development, tourism and infrastructure development, safety and security, job creation, poverty eradication or alleviation and environmental sustainability. These are new devolved constitutional obligations, which must be implemented if a developmental role is to be achieved. An integrated development plan is the cutting-edge of a developmental municipality in which priorities and key competencies are iden ...

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2021-Jun-12 10:26:50

Throughout the developing world, cities experience an increasing influx of migrants in search of opportunities. This inward migration poses particular challenges for the municipalities concerned in that socio-economic development and ecological considerations are central to integrated development planning to achieve sustainability in urban development (and re-development). In the case of the Strollers Overnight Accommodation and Business Facility in Durban, which forms part of the eThekwini M ...

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2021-Jun-12 10:22:29

Human resource development is an important function contributing to a country's growth potential. During periods of transformation, organizations are in particular need of an adequate supply of leaders and managers. In order to ensure the constant supply of qualified and experienced individuals with leadership and management skills, organizations design their own development interventions to suit their needs. Creating a sustainable pool of qualified and experienced managers will facilitat ...

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2021-Jun-12 10:17:02

The discussion on leadership and management presented in this paper highlight the complementary and contradictory associations of competencies associated with these terms. Contradictory, the concepts are dichotomized to point out their distinctiveness in relation to activities, skills and applications. The concept leadership management has been coined to signify their complementary relationships and a mixture of respective competencies like salads within a dish, but in an organizational conte ...

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2021-Jun-12 10:12:39

The roles of political office bearers and appointed officials have been studied and described since Woodrow Wilson's famous article was published in 1887. The relationship between a minister and the managerial cadre of a department is probably one of the most complex issues related to the public sector operations. The paper describes the effects of the political structures in a democratic country with special reference to South Africa. Thereafter attention is devoted to the influence of p ...

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2021-Jun-12 10:07:08

Most governmental organisations run the risk of delivering inferior services due to their inherent monopolistic characteristics. The dangers are hidden in the lack of competition that breeds complacency and serves as impediments to delivering quality services to the public. Even those organisations that deliver superior service must take care to not lose their momentum. The drive that brought them to leadership positions in the public sector may not remain to sustain or enhance continuous imp ...

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2021-Jun-12 10:01:47

The state has changed in context, role and influence from the Westphalian model of 1648 that featured centralised authority and territorial confines sanctioned by the theory of sovereignty. This theory purports the supremacy of the government of the state over people, resources and all formations within state borders. Globalisation coupled with the demise of statist models and the proliferation of democratic systems and greater decentralisation, among other developments, has reconfigured the ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:50:56

The private sector has, on many occasions as part of their social responsibility drive, entered into partnerships with government institutions to do "good". Very few institutions look at the work that they are doing under the guise of a partnership as anything other than a form of marketing. Government, both provincial and local, is used to this kind of approach and do not expect anything else than a form of handout. When an institution comes with a partnership model where there is ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:46:51

The concept of developmental local government is at the core of local government transformation in South Africa and places implicit responsibilities on local authorities. In terms of prescriptions contained in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, legal and moral obligations are imposed on municipalities to function on a participatory basis with the intention that the broader community should have a more significant role to play in local government decision-making. Municipal ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:42:51

The concept of an employee assistance programme (EAP) as a workplace intervention is relatively new in the public sector. Originally it was established to assist employees with socio-economic problems. The stresses of the modern working environment, the many changes in the South African working situation and especially the advent of HIV / AIDS has changed the profile of the EAP in the public sector drastically. The EAP signifies a socially responsibility acceptance by the employer to assist t ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:34:28

This paper firstly examines : service delivery performance by the South African public service? Secondly, it proposes a transformative African leadership and governance approach to improve public service delivery in South Africa. To this end the author conducted an intensive research study in 2004, to analyse service delivery performance in selected South African public service departments. The findings of the research suggests that although the South African public service has been successfu ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:29:32

Regional integration, which encompasses efforts by a group of countries to promote their political, economic, social and cultural integration and development, has been pursued in Africa since the early 1960s. However, there is near unanimous agreement that regionalization has failed in Africa to produce effective frameworks within which poverty and underdevelopment can be mitigated. While the resolution of a number of issues, such as, political instability and weak infrastructures is imperati ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:24:36

South Africa has entered into a number of agreements with its neighboring states, which are members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) with a view to establish transfrontier parks. These agreements are also aimed at effective cross-border natural resources management. The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park was the first Park to be established. Subsequent to the Kgalagadi, on 9 December 2002, the three heads of states (South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe) signed an international ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:19:27

Governments are looking for alternative ways of delivering high quality services to as many citizens as possible over a short period as possible and yet maintain viable systems in the medium and long-term. Traditionally, government programmes and services were for the most part delivered through government departmental organisations. However, this is no longer the case as governments are increasingly entering into partnerships with more independent agencies to deliver public goods and service ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:15:41

During the previous dispensation in South Africa, black South Africans were viewed as temporary sojourners in urban areas and therefore the rendering of municipal services was perceptibly free (being incorporated into the nominal rental payable for the government-owned houses people rented). Both infra-structural and social development in the black townships was a central government function and funds provided for in budget allocations from Parliament. Today that situation no longer exists as ...

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2021-Jun-12 09:05:31

Research in Public Administration requires a pragmatic approach in an attempt to address epistemological, methodological and discipline-oriented problems. This paper argues for a philosophy of Public Administration to provide basic values needed if we are to address some of these problems, and meet the challenges of organizational renewal, change and technology. Philosophy (of common sense) is treated in this paper as a practical issue, both in the training and performance of public managers. ...

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2021-Jun-12 08:59:52

Public-Private Partnerships are seen as mechanisms that offer the promise to strengthen government's policy implementation capacity and its ability to deliver services efficiently, effectively, economically and equitably (4Es) to communities. HIV / AIDS-related problems add to the complexities associated with building partnerships and networks as it demands a shift towards horizontal and broader based policy issues that show no respect to boundaries or do not fit neatly into areas of juri ...

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2021-Jun-12 08:53:02

A guiding principle for the South African public service is that of service to people. In terms of Section 11.1 of the White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service meeting basic needs through service delivery should be addressed by providing the necessary infrastructural support to open up previously suppressed economic and human potential in both urban and rural areas. This in turn will lead to community empowerment and increased outputs in all the sectors of the economy. The Bath ...

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2021-Jun-12 08:03:04

Disclosure of wrongdoing, which manifests itself in the form of impropriety, graft and maladministration, take individuals of exceptional courage and resolve. In the quest for a just and accountable system of governance, documented case studies indicate that those who publicly disclose acts of wrongdoing face the prospects of reprisals and victimization of unprecedented proportions of getting both their careers tarnished, and family lives destroyed. Governments in response have recently becom ...

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2021-Jun-12 07:58:26

The customer care or service approach is designed to improve relationships with and ways of handling customers, that is to realign organisational strategies and processes towards satisfying customers' needs. The best customer care programmes go further than a simple concentration on the (external) customer and recognise the fact that, especially in large organisations, intermediate departments or sections involved in the supply of a service are themselves customers of one another. There i ...

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2021-Jun-12 07:47:40

SAAPAM is an academic, independent, professional and non-profit association established in 1999 and registered with the Department of Social Development (Registration number 039-162NPO). At the time, the founders of the Association placed their faith in the future potential of the academics and practitioners of Public Administration and Management and the South African Public Service, sharing a common belief and vision of a high performing and leading edge, people-valued government in the pro ...

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2021-Jun-12 07:41:57