South Africa is a constitutional state and thus the Constitution of the Republic is the supreme law of the country. All laws in South Africa should derive from this legal construct and be coherent with the constitutional framework. In South Africa, there are three major organs of state - Executive, Parliament and Judiciary. The Executive (cabinet) is responsible for articulating policies, coordinating them into laws and overseeing implementation thereof once the legislature has approved them. ...

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2021-Jun-20 18:00:11

Knowledge is not easily measured or audited. As such, organisations have to manage knowledge effectively to take full advantage of the skills, experience and expertise inherent in their systems and structures as well as the tacit knowledge that their employees possess. Knowledge management should not be confined to education and research institutions only. Government departments, legislatures, public entities and agencies deal with invaluable information and knowledge that needs to be systema ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:57:21

Access to reliable, timely information is integral to the effective and efficient functioning of the legislature in a democracy. Members of legislatures need information as they monitor and evaluate issues, develop policy options, predict consequences, and influence government decision-making.They need information in order to monitor the success of on-going programmes and/or to identify areas of weakness. The concept 'information' can be idefined as 'data that has been verified to ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:54:25

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, puts Money Bills in an exceptional position. Only the member of the executive responsible for finance may introduce a Money Bill; and specific acts must be passed to prescribe a procedure for the amendment of Money Bills. Progress in this regard has been slow. One reason is that legislators as well as technocrats doubt whether legislators have sufficient expertise to play a meaningful role in the legislation of public finance. This artic ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:50:22

This article argues two issues - first, that the transformation of knowledge and knowledge production is still pertinent and yet an unresolved issue. The reconstruction of knowledge management as a discourse and practice in the legislatures cannot be fulfilled without the transformation of the knowledge base. The legislatures, through their oversight and public participation, have an opportunity to engender a people-connected knowledge production and knowledge management regime, but are not d ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:47:36

do not recall any other provincial parliament in South Africa that has ventured into the subject of knowledge management as many parliamentarians or even managers tend to reduce knowledge management to a function of an Information Technology (IT) or Information Communication Technology (ICT) expert who is visualised as sitting in a quiet room working on a computer databank. This is, as subsequent discussion will reveal, a misnomer that is dangerous for any complex organisation such as parliam ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:44:47

Making reference to the dawn of the information age and the rise of a network society, Manuel Castells wrote: "bypassed by global networks of wealth, power, and information, the modern nation-state has lost much of its sovereignty. By trying to intervene strategically in the global scene, the state loses the capacity to represent its territorially rooted constituencies". This underscores the importance of knowledge and its implication in the running of the state. On 29 September 201 ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:41:35

This Special Issue of the Journal of Public Administration addresses a very important question, which, as Thabo Mbeki in his keynote address at the Knowledge Management Conference in Stellenbosch on 16 January 2012 explained, has always been a "fundamental issue immanent in all philosophical discourse, from ancient times, to date â?? what is knowledge?" This question is asked at the appropriate time in the evolution of the modern world. It is particularly important in contendi ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:38:01

Roy Padayachie : a tribute by Solly Pillay Professor Petrus A. Brynard : an obituary by Kabelo Moeti ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:34:37

The Swanepoel-De Beer team has a host of community development classics in their stable. To cite a few, in 1996 three training manuals were published (Training for development; Community-capacity-building and Communication for development) by International Thomson Publishing. This was followed in 1989 (until 1997) with different editions of an old favourite, Community development. Putting plans into action. ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:32:06

The South African media industry has since 1994 been expected to enjoy the freedom of reporting their news without hindrance by the state machinery. Such has been a dream wished by many news reporters of the past, most of who never lived to see the dream they wished for all their lives come to pass. However, the post-apartheid legislation governing the media industry and freedom of the press has drawn contradictory responses, depending on the standpoint of the observer in relation to the fair ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:29:35

The lack of clear national direction on how municipalities should go about planning and budgeting leads to a slow pace of basic service delivery. This situation has prompted the significant need for transformation of municipal planning and budgeting of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) programme, which would result in the improvement of basic service delivery. It is arguable that the National MIG unit must systematically establish a national strategy for basic services which will inclu ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:26:06

Public services are a prerequisite to the establishment of an enabling local development environment. Within such an environment, local people are able to make productive use of the opportunities for business partnerships, employment creation, income generation, economic output and tradable market economies, as well as gaining the capacity to resist threats. The lack of public services or their poor delivery, therefore, imposes severe limitations on the local development environment, thereby ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:23:33

South Africa's post-apartheid government entrusted the delivery of some services to its local sphere of governance, which is in close contact with society. Guided by the 1996 Constitution, local municipalities are required to render basic services and to address existing backlogs that have accumulated over years of separate development. For this reason, instruments such as the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) have been adopted to enhance the local municipality's delivery of such serv ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:20:43

Every public institution is created to provide public goods and services. For the provision of those goods and services, appropriate functions must be performed. This means that every public institution is identified and characterised, among other things, by its functional activities. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996 entrenches specific powers and functions applicable to all municipalities in the state. The same provision is made in Chapter 5 of the Local Government Mu ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:18:10

A municipality is an autonomous sphere of government, and the Constitution of South Africa (1996) provides that all spheres of government must exercise their powers and perform their functions in a manner that does not encroach on the geographical, functional or institutional integrity of government in another sphere. These constitutional provisions largely protect the autonomy of the municipal council from encroachment by any other sphere of government. Furthermore, the Constitution explicit ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:15:24

Financial institutions play an important role in the delivery of financial services, particularly credit. However, this role is hampered by uncertainty associated with asymmetric information, collateral constraints and high transaction costs. Faced with uncertainty about future prospects and the illiquid and irreversible nature of assets, poor households in South Africa become vulnerable to social and economic shocks. Using a sample of successful practices in different countries, this article ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:12:09

This article examines the link between financial accountability and service delivery. This has become apposite considering alarming ubiquitous service delivery protests in many provinces of the Republic of South Africa. As 2015 the target year for the millennium development goals draws closer a rethink of pragmatic principles that may propel desired service delivery is pertinent. The methodological approach is conceptually rooted in reviews that culminate in suggested policy measures toward a ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:06:43

From the advent of the democratic dispensation in South Africa in 1994 the transformation of the public sector has become one of the central priorities of government. The transformation of the public sector was popularised and institutionalised specifically to ensure that there is greater access to public services. To realise this government promulgated a number of pieces of legislation and adopted policies that have since served as a strong foundation for performance management in the South ...

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2021-Jun-20 17:01:43

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 states that every worker has the right to form and join a trade union participate in the activities and programmes of a trade union and to strike (Clause 23(2)).The Constitution further states that every trade union employer's organisation and employer has the right to engage in collective bargaining and everyone has the right peacefully and unarmed to assemble demonstrate picket and present petitions. It is further enacted ...

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2021-Jun-20 16:58:44

The introduction of the Batho Pele principles in 1997 as a policy and legislative framework that would revolutionise public service delivery in South Africa was seen as an instrument that would bring about efficiency and effectiveness in the provisioning of services. The eight principles are based on the ideals of the Constitution that seek to promote and maintain high standards of professional ethics and ensure that citizens are encouraged to participate in policy making and that the public ...

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2021-Jun-20 16:53:30

Despite government intervention, the number of service delivery protests in the country leaves much to be desired. This article argues that the ubuntu management approach can provide a solution to service delivery problems in South Africa. The article addresses the above statement through critical review and analysis of this debate, whereby the claims made in the debate on ubuntu in the post-apartheid era are assessed, with particular attention drawn to ubuntu's relevance and significance ...

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2021-Jun-20 16:50:06

In South Africa, the functioning of the different spheres of government is stipulated in the 1996 Constitution and consolidated through the notion of intergovernmental relations (IGR). More importantly, inter-governmental relations is aimed at promoting good and co-operative governance across national, provincial and local level government, including the smooth operations between and among existing public departments within the public sector. The purpose of the article is to examine the impor ...

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2021-Jun-20 16:47:24

The dawn of democracy precipitated the need for urgent government action to extend the delivery of services to the large majority of South Africans who were excluded through years of separate and apartheid capitalist development. Whereas the immediate post-1994 landscapes were clouded with diverse infrastructure amenities and facilities for the delivery of basic public services, most communities continue to have insurmountable challenges accessing water, electricity, sanitation and housing. P ...

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2021-Jun-20 16:44:42

The introduction of democracy in South Africa brought some hope to millions who were previously marginalised. The new government transformed the public service by developing and enacting policies that would ensure fairness and equity in the provision of services. Notwithstanding the progress, government's failure to adequately meet communities' needs has led to recent service delivery protests. The empirical evidence has revealed that communities are unhappy because of, among other th ...

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2021-Jun-20 16:41:26

In the speech delivered at the joint conference of the Tshwane University of Technology's (TUT) Public Management Department, Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the South African Association of Public Administration and Management - Gauteng Chapter (SAAPAM-G) on 'Service delivery in the changing political landscape in South Africa', Maserumule made a very important observation, which could be used to contextualise the theme of this Special Issue of the Journal of Public Ad ...

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2021-Jun-20 16:38:20