This article focuses on a study that explored citizen participation in the planning and policy processes in Lesotho with specific reference to Qacha's Nek. Qacha's Nek is one of the districts classified as a remote mountain area of Lesotho and is characterised by a low population density, and in most cases, can be viewed as predominantly rural with a need to develop and focus on policy development and planning. In Lesotho, citizen participation has been encouraged by the different gov ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:31:43

The road for South African municipalities to achieve clean audits appears to be a difficult one. Apparently, it is said that municipalities will take 120 years to attain clean audits. It is argued in this article that a sound internal control environment (some call it control environment) as a sub-system of a control system in municipalities, is required and should be conceptually structured within the context of local government in order to form the basis for interventions. In order to achie ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:29:08

Legislation is an important element in ensuring accountability and transparency in the utilisation of public funds. However, as reflected in the State of the Public Service Report (2010 and published every five years), accountability is still a cause for concern and still needs greater attention as many departments still receive qualified, adverse or disclaimed audit opinions from the Auditor-General, pointing out serious financial mismanagement. This article explores the mechanisms available ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:26:35

Oversight has become an important and interesting field of study. Once referred to as a neglected stepchild (Rockman, 1984), oversight is positioned to be a key factor in strengthening democracy. International organisations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have placed emphasis on the relationship between oversight and democracy. Oversight plays a fundamental role in maintaining checks and balances between the legislative and executive sectors. Premised in the Const ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:24:01

The South African Parliament in a democratic government has to focus on discussions and the promulgation of legislative frameworks that must resolve societal challenges from an economic and social point of view. These important tasks take into consideration the political landscape and ideological factors that influence how it functions. Parliament is very important in the whole architectural structure of the South African Government on the basis that its functionality determines the directive ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:21:12

The Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act 3 (IRFA) of 2005 provides a framework for the national, provincial and local government spheres and all organs of state to facilitate coordination in the implementation of national policies and legislation, including the effective provision of services, and the achievement of strategic national priorities. As a result, numerous intergovernmental relations forums were established as required by the IRFA. However, the functionality of the intergover ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:18:18

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996 brought the unique element of cooperative government, which underpins intergovernmental relations. The principles of cooperative government and intergovernmental relations recognise the interdependence of the three spheres of government in South Africa, which are distinctive and interrelated, and place a duty on these spheres of government to respect each other's powers, functions and institutions and to inform each other of new pol ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:15:22

Over the past 20 years, South Africa has made important strides in building its intergovernmental fiscal relations, such as general budget and financial management reforms, budget preparation and budget implementation. The current legislative provisions and court decisions referred to in the article confirm the distinctiveness, interdependence, and interrelatedness of the various spheres of government and are also an indication that the national-provincial-local government nexus chain is stil ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:12:47

South Africa is facing a backlog with regard to housing provision in both rural and urban areas, even though, over the last two decades, the housing programme has produced large numbers of housing units, which have changed the country's landscape. This article is an ongoing effort to make sense of the continued increase in social protests around service delivery and access to free houses. It focuses on the role and importance of private sector players in housing development under the neo- ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:10:13

Twenty years into democracy, the South African government has demonstrated that it is a developmental state, with its policy frameworks that emphasise improving the quality of people's lives. In this process, the government has formulated various policy frameworks to enforce its developmental objectives. Thus, through the Department of Human Settlements, the government seeks to satisfy its developmental objectives by accelerating the delivery of human settlements and by using housing as a ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:07:51

This article assesses the evolution of the macro-economic policies of government in South Africa, covering the period of 1994 to 2014. The aim of this article is to examine how these policies, namely the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the New Growth Path and the National Development Plan (NDP), have impacted individual and national development. The article employs a qualitative approach precisely because it is descriptive ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:05:20

Education is one of the priority areas of the state. The Department of Education is mandated by the South African Constitution to provide quality education to all learners. As such, huge amounts of money have been spent on education, but the question is, are these public funds spent for a good cause or not; if yes, what impact have they made and if no, why not? The study was carried out following mixed research methods. The primary data was collected from the key informants using questionnair ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:02:45

A nexus between good governance and development exists. However, there is no universal consensus on what constitutes good governance, since its attributes are by no means universally agreed on, because cultural norms and values differ around the world. This has implications for how good governance might be measured and implies that methodologies or tools for measuring governance quality, that are based on Western values, might be inappropriate for measuring African governance. In the Post-Was ...

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2021-Jun-23 05:00:08

The nature and functioning of governments in the 21st century has evolved to consider additional measures that offer increased responsiveness towards citizens in the provisioning of service delivery. The daily functioning and implementation of programmes requires that public officials, especially at senior management levels, need not only guard against the wastage of diminishing public resources, but maintain efficient and effective public services. This matter of diminishing ...

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2021-Jun-23 04:57:14