This is the research report of the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI), compiled by Mosa Phadi and Joel Pearsons. PARI is a Johannesburg-based organisation that studies the effectiveness of state institutions in the delivery of services and infrastructure. ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:23:59

What happens when the local communities' patience runs out with what they perceive as unaccountable local authorities? To what extent do South Africa's public representatives seek to fulfil the public service mandates and leadership roles for which they were elected in regular five-yearly elections? How effective are current forms of public participation and consultation in addressing local communities' concerns on local democracy and governance issues? Twenty-three years into a d ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:21:39

This paper examines the role of the Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) as a driver for Local Economic Development (LED). In view of the fact that South Africa is still experiencing high levels of poverty and unemployment, LED is seen as a contemporary approach in the local government development process. In connection to this, Statistics South Africa has recently indicated that South Africa had an average unemployment rate of 25.31 percent from 2000 to 2016. This figure serves to qua ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:19:18

Waste not only poses a threat to the ecology but also to human life. One major way of addressing the threats posed by waste is through recycling, not only to create a clean environment, but also to provide socio-economic benefits for recyclers. While the South African government has made commitments to ensure sustainable waste management programmes, feasibility studies conducted in Alice indicate the town is currently facing environmental and health hazards as a result of the build-up of wast ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:17:04

Information Technology (IT) has become an integral function of doing business in the information age of today. Organisations, including local government, make use of IT to ensure that their business objectives are met. The effective use of IT, within the context of local government, can enhance the way in which service delivery is administered. However, the use of IT within local government presents a number of significant risks. Thus, it is of paramount importance to ensure that IT is govern ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:14:02

Leadership and performance management, although commonly assumed to be associated, are rarely studied together. This silo approach sadly deprives research of a deeper understanding of the link between the two constructs. It also results in the pursuance of a perspective of performance management that often does not factor in leadership influence. A challenge for contemporary researchers, therefore, is to isolate and determine the relative importance of leadership, for the successful implement ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:11:35

In this article, a normative model to improve the implementation of the local government budgetary reforms by municipalities in South Africa is presented and discussed. The model is based on empirical findings from a study that incorporated a mixed methods research methodology approach. It is proposed, by the authors, that municipalities could use this model to improve the manner in which their budgets are formulated and administered. It is envisaged that this model could also render an impro ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:09:13

The objective of this study was to explore how corporate reputation is managed at the Emfuleni Local Municipality in the Gauteng province of South Africa. This study employed a qualitative research approach and a case study design. Individual, in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with eight participants until the data was saturated. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The results show that the management of reputation is a multifaceted concept, which includes corpora ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:06:22

For many years now, there have been service delivery protests in the Fezile Dabi District Municipality, formerly known as the Northern Free State District Municipality. This generated ongoing bad publicity in the form of negative media reports, and it became increasingly clear that there was a problem regarding the reputation of the municipality. To help the municipality to manage its reputation, reliable and scientific information was needed about how the municipality was perceived by its st ...

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2021-Jun-25 08:03:53

Since the dawn of majority rule in 1994, South Africa has been witnessing a wave of community protests such as never seen before in this country. Some of these protests, including those in areas such as Malamulele (Limpopo Province) and Khutsong (Gauteng Province), have received a considerable amount of attention from scholars, media, opinion-makers and politicians, inter alia. Judging from the existing literature, the causes of community protests often range from poor service delivery to mun ...

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2021-Jun-25 07:59:12

Many municipalities in South Africa have experienced difficulties due to poor service delivery. In some instances, poor service delivery has led to violent protests, which has resulted in the destruction of property. The purpose of the study conducted was to investigate service delivery effectiveness in one local municipality in Limpopo in South Africa. The qualitative approach was adopted where a questionnaire with open-ended questions was used to collect data. Purposive sampling was used to ...

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2021-Jun-24 21:34:15

This article analyses the General Report on local government audit outcomes of the Eastern Cape Province 2013/2014 and reflects on the financial control and ethics as critical measures for enhancing sound municipal financial management, accountability and clean audits. With reports and details of material misstatements, unauthorised expenditure, fruitless, wasteful and irregular expenditure, including the material underspending of budgets and unspent government grants by municipalities and mu ...

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2021-Jun-24 21:27:30

As I indicated in my editorial of September 2016 titled, Descending from the Ivory Towers, an impressive body of literature on the science and praxis of governance is surging. This Edition adds to this. It is a compendium of perspectives on various aspects that are critically important to optimise the local sphere of government. ...

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2021-Jun-24 21:23:24