PhD (Administration) / Department of Public and Development Administration / The focus of this study is on the role of the integrated development plan in community development. This study focuses on Limpopo province, but for the purpose of this study the research was conducted in Capricorn district municipality which is comprised of the following five (5) local municipalities: Blouberg, Aganang, Molemole, Polokwane and Lepelle-Nkumpi. The District Municipality is expected by the government and communities to play an active role towards community development as a central feature on local government development. The district municipality must be involved in the development of its communities in partnership with local municipalities, communities and other structures which can play an active role in community development. The integrated development plan is a process through which a municipality can establish a developmental plan for the short, medium and long term. In terms of the Local Government Municipal Structures Act No 117 of 1998 all municipalities have a responsibility and accountability to develop their communities which will have an impact on the daily lives of South Africans. In view of this mandate, Capricorn District Municipality must develop its vision, mission and objectives to meet community needs and improve the quality of life of all people. Developmental local government is local government committed to work with citizens and groups within the community in order to find sustainable ways to meet people’s social, economic and material needs. South Africa and in particular Capricorn District Municipality has a back-log of services that have not been provided to the previously disadvantaged communities. The integrated development plan is intended to redress all the past economic imbalances. Municipalities must focus their efforts and resources on community development especially on communities and groups which have been previously marginalised or excluded from economic and community development, such as women, disabled people, and very poor people by the apartheid government. Challenges of the integrated development plan which are experienced by the community are poor service delivery, poor implementation of the integrated development plan, corruption in district municipal projects and poor financial management. ii The researcher intends to follow a mixed method approach in which both qualitative and to a lesser degree quantitative approaches will be used. The reason for using a mixed method is because the study can be integrated in such a way that qualitative and quantitative methods will retain their originality. In this study, a qualitative approach is applicable because it allows openness to ideas, opinions, feelings, experiences and perceptions which may be expressed by research participants to the researcher. The researcher will for the purpose of this study be more interested on the qualitative study as it will be able to give results from the respondents. The researcher will use a Likert scale questionnaire in order to source out information regarding the role of the integrated development plan in community development. The researcher will use non-probability sampling and its subtype purposive sampling method in order to obtain results from participants. Although there are different types of sampling, the researcher intends to use non probability sampling which is by and large more successful than quota sampling. In this process, purposive sampling will

MAdmin / Department of Public and Development Administration / The study focusses on the challenges militating against community participation on the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) process in Thulamela Local Municipality (TLM) and to find strategies to be used to enhance community participation on Integrated Development Plan. The study is based on matters of community participation and IDP in order to find out how community participation in the municipalities can influence the planning process in an integrated manner. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (Act No. 108 of 1996) mandates local government to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government. IDP is the rightful platform to fulfil the aforementioned mandate in the local government. In this study, the researcher made use of a mixed research method where both qualitative and quantitative research methods are used. The research is qualitative in nature, but the quantitative method is also used in data interpretation, because data collected was based on the views and opinions of a large number of respondents and the analysis of results based on statistical significance. The researcher used the non-probability sampling and its subtype purposive sampling method to select the participants in this study. Questionnaires, interviews as well as literature were used to gather data in this research. Two types of data analysis were used when analysing the data. For data collected through interview, the researcher used thematic analysis (Narrative form) and for data collected through questionnaire, the researcher used International Business Machinery (IBM)- Statistical Product in Service Solutions (SPSS) Statistics V25. The researcher followed research ethics before conducting the study. The major findings of the study are: • The study found out that 38 (76%) of the respondents agreed that community members actively participate in IDP process. This is an indication that community members of Thulamela Local Municipality actively participate in IDP process. • The researcher found out that the majority of the respondents at 45 which constitutes 90% agreed that active community participation in IDP process plays an important role in the improvement of the basic service delivery. • The researcher found out that majority of the respondents at 35 which constitutes 70% of the respondents in the study agreed that community members are well informed about different types of participation in IDP process. • The researcher found out that majority of the respondents at 38 which constitutes 76% of the respondents in the study disagreed that there are enough resources to capacitate community members in order to participate actively in IDP process. v The main recommendations are: • The researcher recommends that community members should take a share of responsibility to actively participate in IDP process. Thus, the community members should consider it necessary that they strive to make community participation on IDP process fashionable. • The researcher recommends that there should be active community participation in IDP process because it plays an important role in the improvement of basic service delivery. Community participation in IDP process needs to be active for the basic service delivery to be improved. • The researcher recommends that community members should be well informed about different types of participation on IDP process. It is the responsibility of the municipality to inform community members about different types of community participation that they can use to participate in IDP process. • The researcher recommends that the municipality should make enough resources to capacitate community members in order to participate actively in IDP process available. The municipality should embark on a journey to raise funds either from other government sectors and/or private sectors. / NRF