This study examines the relationship, or lack thereof, between cultural policy and development at the local government sphere in South Africa and, ascertains the extent to which the City of Tswane Metropolitan Municipality (CTMM), as the focus of the case study, involves culture in its development framework. The research is informed by an observation from internationa best- practices that local government, as a sphere of governance closect to the people, is one of the best platforms on which the centrality of culture in the development matrix of any country is located and upheld. The research was arranged in three sections or phases, namely: exploration, discovery and the consolidation. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil.

The aim of this quantitative study was to develop and validate a model to measure the organisational effectiveness of a metropolitan municipality in South Africa. The literature review phase explored the concept of organisational effectiveness and the assessment thereof in both the Public and Private Sectors. The literature review indicated that there is a clear distinction between business performance (operational and financial performance) and the larger concept of organisational effectiveness, and also that the measurement of organisational effectiveness in the Public Sector differed from the measurement thereof in the Private Sector. The literature review also indicated that measures of Public Sector effectiveness could not be directly applied to measure the effectiveness of Private Sector organisations. From the literature review a proposed theoretical model for measuring the organisational effectiveness of a metropolitan municipality in South Africa was proposed. This proposed model included organisational and behavioural variables contained in traditional approaches to organisational effectiveness, variables that were identified in previous organisational effectiveness studies, as well as variables contained in existing assessment models of organisational effectiveness. This model was then validated during the empirical phase by conducting a survey of an existing metropolitan municipality in South Africa (n = 6514) and exposing the results of the survey to Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The confirmatory factor analysis conducted as part of SEM subsequently identified three main and 10 secondary statistically significant organisational and behavioural variables that could be used to measure the effectiveness of a metropolitan municipality in South Africa. The three main variables identified were (1) Healthy Systems, (2) Goal Achievement and (3) Service Delivery, while the 10 secondary variables identified were (1) Diversity, (2) Training & Development, (3) Rewards & Recognition, (4) Management Practices, (5) Internal Functioning, (6) Work Environment, (7) Interpersonal Relations, (8) Workforce Equity, (9) Customer Satisfaction and (10) Vision & Mission. It was thus recommended that metropolitan municipalities in South Africa could use this validated model as an assessment framework to measure their current organisational effectiveness, to identify aspects which need to be rectified to improve effectiveness, and to compare and benchmark their municipality in order to learn from other metropolitan municipalities to improve their effectiveness. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / D. Admin. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

The focus of this study is on understanding the multiple and interacting factors that hinder or enable municipal planned climate change adaptation, here called barriers and enablers respectively, and their implications for community based adaptation. To do this I developed a conceptual framework of barriers to and enablers of planned climate change adaptation, which informed a systematic literature review of barriers to planned community based adaptation in developing countries. In this framework barriers were grouped into resource, social and physical barriers. I then conducted empirical case study analysis using qualitative research methods in four South African municipalities to understand what barriers and enablers manifested in these contexts. In light of the reflexive nature of my methodology, my framework was adjusted based on my empirical findings, where contextual barriers were found to better represent the empirical results and subsumed physical barriers. I found my framework useful for analysis, but in the empirical cases, barriers and enablers overlaid and interacted so significantly that in reality it was often difficult to separate them. A key finding was that enablers tended to be more about the way things are done, as opposed to direct opposites of barriers. Comparison of barriers and enablers across the case studies revealed a number of key themes. Municipalities struggle to implement climate change adaptation and community based adaptation within contexts of significant social, economic and ecological challenges. These contextual barriers, when combined with certain cognitive barriers, lead to reactive responses. Existing municipal systems and structures make it difficult to enable climate change adaptation, which is inherently cross‐sectoral and messy, and especially community based adaptation that is bottom‐up and participatory. Lack of locally applicable knowledge, funding and human resources were found to be significant resource barriers, and were often underlain by social barriers relating to perceptions, norms, discourses and governance challenges. Enablers of engaged officials, operating within enabling organisational environments and drawing on partnerships and networks, were able to overcome or circumvent these barriers. When these enablers coincided with windows of opportunity that increased the prioritisation of climate change within the municipality, projects with ancillary benefits were often implemented. Analysis of the barriers and enablers identified in the literature and case studies, informed discussion on whether municipalities are able to implement community based adaptation as defined in the literature, as well as the development of recommendations for how municipal planned climate change adaptation and community based adaptation can be further understood and enabled in the future. These recommendations for practice and research include: (a) To acknowledge and understand the conceptual framings of municipal climate change work, as these framings inform the climate change agenda that is pursued, and hence what municipal climate change adaptation work is done and how it was done. (b) The need for further research into the social barriers that influence the vital enablers of engaged officials, enabling organisational environments, and partnerships and networks. (c) To learn from pilot community‐level interventions that have been implemented by municipalities, as well as from other disciplines and municipalities. (d) To develop top‐down/bottom‐up approaches to enable municipal planned climate change adaptation and community based adaptation, that benefits from high level support and guidance, as well as local level flexibility and learning‐by‐doing. (e) To develop viable mechanisms for municipalities to better engage with the communities they serve.

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Public Management in the Faculty of Business at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2013 / This study investigated the role of the informal business sector in local economic development with reference to Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM) as one of the possible solutions to deal with socio-economic challenges in the region. This study described the state of the informal business sector, the contributions thereof in local economic development, and the level of responsiveness from local authorities in Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality. A survey questionnaire was administered to informal business actors in BCMM and semi-structured interviews were conducted with BCMM managers in the Business Development and Local Economic Development Directorates who were purposively selected because of the positions that they hold in the municipality. This study found that the informal business sector is underdeveloped in BCMM, and is imbued with development challenges, namely; support services such as infrastructure (designated municipal trading stalls) and access to financial support and the lack of strategy/policy dedicated to the prioritisation of the needs of the informal business sector. The informal business sector in BCMM is dominated by small and micro businesses. The municipality acknowledges the contributions of the informal business sector in local economic development from a job creation (selfemployment) and poverty alleviation perspective. However, the business environment of the informal business actors requires urgent development and support to stimulate and encourage the gains of this sector and the role that it plays on local economic development.

Thesis (MTech (Public Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Cape Town has an extremely unequal society characterized by increased unemployment, and a lack of adequate and affordable service delivery for communities living on the Cape Flats including townships. Is the service delivery demand too big or doesn’t the City of Cape Town municipality have the capacity to cater for all communities within the municipal boundaries? Or is the municipal staff not performing as they are supposed to perform? The Integrated Development Plan can be described as the pivot upon which all development activities in a municipality revolve. The research project investigates the performance of the City of Cape Town Municipality’s IDP. The study further investigates the powers and duties given to people elected and appointed to implement this new South African local government vision of a free and prosperous South Africa for all to enjoy under the African sun. The most important tool in the municipality’s hands is the IDP. The IDP of a municipality is a map that a specific municipality wants to travel in that five-year period while they are in control of that municipality. The vehicle that drives human beings into a specific direction must be strong and able to succeed in pursuing the municipal vision.

Thesis (MTech (Public Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / The eradication of poverty is an important priority for the South African government. The Constitution makes provision for vulnerable households. Local government has to formulate policies to address the needs of the poor. Municipalities formulated and adopted Indigent Policies to ensure that poor households have access to essential basic services. This led the researcher to identify what challenges are related to the financial sustainability of the Indigent Policy in its implementation process in the City of Cape Town for the period 2003 to 2016. This study followed a qualitative research approach. Data was collected by conducting in-depth interviews. The selected participants had access to information relevant to the policy. The researcher respected the rights of participants by allowing them the freedom to withdraw at any stage of the research study, ensuring confidentiality, ensuring anonymity, ensuring fair treatment and protecting the participants from any harm and discomfort throughout the research study. The researcher holds that all the respondents are confident that the Indigent Policy is sustainable. However, should it become too expensive for the City of Cape Town, it could result in the budget being reprioritised. It is recommended that the City of Cape Town develops a beneficiary system for qualifying indigents to allow them to receive additional benefits from other facilities such as libraries, swimming pools and the MyCiTi bus services.

Territoire d’industrie et d’immigration, Saint-Denis est un des hauts-lieux de la "banlieue rouge" de Paris. Après 1945, la pénurie de logements que connaît la France y est aggravée par la médiocrité du parc immobilier ancien et par une croissance démographique, qui se traduit par le développement de bidonvilles d’immigrants. La municipalité communiste fait de la construction de logements un axe central de sa politique sociale, constituant ainsi l’un des plus importants offices d’habitation à loyer modéré (HLM) de banlieue parisienne, gestionnaire d’environ 9 000 logements à la fin des années 1970. Les enjeux posés par la gestion d’un tel organisme et les mutations sociales induites s’observent dans les archives locales. Parmi ces questions, celle du logement des immigrants étrangers ou (post)coloniaux prend une importance croissante à partir des années 1960. Encore inférieure à 10 % en 1965, la proportion des ménages d’immigrants logés par l’office municipal s’élève à au moins un quart des locataires dans les années 1980. La reconnaissance de leur appartenance locale, si ce n’est d’une citoyenneté urbaine, est en jeu et paraît fortement dépendante des contraintes économiques, sociales et institutionnelles pesant sur la gestion d’un office HLM en banlieue ouvrière. La logique d’une hospitalité municipale graduelle et conditionnée est d’abord mise en difficulté par la dissymétrie entre offre et demande de logements sociaux. À partir de la fin des années 1960, lors d’importantes opérations d’aménagement urbain, la question est vue sous l’angle du peuplement immigré et de sa répartition dans l’agglomération. Une logique de « seuil de tolérance » aux immigrants à la source de discriminations prend alors forme. Elle est relative dans la mesure où la part des immigrants logés continue de progresser. Néanmoins, l’importante crise budgétaire qui touche l’office HLM de Saint-Denis à partir 1974, combinée à une désindustrialisation avancée, contribue à une crispation durable sur la question ethno-raciale. / Territory of industry and immigration, Saint-Denis is one of the symbolic places of the "banlieue rouge" (red suburbs) of Paris. After 1945, the housing shortage happening in France is worsened in Saint-Denis by the mediocrity of the old housing stock and by a population growth which leads to the spreading of immigrants slums. The communist municipality makes housing construction a central axis of its social policy, therefore becoming one of the greatest HLM (social housing) municipal agencies of the parisian suburbs, managing about 9 000 apartments at the end of the 1970s. Managing such an agency and the induced social mutations pose challenges that can be observed in the local archives. Among those, the question of the housing of foreign or (post)colonial immigrants is taking on increasing importance from the 1960s. Still below 10 % in 1965, the proportion of foreign households housed by the municipal agency amounts to at least a quarter of the tenants in the 1980s. The acknowledgment of their local membership, if not even of their urban citizenship, is at stake and appears to be highly dependant on economic, social and institutionnal constraints which weigh on the managment of a HLM agency in a working class suburb. The logic of a gradual and conditionned municipal hospitality is first of all put in a difficult position by the dissymmetry between supply and demand on social housing. From the end of the 1960s, during significant urban planning operations, the question is seen from the perspective of the immigrant settlement and its repartition in the agglomeration. A logic of "tolerance threshold" to the immigrants which is the origin of discriminations then begins to take place. It is relative since the share of housed immigrants is still progressing. Nevertheless, the important budget crisis which is striking the HLM municipal agency of Saint-Denis from 1974, combined with an advanced desindustrialisation, contributes to a sustaining contortion on the ethno-racial question.

The research was conducted to address the low service levels offered by Buffalo City Municipality. In the past Council has received numerous customer complaints to this effect, via correspondence and verbal communication to council delegates and officials. The executive head of the municipality has requested a turn around of this appalling situation. The aim of this research was to gain insight and meaning to the existing problem in an attempt to correct it. This was accomplished by identifying the problem, and then by introducing sub-problems to the main problem for practical and relevant solutions. The research was extended to cover the East London and King Williams Town Local Councils. This was undertaken through personal interviews with the Buffalo City Municipality staff, management, Salga officials and non-profit organisations that were involved in community research on service levels and delivery in local government for this region. Literature was reviewed on methods of improving customer relations in both the public and private sectors. Local and international best practices were analysed to benchmark against successful practices worldwide. Information relevant to Buffalo City’s scenario has been presented in this study, from the identification of effective customer relation practices, followed by the roles and skills required by management. In addition to the personal interviews conducted, a two-page questionnaire was compiled based on integrated information from literature reviewed on best practices, and staff and management input. The questionnaire formed part of the empirical study. Results of the study were critically analysed and revealed three main areas of urgent importance. These are: effective communication, the establishment of a customer care policy and procedures together with training and development. These are effectively achievable after the placement of staff. The study was concluded with a practical and applicable detailed programme of intervention.

The influence of local economic development strategic leaders on how Integrated Development Plans (IDP) are developed is critical to gain insights into strategic planning directed towards economically developing municipalities. Concisely, the aim of this qualitative study was to gain a multiple understanding of how LED strategic leaders, namely managers of the LED directorate and sub-directorates at Makana local municipality influenced the IDP formulation. The fact that these LED strategic leaders, ‘make consequential or strategic decisions’ suggests that their decisions have an influence on the IDP formulation. Thus, the key research question in this study was: How do LED strategic leaders at Makana local municipality influence the formulation of the IDP at this municipality? This qualitative research used purposive sampling of incidents upheld by LED Strategic leaders. A total of ten in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted with four LED strategic leaders regarding incidents of their perceived influence on the formulation of the Integrated Development Plan at Makana. The interviews were in-depth in order to gain a rich understanding of their perspectives of reality. As the number of LED strategic leaders was already very small, all the four leaders at Makana participated in this study. Interview data was transcribed and analyzed using open coding and constant comparison. Member check was conducted to enhance confirmability of the findings of this study. Findings indicate that LED strategic leaders perceived their influence on the formulation of the IDP Makana municipality in four varied ways. Predominantly, LED strategic leaders commonly perceived that they had influence in setting evidence-driven direction, and searching for fitness of activities and issues with LED strategy. Thereafter, the other ways in which these LED strategic leaders perceived how they influenced the IDP formulation involve the facilitation of clarity and local relevance of LED mandates, and finally the integration of multiple economic voices of stakeholders. This demonstrates that LED strategic leaders at Makana emphasize proactively managing strategy process rather than content in terms of identifying key opportunities and major economic drivers in the local milieu. Instead, they perceived their influence as characterized by enhancing compliance with bringing the process of municipal strategy formulation closer to stakeholders. Implications of these findings are highlighted.

This study presents results to be contributed to the field of Environmental Education. It is a new arena for qualifications development and implementation in the South African Education and Training system. The study is located in the context of a joint research programme focusing on understanding issues of articulation and learning pathways development for sustainable development, established between the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) in partnership with Rhodes University, Environmental Learning Research Centre (ELRC). Phase 1 of the SAQA/ELRC research showed that researching workplace learning requires an understanding of learning pathways, if it is to be meaningful. It is for this reason that this research in phase 2 focuses specifically on learning pathways in the context of a local municipality in Makana. Using a case study research approach and qualitative data, this study investigated learning pathways for three occupational categories at different levels in the Makana Municipality: 1) key managerial occupations; 2) key supervisory occupations; and 3) key workers occupations relevant to sustainable development and how they are shaped and experienced. It also identified system and structural factors influencing articulation and access issues relevant to progress in learning pathways relevant to these key occupations. The study was designed using a case study research. Primarily, qualitative research techniques were employed to generate data, including observations, interviews and document analysis. The study used inductive, abductive and retroductive modes of inference to interpret and analyse data, using critical realist and systems perspectives. The findings on worker learning pathways show that there is a discrepancy between the Training Policy and the Environmental Training and Education Strategy of Makana Municipality. The issue of complexity in learning pathways and social structural factors such as inequality emerged as factors that strongly influenced learning pathways for workers. Learning pathways for workers involved in sustainable development practices hardly existed or simply did not exist. Interesting transitions associated with learning pathways such as from home, to work or no schooling in the case of the workers, showed a pattern of emergence. These showed that learning pathways are not accessible and equally available to everyone as can often erroneously be assumed. The findings on supervisor learning pathways show diverse complexities as well as related issues, when compared to the worker’s learning pathways. Issues such as overlapping of study and work emerge as influential to supervisor learning pathways. Lack of support is, however, an influencing factor, but in a different context compared to the workers, and mainly focuses on lack of bursaries, highlighting training policy issues. This aspect was found to also relate to lack of proper resources in order to enable them to learn and do their job better; an issue raised by the workers too. This challenge of lack of support in various forms posed a barrier to learning pathways. Findings related to the manager’s learning pathways show a noticeable gap between the workers, supervisors and managers. The manager’s generally have higher education qualifications related to sustainable development, and in certain cases managers have had exposure to international training related to sustainable development. Factors such as ample opportunities for learning, mentoring, association on professional bodies, and decision making powers influenced the manager’s learning pathways. It was also notable that while managers receive occupationally directed training, it is not necessarily sustainable development related. In theory, the results highlighted a need to understand systems as a whole and how their integration is important in influencing learning pathways. There were also underlying mechanisms and structures identified which needed to be unravelled and understood as these were found to influence learning pathways in this study. The study highlighted critical insights in understanding how learning pathways in a local municipality context (the case of Makana Municipality) are constructed by both systems and structural factors in the workplace, while also identifying ways in which agency of those engaged in learning for sustainable development in workplaces is enabled and /or constrained by such factors. It also showed the persistence of deep-seated inequalities of opportunity, especially for workers, to access and participate in sustainable development learning pathways.