A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 31 March 2014 / This thesis was designed to examine the South African state’s capacity in the provision of basic services. State capacity is defined as the ability of the political system to enforce rules and deliver services. This reinforcement of control by the state over persons and resources within governments is critical for the performance of a political system. State capacity is therefore vital in ensuring that the provision of basic services is satisfactory and sustainable so as to optimise client satisfaction. Sedibeng is a District Municipality in one of the nine South African provinces called Gauteng Province. In spite of its rich and enduring political history and heavy industry, the situation in Sedibeng is partly attributable to the lack of adequate skills capacity with which to drive service delivery in the area. Within this context, this investigation sought to explore the role of state capacity in the provision of basic services to citizens at local government level by focusing on three local municipalities: Emfuleni, Midvaal and Lesedi. The research was underpinned by four inter-related and mutually reinforcing concepts positioned within the context of local government, namely skills capacity-building, leadership and governance, performance management and service delivery. This conceptual framework was based on the assumption that skills capacity-building is a catalyst or enabler in enhancing leadership, governance and the overall performance of organisations. A qualitative research approach through interviews, focus groups and document analysis was adopted. The researcher also used a case study design and its advantage is that, apart from it enabling understanding of the contextual issues impacting skills capacity-building, it also provided an ideal opportunity for the researcher to tap into the vast municipal experiences of Emfuleni, Midvaal and Lesedi. Of importance was the contribution of executive managers, senior managers and ward councillors regarding the state of skills capacity, the process followed to implement skills capacity and to learn whether skills capacity efforts have been used to improve employee performance in the provision of service. From the cross-case analysis involving the three municipalities, it emerged that despite the common difficulties encountered in organisational culture, resource for capacity-building initiatives, recruitment, selection and retention strategies and aligning skills capacity with the municipal strategic direction, the skills capacity-building initiatives were being implemented with some degree of success. The findings of the study concluded that although there had been significant progress in the implementation of skills capacity-building programmes in Emfuleni, Midvaal and Lesedi, it is not clear whether these training initiatives were producing the desired outputs across Sedibeng’s three municipalities as a step to provide and improve service delivery, as the scope, intensity and sustainability of these efforts varied markedly across the three local municipalities. The investigation also revealed that there was no evidence of monitoring and evaluation with intense feedback and review of the progress made through skills capacity-building. Further findings were the loss of skilled and highly experienced employees and managers, which undermined the organisational memory which is critical for strategic planning and effective service delivery in any institution. Even though the researcher had assumed that skills capacity-building was the most important ingredient in service delivery, the findings of the study revealed that training is not the only important variable needed to improve service delivery in local municipalities. Other crucial variables include the alignment of training with performance management, career management, reward systems, skills transfer, employee welfare and retention strategy for the protection and preservation of organisational memory. The study concludes that learning provides the intellectual basis which stimulates the impetus for effective and sustainable organisational memory, which in turn plays a key role in facilitating strategic planning, skills formation, staff motivation and retention to improve service delivery. This learning emphasises the important consideration to locate the problematic of organisational memory towards possible improvement of service delivery where skills capacity and other related factors play a major role. The contribution of this thesis to the body of knowledge is underpinned by the interface between learning and organisational memory as surfacing beyond skills capacity and as a necessity to enhance service delivery in municipalities. / MT2016

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public and Development Management 6 April 2017 / Since the inception of the democratic era in South Africa, citizen engagement has been a contentious issue for the local government sphere. In hardly a decade of democracy, cracks began to manifest on the newly-ushered system of public participation in the country, which saw communities embarking on various acts of protests around the country. Sadly, the ugly actions of dissatisfaction by the citizenry have been the order of the day since the early days of democracy, and some have been labelled it ‘a cry for attention by the disgruntled citizens’. As evidence of the disconnection in the local discourse, the aforesaid factor was regarded as a starting point in this research. As such, numbers of, and various reasons for the violent protests were examined thoroughly to establish the truth behind same. Public conversations and discussions, albeit informal, were held wherever possible, and all these pointed to the crisis of democracy in the local government. The research explored the notion of meaningful citizen engagement as a panacea for alleviating service delivery backlogs in the local government. To avoid challenges of the cause-effect scenario in analysing the processes, measurements of meaningful citizen engagement in the local government, named ‘condition’, were developed in this research. Focusing on five different categories of municipalities, fifteen officials and ten councillors were interviewed using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Further to that, two focus group discussions were held with ten community members and eight ward committee members each, using unstructured interview questions as focal themes. Apart from the interviews, four non-participant observations (IDP/Budget meetings) were conducted in order to get a sense of the current engagement processes. Furthermore, various public documents, both internal and external of the organisations, were analysed and utilised as part of the literature review. Data from the above sets of sources were explored and analysed using the basic interpretive qualitative design and phenomenological methods to make meaning of same. The research findings suggested that current mechanisms of engagement lacked depth, and are limited in terms of opening meaningful engagement spaces for the citizens. These findings pointed to the dire need to move away from the normal, passive public participation towards the engaging, deliberative notions wherein the citizens would have opportunities to influence the final outcomes of planning and budgeting. / MT2017

Submitted for the partial (25%) fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Management in the field of Public and Development Management in the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of Witwatersrand March 2016 / In the past few years, the contribution of the performance culture to the overall success of the organisation has prompted interest to explore the concept. The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine facets that are perceived to be contributing to the performance culture and how employees in the Mpumalanga Department of Culture DCSR perceive such facets as causal factors to the performance of the organisation. This study is a qualitative descriptive study and semi semi-structures interviews were conducted. Eight participants were requested to take part. Two participants are from the head office and two from each of the three districts. All interviews were conducted face to face. Interviews were recorded on tape, transcribed and assessed according to themes. The overall findings of this study were that there are negative perceptions of performance culture as assessed according to the London School of Economics Eight Dimensions Performance Culture Model. / MT 2018

Thesis (MPA.) --University of Limpopo, 2014 / Refer to the document

Thesis (MPA)--University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus), 2011 / Public participation in South Africa is provided for in various legislative prescripts, not limited to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996; White Paper on Local Government, 1998; Local Government: Municipal Structures Act, Act 117 of 1998; Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, Act 32 of 2000. Whereas all 283 municipalities in South Africa are required, as per these legislative prescripts, to conduct community participation, and whereas the same municipalities are pursuing the Integrated Development Planning Process (IDPP), community participation is not immune from problems and challenges. Pursuant to this, the research assessed public participation in the municipality under study, and found that these problems and challenges include among others, resource constraints; abuse of participatory structures by community elites and opportunists; marginalization of communities from decision-making; legitimacy of structures, through which the public participates. In addition, the following were identified: lack of creation of democratic culture of rights; lack of induction of the citizenry into democratic discourse and practice; lack of creation of mutual, reciprocal, and political tolerance; and a normative consensus as some key issues that will not auger well for a conducive public participatory environment in developmental planning processes. To be specific, the municipality under study has failed dismally in addressing certain areas of community participation in the municipality’s IDPP, such as, providing transport to members of the public to attend public participatory forums, utilization of ward committees as platforms for community participation, and ensuring representation of previously disadvantaged groups. vi Based on the critical issues raised and conclusions drawn, the study has therefore provided possible recommendations to resolve the problems and challenges of public participation in the municipality under study. Although the problems and challenges may not necessarily be generalized to other municipalities, the recommendations proffered, can also be populated to other municipalities, to add value in enhancing respective public participation, which is believed to consequently influence positively on service delivery

Thesis (MPA) --University of Limpopo, 2010 / The purpose of the research was to assess the role of Ba-Phalaborwa Local Municipality in addressing socio-economic mining challenges in Phalaborwa community of Limpopo Province. Semi – structured interviews were used for the officials of Ba-Phalaborwa Local Municipality, officials of Phalaborwa Mining Company, Foskor mine, Sasol Nitro, Department of Health and Social Department and Community members to collect data. Not much research has been conducted in this field especially in the Limpopo Province. From the literature review, it was detected that historically, South Africa has been primarily dependent on mineral and energy production and export. Mining sector is considered as the starting point for socio-economic development and beneficiation of the local communities in every country. South Africa is still a developing country with high rate of illiteracy, poverty and unemployment. This situation was also worsened by the policy of segregation during the past government with no opportunities for black people in the decision making house. Therefore the establishment of the three spheres of government by the constitution of the Republic of South Africa exposed the local sphere with new challenges of governance, especially in administration and management of the mines. It is evident that natural resources are the most important international commodities and thus play a major role in the socio-economic development of the communities. The study also aimed to assess the challenges and problems the local municipality faces in administration and management of the impact of the mines towards local communities. The effect of mining closures and employee retrenchment has an administrative effect on the local authority towards service delivery and social development.Thus, an interview was conducted with various interviewees to attain the goals of the study. The main patterns that resurface from the data collected exposes lack of monitoring and evaluation on projects by the municipality and the mines. iii Inefficiency and ineffectiveness of local government is compromised. Projects are agreed upon during stakeholders’ forum but implementation is difficult to attain. It would be advisable for the government, especially municipalities to take a lead in all socio-economic responsibilities of the community in conjunction with other key partners.

Thesis (MPA) --University of Limpopo, 2006 / The study conducted was based on the political and administrative interface in the Department of Education in Limpopo. This provincial Department has experienced challenges that originated from the offices of both the Executive Authority and the Accounting officer. This grey area in the Department had almost paralysed the whole system and it became imperative that it be studied in an attempt to find possible solutions. An extensive scientific body of knowledge from different scholars and their findings contributed to a new direction recommended for consideration. The findings presented have the capacity to hamstring any organisation. The findings reveal, among others, that: the complementary bureaucratic model is threatened by time, and its challenges are enormous; there is little knowledge among politicians and administrators regarding interface matters; administrators do not have a global picture regarding the result of unethical conduct; more research on interface matters needs to be done and results published for the public to be educated while politicians and administrators should be continuously trained; the fluidity of the interface needs continuous focus to avoid plunging the department into an untenable situation.

M. Tech. Business Administration / It has been noted that in developing countries, including South Africa, many projects on e-Government implementation have failed, while others have added very little value to the everyday lives of the citizenry. Broad reasons for the partial success or failure are related, inter alia, to people, policy, process or infrastructure. According to the management report of 2010 SITA (PTY) Ltd, there are many factors affecting the implementation of e-Government services. In terms of governance, there is a lack of both vision and consultation. In addition, there no is centralised budget for e-Government projects. The other challenge faced by SITA is that of skills inefficiency, as well as lack of technological upgrading that affects e-Government. In terms of process, employees are working in silos; there is no collaboration, and e-Government is a non-integrated service delivery process. The research purpose can be stated into the following objective: To identify governance, technology and financial factors that affect effective implementation of e-Government services at SITA (PTY) Ltd.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / Knowledge Management is an increasingly important driver in today's economy which functions mainly on knowledge. In view of that, knowledge is valuable asset for an organization to sustaining competitive advantage. The challenge faced by organization is the loss of critical organizational knowledge held by employees who are departing due to circumstances such as retirement, termination of contracts, resignation and transfer. This challenge is further aggravated by the lack of capturing and preserving knowledge before experienced employees depart from the organization. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of SharePoint in the public sector as a tool for Knowledge Preservation. The objectives of the study were; to determine the use of SharePoint in the public sector; the processes used to preserve the knowledge within the public sector; the benefits of using SharePoint for Knowledge Preservation; the challenges of using SharePoint for knowledge preserving and the factors for effective use of SharePoint as a tool for preserving knowledge.

D. Tech. Business Administration / Focuses on non-managerial administrative employees in the South African public service. The primary objectives of most public sector organisations are to provide a social benefit on a limited budget and to reduce costs. These objectives are in direct contrast to private sector organisations whose primary focus is on increasing profits.