The study was undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of the interventions made by the Mogale City Plato mentorship programme to promote growth and sustainability of SMMEs. Though there have been interventions through the Plato mentorship programme to help develop SMMEs, there is still a high failure rate of small businesses in MCLM. The study will therefore evaluate if the Plato mentorship programme achieved its envisaged aim. A structured research instrument (questionnaire) was used to collect data through a self-administered survey. Questionnaires were distributed to the respondents by the researcher, and 100% of the questionnaires were returned for analysis. The results of the study showed that Mogale Plato mentorship programme adds value and advances small businesses and entrepreneurship. The study concluded that owners that took part in the MCLM Plato mentorship programme acknowledged that the programme was effective and increased business performance. The study showed that owners are faced with different challenges in running their businesses, which spoke volumes regarding the effectiveness of the mentorship programme. The findings also revealed that a majority of business owners benefited from the assistance received from MCLM Plato mentorship programme. The study recommends that MCLM sets up an office for mentoring individuals/groups in the municipality. This means that within MCLM, there should be a mentoring office and training twice a month that is aimed at helping business people know how to improve their businesses and manage challenges and take advantage of opportunities around them. The study also recommends that the municipality to create an incubating site for new owners/managers. The new owners/managers could share common services such as secretarial services, bookkeeping, and boardrooms / Business Management / M. Tech. (Business Administration)

The purpose of this study is to investigate and explore the challenges and problems experienced by the residents of Braamfischerville, related to the provision of housing, including the provision of services such as adequate water and electricity and roads in the study area. The research focused largely on how the challenges and problems related to housing affect the lives of the residents, socially and economically. It seems these houses were designed for people who are single and young, and will never grow and have families of their own. When considering the size of these houses, it becomes clear that they do not cater for larger families. The quality of the housing units in this area is of very poor standard. The mixed research methods are used to collect the primary data for this study. The use of both quantitative and qualitative methods are deemed most appropriate for this research study, as most researchers regard them as best methods in answering the research questions. Mixed approaches are also important in identifying issues, factors and relevant questions which can become the focus of a quantitative. The use of mixed methods has the assumption that both approaches can complement each other and help in avoiding unnecessary shortcomings. The findings revealed that the size of the RDP houses was not suitable to accommodate most of the residents in this area. The problem was caused by poor housing designs which resulted in very small, overcrowded RDP houses. Most of the RDP housing units are defective, mainly caused by the use of poor building materials and it was also found out that unemployment was a major challenge in Braamfischerville. The state has not managed to create jobs for the community of this area. It has become very difficult for these people to make improvements to and maintain their RDP houses. Provision of basic services such as water and electricity was found to be in order. The roads in Braamfischerville were found to be in very poor conditions. And that has negatively affected the socio-economic activities in the area. Finally, the land where this settlement has been established, was found to be inadequate. The area is situated very far from the places of employment and other facilities. Several houses were built on damp areas, flooding areas and on the wetlands. These houses are said to pose a serious danger to the occupants. / Geography / M. Sc. (Geography)

The assessment of internal controls has significant influence on the audit outcomes of public institutions, especially local municipalities. An effectively designed and implemented internal control enhances the ability to mitigate risks, and ultimately enables public institutions to achieve their predetermined objectives, to present reliable financial reporting and to comply with legislation and regulations. Without the internal controls, public institutions may experience challenges that may hinder them from achieving their performance objectives. The complementary role of the drivers of internal controls (leaders, managers and governance structures) is even more critical to strengthening internal controls. The study area at which the research activities were carried out was Roodepoort City Theatre at which three categories of documents (the general reports of the audit outcomes of the Gauteng Province local government, RCT’s annual reports and internal audit reports) were targeted for analysis using three document analysis templates. From the results of this research on the main points that are expressed in the three documents, the Auditor-General has played a significant role of assisting managers in the RCT to strengthen internal controls, but RCT’s internal controls still need to be strengthened through appropriate corrective measures by the drivers of internal controls. Therefore, it is pertinent to note that the changes in the composition of the drivers of internal controls of RCT had significant negative implications over internal controls. / Public Administration / M.P.A. (Public Administration)

In terms of the South African Government Structure, Local Government is entrusted with the service delivery mandate. Furthermore, Local Government, being the closest sphere of government to the people, is expected to enhance service delivery to the communities within its jurisdiction. Local Government has for the past four years, undergone numerous transformation processes, ranging from Local Authorities, to Transitional Local Councils and to Municipalities. Having mentioned that, Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, in particular, has recently acquired metropolitan status, which requires another transformation protocol. At the same time this automatically raises the bar on the service delivery expectations by the communities. In general, Local Government has been extensively supported by the National and Provincial Governments to deliver superior services to communities. This has happened through numerous pieces of legislations such as the Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998, the Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000, the Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003 and the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, act 108 of 1996. In 1997, the South African Government introduced a White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service. This was to re-emphasis on the performance enhancing role of both the political and administrative leadership in the implementation of service delivery mandates. The need was identified that communities require an assurance that their needs are taken care of by the leadership of the municipalities. It is therefore the role of leadership to ensure effective implementation of service delivery initiatives and to promote a culture of performance among the administrative officials of the municipality. The aim of this study is to critically investigate the role of leadership: A case study of Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM), with the view that BCMM is considered one of the high capacity municipalities within the Eastern Cape Province. During the literature review, it became evident that different people and scholars, dating back in the early 90’s, view leadership in different forms. In sourcing the information for this research, structured interviews were conducted with five Directors, five Executive Mayoral Councillors and five Ward Councillors. The interviews were an extensive consultation process which resulted in over 30 hours of engagement with research participants, with an average of 2 hours per structured interview. A four week period was allocated and effectively utilised for this exercise. The research provides recommendations for further research on other related components of the subject such as the intended role as compared to the current role fulfilled by both administrative and political leadership, and suggested solutions to the current problems in Municipalities, in order to ensure their sustainability within Local Government. The research findings identified the need for the leadership to take the leading role in service delivery initiatives in order to address the service delivery challenges in local government. Political leadership need to enhance the public participation process to ensure the community is on board regarding the progress of their respective projects and planning processes.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been widely deployed in developmental programs and this has lead to the creation of a new field – ICT for Development (ICT4D). Within the context of ICT4D, various e-services are being developed, including e-Commerce, e-Government, e-Health and e-Judiciary. ICT4D projects allow Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) in rural areas to increase sales and gain a market share in the global market. However, many of these ICT4D projects do not succeed, because they fail to bring enough financial value to SMMEs due to the form they currently have. An obvious example is e-Commerce, which should be a source of revenue for business organizations, but most often is not. This thesis presents the design and implementation of a rewarding and negotiation application for a shopping portal to improve the marketing of products for rural entrepreneurs. The shopping portal has been set up for the Dwesa community, a marginalized area in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The proposed system, called the Dwesa Rewarding Program (DRP) enables customers buying online to get points for some of the activities carried out on the shopping portal. It also allows customers to negotiate and make offers whilst purchasing and get rewarded for buying online. The novelty of the system is in its flexibility and adaptability. One achievement of this system is the establishment of negotiation rules which allows fairness in rewarding customers. This should in turn lead to increased sales on the e-Commerce platform in marginalized areas and subsequently increased effectiveness of ICT4D for socio-economic development

Public organisations account for their performance by making annual reports available to the public. While such increased emphasis on performance leads to a greater awareness of annual reports, it also raises the question of whether performance information is relevant and effective for accountability purposes. This qualitative study uses the Critical Realism approach to assess the contribution of performance reports in making municipalities more responsible; and their managers accountable for achieved and failed service delivery targets. Content and thematic analyses are applied to the collected data following case studies on the metropolitan cities of Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, and Tshwane in Gauteng, South Africa. The findings are that despite poor quality issues in reports, there is no link between performance and accountability. In other words, while performance reports have the capacity to correctly provide actual performance data, they are not used to hold public managers to account. Generally, politicians from underdeveloped countries are elected based on popularity rather than ability, hence they are reluctant to utilise performance reports, instead they tend to keep those public managers who look after their interest despite failures. Therefore, lack of consequences, complex governance systems, and passive citizenry, create a safe zone for both councillors and public managers to remain unaccountable. Further studies are recommended on empowering communities and accountability of councillors to citizens. / Business Management / M. Phil (Accounting Sciences)

Many scholars lament of poor infrastructure to manage and preserve digital records within the public sector in South Africa to support electronic government (egovernment). For example, in South Africa, the national archives’ repository and its subsidiary provincial archives do not have infrastructure to ingest digital records into archival custody. As a result, digital records are left to the creating agencies to manage and preserve. The problem is compounded by the fact that very few public sector organisations in South Africa have procured systems to manage digital records. Therefore, a question is how are digital records managed and stored in these organisations to support e-government? Do public organisations entrust their records to the cloud as an alternative storage given the fact that both physical and virtual storages are a problem? If they do, how do they ensure accessibility, governance, security and long-term preservation of records in the cloud? Utilising the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) Lifecycle Model as a guiding framework, this qualitative study sought to explore digital curation of records in the cloud to support e-government services in South Africa with the view to propose a framework that would guide the public sector to migrate records to the cloud storage. Semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data from the purposively selected Chief Information Officers in the national government departments that have implemented some of the electronic services such as the Department of Arts and Culture, Department of Home Affairs, Department of Higher Education and Training and the Department of Basic Education. Furthermore, the National Archives and Records Services of South Africa was also chosen as it is charged with the statutory regulatory role of records management in governmental bodies. So is the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), a public sector ICT company established in 1999 to consolidate and coordinate the state’s information technology resources in order to achieve cost savings through scale, increase delivery capabilities and enhance interoperability. Interview data were augmented through document analysis of legislation and policies pertaining to data storage. Data were analysed thematically and interpreted in accordance with the objectives of the study. The key finding suggests that although public servants informally and unconsciously put some records in the clouds, government departments in South Africa are sceptical to entrust their records to the cloud due to a number of reasons, such as lack of policy and legislative framework, lack of trust to the cloud storage, jurisdiction, legal implications, privacy, ownership and security risks. This study recommends that given the evolution of technology, the government should regulate cloud storage through policy and legislative promulgation, as well as developing a government-owned cloud managed through SITA in order for all government departments to use it. This study suggests a framework to migrate paperbased records to cloud storage that is controlled by the government. / Information Science / D.Lit. et Phil. (Information Science)

The study investigated the possibility of developing a monitoring and evaluation tool to capacitate the South African Department of Home Affairs towards the sustainability of its mobile unit project. As South Africa has a history of gross discrepancies in the appropriation of services by the citizenry, a fleet of 117 mobile trucks was deployed as part of the 2004 Turnaround Strategy. The chosen structural-functionalist theoretical vantage point informed a quantitative baseline survey in which the views of thirty eight respondents in six provinces and across various ranks were gauged. The majority expressed positive views about the sustainability of the mobile units beyond project phase. They expressed confidence in the goals, relevance and realistic nature of the mobile units. In the SWOT analysis, the respondents expressed more strengths and opportunities than weaknesses and threats. These findings form the baseline for the development of the intended M&E framework. / Sociology / M.A. (Sociology)

The purpose of the study was to explore and describe leadership at Matlala District Hospital in Limpopo, a province of South Africa. The study was critical for a better understanding of leadership styles adopted in different situations (hospital, district or province) at Matlala District Hospital in the Sekhukhune district. The main objectives of the study were described in chapter 1 on leadership styles (transformational and transactional), to determine how best to investigate leadership styles at Matlala District Hospital, to determine what the current leadership style at Matlala District Hospital is and to propose the most appropriate leadership style for Matlala District Hospital. A mixed-methods approach was used with an exploratory and descriptive design. In terms of the qualitative methodology, purposive sampling was used as the managers were selected on their knowledge of the issues under investigation. Firstly, an interview schedule was developed and used to collect data at Matlala District Hospital. The sample size was 82. Interviews were conducted with 12 members of the executive committee who were regarded as senior managers of the hospital. Secondly, the researcher distributed the questionnaires to participants of the hospital that met the inclusion criteria. Seventy participants completed questionnaires, which were collected upon completion. A 100% response rate was reached. Thematic analysis was used to assess the qualitative data. With regard to quantitative data analysis, descriptive, frequency tables and charts and inferential statistics were used. According to the results, those managers who felt that resources had be provided felt strongly that leadership at the hospital should be improved. Accordingly, guidelines for improving leadership at Matlala District Hospital have to be developed to ensure that mitigating factors are in place for the improvement of the situation at the hospital. / Public Administration and Management / M. P. A. (Public Administration)

D. Tech. (Business, Faculty of Management Sciences), Vaal University of Technology / Organisational performance in the public sector has emerged as a critical topic in the post-1994 era in South Africa. This could ostensibly be attributed to the inability of the majority of most public organisations in the country to deliver a satisfactory standard of service to the public. An intense controversy has also emerged the world over on the selection of performance measures that are appropriate for use in public organisations. This debate is actuated by the existence of a multiplicity of performance measurement indices as well as frameworks that can be applied to manage performance in organisations. The existence of these multiple measurement mechanisms tends to confound the entire process of managing organisational performance. Another unresolved controversy focuses on the extent to which various organisational resources impact on organisational performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between organisational performance and three organisational resources; specifically, the human factor, organisational systems and organisational processes. A quantitative design was adopted in which a survey questionnaire was administered to 272 managers and employees of a South African National Government Department. Respondents were selected using a blend of purposive sampling and convenience sampling approaches. Data were analysed using the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 20.0). Reliabilities were measured using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the human factors, organisational systems and organisational processes. Spearman’s correlation and multiple linear regression analyses were used to investigate the relationship between organisational performance and the sub-elements under each of the three organisational resources. The impacts of each of the three factors on organisational performance were compared using the mean-score ranking technique. Performance of the National Government Department was measured using the four performance yardsticks of the Balanced Scorecard; namely, customer satisfaction, financial performance, innovation and learning, and internal processes The findings of the study revealed that performance of the National Government Department was highest in four strategic areas; which are the promotion of good corporate ethics and values, client satisfaction, service quality and relations with external organisations. However, performance shortfalls were observed in four key areas; namely, organisational speed, attrition of manpower, overloading of employees and the overburdening of divisions with high workloads. Correlation analysis showed that there were positive relationships between organisational performance and the five human factor components; life satisfaction, quality of work life, ability utilisation, creativity and autonomy. Regression analysis indicated that there were significant and predictive relationships between organisational performance and three human factor elements; namely, quality of work life, ability utilisation and life satisfaction. Among the five human factor elements, life satisfaction exerted the greatest impact on organisational performance. Significant, positive and predictive associations were also found between organisational performance and three organisational system factors; quality, innovation and inter-organisational systems, with quality exerting the greatest impact on organisational performance. Significant, positive and predictive relationships were further observed between organisational performance and the four organisational process factors identified in the study; namely, organisational structure, organisational change, team processes and organisational change. Among these, team processes exerted the greatest influence on organisational performance. Overall, the human factor applied the greatest impact on organisational performance, followed by organisational processes with organisational systems having the least impact. Based on these findings, recommendations were made and implications for further studies were suggested. The findings of the study provide empirical confirmation of the effectiveness of the Balanced Scorecard as a tool for the measurement and management of performance in public sector organisations. Additionally, managers in different public organisations may enhance the performance of their organisations by optimising the sub-elements of the three organisational resources examined in this study.