This Research was undertaken to explore the challenges faced by the Eastern Cape Department of Local Government and Traditional Affairs Integrated Development Planning Unit to support municipalities to deliver credible Integrated Development Plans (IDPs), using Sunday’s River Valley Municipality as a case study. The legal obligation of the Department of Local Government is to support Municipalities to able them to perform their function and execute the duties allocated to them. This mandate originates from the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996. The Provincial Department of Local Government Integrated Development Unit is therefore obliged to support and guide municipalities in the development of IDPs by mobilizing and coordinating sector departments to participate in IDP processes, and to identify and allocate funds for projects. It is suggested that the DLGTA IDP Unit is not doing enough to support municipalities so as to deliver credible IDPs, hence the wide-spread violent service delivery protests. The study aimed at establishing whether there is a direct link between the efforts or not of DLGTA to help the municipality to develop a credible IDP and service delivery protests. The IDP may be credible, but the implementation may be flawed, or funding does not flow as expected, or the people on the ground may not understand that it may take years to deliver services. The study targeted senior managers of coordinating Departments, the Sunday’s River Valley Municipality (SRVM) and IDP Managers of SRVM and the Cacadu District Municipality (CDM). The study discovered that sector departments do not participate meaningfully in IDP processes mainly because: (1) SRVM does not extend invitations to all sector departments to attend IDP meetings; (2) There is no legal obligation to participate at local level; (3) There appears to be no commitment shown by senior managers of SRVM on IDP Processes. The DLGTA IDP Unit efforts to assist SRVM to deliver credible IDPs cannot be deemed successful, because the SRVM IDP continued to receive medium rating score for four years in succession. The DLGTA IDP Unit never paid attention to the issues cited above as the cause of stagnation of SRVM IDP. The DLGTA IDP Unit was not aware that the issues cited above were the cause for the poor SRVM IDP until the researcher brought it to their attention. It is therefore recommended that the culture of participation in the IDP processes by top management of both SRVM and DLGTA should be included in the performance contracts of top management officials. It is also recommended that the Inter Governmental Relations (IGR) Framework Act be reviewed to recognize IGR IDP Structures at local level such as IDP Representative Forums. The Act currently is silent on those structures at local level.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:8917 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Salman, Lindile Andrew |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | 76 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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