Community development: evaluating governance sphere and service delivery challenges: the case study of Inkosi Langalibalele local municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Abstract

Since the advent of democracy in South Africa, municipal governance and service delivery has been marred with many challenges. These include but are not limited to high levels of corruption, performance, lack of transparency, poor financial management, lack of competent leadership and poor service delivery. All these challenges reflect poor governance across most local governments, often resulting in service delivery protests. This study sought to reflect and evaluate governance and service delivery sphere challenges in the Inkosi Langalibalele Municipality as one of the municipalities placed under “provincial intervention” as per Section 139 of the Constitution of South Africa of 1996. Since 2017, Inkosi Langalibalele Municipality has been under “provincial intervention” to address failures in delivering essential services, poor functioning of oversight structures, lack of consequence management, and inability to demonstrate sound financial management. Though there is a consistent exploration of different challenges and loopholes existing in municipal governance across studies, there remains a dearth of the researcher that engaged in critical evaluation of the impact of “provincial intervention” in addressing governance and service delivery challenges in South Africa. Therefore, this study aimed to provide a detailed evaluation of governance and service delivery challenges in a municipality under “provincial intervention”. To adequately address this, a contextual study approach had to be conducted, and the following questions were crucial in guiding the study: (i)What is the relationship between good governance and service delivery in Inkosi Langalibalele Municipality?;(ii) What are governance and service delivery approaches utilized by the Municipality?; (iii) What are existing governance and service delivery challenges in the Municipality? and; (iv) What are strategies to improve governance and service delivery in the Municipality? Using a qualitative exploratory research design, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted with key informants to understand the governance and service delivery challenges and identify measures that can be used to address these challenges. The study's findings revealed that there have not been any significant improvements in the governance infrastructures with the provincial intervention in place. On the contrary, service delivery remains very slow, and public participation processes have been grossly affected. Improving standards of local governments while detached from the constitutional values of public participation is a crucial challenge that needs attention if “provincial interventions” are to be successfully effective in practice.