An evaluation of the back-to-basics programme to enhance municipal performance: the case of eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality.

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the Back-to-Basics Programme (B2BP) to enhance municipal performance in the case study of eThekwini Municipality. Since the advent of democracy, the local government system has been subject to several extensive reforms to ensure the municipalities are developmental-oriented. Hence, municipalities remain the cornerstone and the champions of service delivery for their citizenry. Against the backdrop, the National Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs 2014 introduced the B2BP to challenge the status quo at the municipality level. To ensure that municipalities serve communities better by focusing on the five (5) critical pillars, mainly public participation, infrastructure services, good governance, financial management, and building institutional capacity. This study adopted a qualitative method to generate information that answered the research questions. The interpretivism philosophy and the inductive approach with thematic analytical data interpretation informed this study. The study showed a significant improvement in how the municipality delivers services to its citizenry. The Back-to-Basics programme managed to improve the performance and functionality of the eThekwini Municipality through the implementation of the B2BP. However, some areas still had challenges, such as community participation, since many councillors failed to convene community meetings to report back to their communities. Furthermore, the program was confronted by numerous challenges, namely: - treating the B2BP as malicious compliance; the politicization of the B2BP; lack of political support; administrative instability due to high vacancy rates; poor political governance and political stability due to poor management of coalition. However, the B2BP has a great potential to change the status quo at the municipality level and, at the same time, enhance municipal performance and speed up service delivery. Therefore, in unleashing the potential of the B2BP, this study recommended that it is imperative to sustain the program through the reaffirmation of the commitment from both political and administrative authorities, ensuring de-politicization of the B2BP, strengthening monitoring and evaluation of the Back-to-Basics program to ensure accountability.