Proches, Cecile Naomi.Singh, Nikita.Ngcobo, Emmanuel Sibusiso.2025-09-262025-09-2620232023https://hdl.handle.net/10413/23932Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Post-1994, the current South African government shifted its efforts and policies toward development to address the country’s economic and social needs, such as job creation, poverty eradication and promotion of equality. Despite the several reforms initiated by the government, poor service delivery remains a critical challenge facing South Africa, leading to several protests. Therefore, this research explored the perceptions towards poor service delivery in South African local governments to identify possible solutions. The study adopted interpretivism as the research philosophy to explore the participants’ perceptions towards service delivery in Umzumbe Local Municipality, located within the Ugu District Municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. A qualitative research method was used to gain an adequate understanding of the participant’s perceptions towards service delivery. The study involved fourteen participants (ward committee chairpersons and officials) from Umzumbe Local Municipality. The data was collected through focus group discussions. The collected data was transcribed and analysed using NVivo (Version 14). Thematic analysis was conducted to identify, organise and report both the main themes and sub-themes identified from the dataset. The findings revealed that the stakeholders’ (ward councillors, ward committee and municipal managers) roles in service delivery included ensuring accountability, managing resources, monitoring and evaluating municipal and service providers’ performance, meeting quality standards, supplying raw materials and observing service delivery protests. Also, the findings revealed that the community expected the municipality to provide accessible, affordable, sustainable, and quality services. Furthermore, the study identified the challenges that hampered service delivery in the municipality, including funding, capacity/staff shortages, lack of accountability, corruption, political deployment and political coalitions. Based on the findings, recommendations were proposed to increase the quality of service delivery in the municipality, including the appointment of competent staff, the introduction of a good customer-care system, close monitoring of municipal service delivery and performance, encouraging of teamwork, renewal of political will to fight corruption, employee training, effective communication, and avoidance of political interference. Overall, the findings provided in-depth knowledge of the stakeholders’ (i.e., ward councillors, ward committees and municipal senior managers) perceptions toward service delivery in the Umzumbe Local MunicipalityenCC0 1.0 Universalhttp://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/Accessibility.Service delivery.Accountability.Affordability.Service delivery protests.Thesis