Assessment of different approaches to public service provision by the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality
Date
2008-12
Authors
Kwangwane, Thulani Thompson
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
Abstract
Since its establishment in the 19th century, the City of Johannesburg has
metamorphosed from a gold mining dormitory, a segregated town to a modern
metropolitan municipality that is one of the flagships of South African municipalities.
The formerly apartheid city had the legacy of fragmentation along racial lines based
on the disintegrated economic logic that systematically developed areas
disproportionately with black urban and peri-urban areas at the mercy of the white
urban areas1.
The advent of democracy in 1994 necessitated the city’s transformation into a
democratic, non-racial, developmental and mega municipality encompassing the
townships that were previously on its periphery. This required the national
government, as the superior government to formulate a regulatory framework for
local government to foster a developmental orientation, democracy, good
governance and accountability to the constituent inhabitants, provincial and national
government. Similar to all other municipalities country wide, it became paramount to
improve the provision of public services to cover the backlogs that were created by
the previous separate development policies of apartheid, but specific to
Johannesburg, to maintain its position as the biggest city by population, gross
domestic expenditure and economic growth.
In this study the researcher maintains the seven assumptions advanced by Caiden
(1982:14-6) about public administration i.e. that it is unavoidable, expects obedience,
has priority, has exceptional size, has political top management, poses difficulties in
performance measurement and that more is expected from it. Although public
management is not entirely unique in the above ways due to the phenomenon of
new public management (NPM), it is easy in the South African context to identify
public administration through the schedules in the Constitution (1996), the Public
Finance Management Act, 2002 (PFMA)2 and the formation structures of service
providing municipal entities.
Public policy analysis literature documents the paradigm shift in public management
from traditional bureaucratic structure to decentralisation, NPM and policy networks
amid the complexity theory in the public service endeavour to provide services. The
local legislature i.e. the municipal council is granted the authority over the sphere of
work of the municipality and therefore has the final say in the running of the
municipality to meet the expectations of the electorate. In this study the researcher
focuses on the analysis of the council’s choices of the above public management
structures or policies options in exercising its authority.
The council has to decide on functional activities i.e. municipal services from what
the Constitution (1996) allows and decide on the executive institutions that are
tasked to execute the functions within the budgetary allocations. Regarding research
methodology, annual reports, departmental reports, AG performance reports,
community complaints, council meeting minutes, provincial government reports,
national treasury reports and primary data from questionnaires and expert interviews
were consulted to answer the questions on the levels effectiveness and efficiency.
It was found that the provision of services has substantially improved as from the
beginning of the 21st century and the reason for this improvement is the public
service reforms that include NPM. The semi permanency of entities and utilities
could inhibit the provision of services in future. It was also found that the
weaknesses with the utilities and entities can well be covered by the implementation
of policy networks and the municipality finds it difficult to cope under exogenous
complexity challenges.
Description
Thesis (MPA (School of Public Management and Planning))--Stellenbosch University, 2008.
Keywords
Public policy -- South Africa, Service delivery -- South Africa -- Johannesburg, Local government -- South Africa -- Johannesburg, City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, Municipal services -- South Africa -- Johannesburg, Public administration -- South Africa -- Johannesburg, Dissertations -- Public management and planning, Theses -- Public management and planning