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In South Africa, local government is responsible for administering various activities in municipalities, towns and cities. The effectiveness of governance at a local level is based on the delivery of essential services and the management of public affairs. Many municipalities in the country face several challenges, such as lack of administrative capacity, shortage of skills and lack of essential service delivery. These challenges have presented an opportunity to improve governance and delivery of services. In order to mitigate these challenges and maximise these opportunities, capacity building is a tool that can be used to develop the ability of local government to effectively deliver essential services by enhancing human capital. In this paper, the concept of local government is introduced in section 2; a background follows this on the state of local governments in South Africa and a summary of the challenges faced and opportunities available for local governments. In section 3, capacity building is introduced, and theoretical frameworks and models for capacity building are discussed. Section 4 of the essay consists of the discussion, which links section 3 and section 2. The identified theories are linked to background on local governance in South Africa, and the section demonstrates how capacity building can be used as an effective tool for local governance. Recommendations and conclusions are documented in section 5 of the essay. This section includes closing remarks on the discussions made and a summary of suggested critical points for consideration by local governments on how to proceed further by using capacity building to strengthen governance at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article's purpose is to analyse the political work of binaries used in both domestic and global migration governance responses with a particular focus on Zimbabwean "survival migration" at the Zimbabwe–South Africa border. This article finds that there is peculiar complementarity between South Africa's domestic migration governance framework and global migration governance frameworks aimed at a migration management approach. This article argues that this nice fit normalises the ostensibly clear distinction between migrants and refugees to deny protection to deserving asylum-seekers, which is productive in serving the political interests of the South African government. Without access to the appropriate papers and encountering a border refugee reception office that has developed de facto gatekeeping measures to prevent them from seeking asylum, as well as a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees field office that perceives them as economic migrants, many Zimbabweans living in South Africa occupy a liminal area of categorisation and protection. Hence, the possibilities of the global migration governance providing legitimacy to exclusionary practices at the national level in South Africa are immense. This points to the need for serious engagement with "survival migration" as a category of mobility in analysis, policy, law as well as practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of public space governance in delivering and managing qualitative public space in South African cities is inadequately documented from a municipal governance perspective. The article focuses on the governance of public space delivery and management in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality to unlock the best urban design practices concerning creating and sustaining high-quality public space as an essential element of urban infrastructure. The paper argues that the delivery and management of high-quality public spaces in South African cities are underpinned by several essential governance prerequisites that influence the significance, nature and role of public space within these cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) came into South African politics in 2013. Its inception came when most of the prominent leaders of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), including Julius Malema, Floyd Shivambu and Sindiso Magaqa, were expelled and suspended from the mother body - ANC. The EFF's emergence was aligned with a robust Sankarist and Marxist perspective from ideology to their parliamentary uniform. Furthermore, it assumed a left-wing of the working-class approach to political, governance and human rights issues, which has conspicuously been missing in postapartheid South African politics. From the public to the private sector, the party has radically sent a strong message in an unpopular fashion against labour exploitation, poor working conditions, racism and poor governance, among other social issues. Therefore, the primary purpose of this paper was to critically debate the EFF's approach to upholding the government accountable to its constitutional and developmental mandate. The article adopted a secondary research approach whereby the available literature related to the topic was reviewed and analysed. The paper concluded by arguing that, despite being disruptive in their approach, the EFF has unquestionably transformed politics and significantly influenced the course of governance in South Africa. Furthermore, it has noticeably enhanced accountability from the national to the local sphere of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate South Africa's implementation of educational Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which is led by Gauteng and the Western Cape Provinces, for participation in the global knowledge economy. Accordingly, the two provinces are in the forefront of educational ICT implementation aimed at preparing learners for participation in the global knowledge economy and national development. The paper uses Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to examine South Africa in comparison with fourteen developing countries to establish that its approach towards implementation of educational technology is not appropriate, sustainable nor effective for a developing country. Experiences of developing countries such as Vietnam, Zambia and Kenya, which are in the medium and low Human Development Index (HDI) categories, show that national technological cultures of people have not evolved into what is characterised as the 'Net Natives', which is one of the primary driving force for the adoption of blended pedagogies as an approach for implementing educational technology, to enhance participation in the global knowledge economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes analysing organisations as temporal phenomena composed of multiple temporalities. We argue that the likelihood that an organisation is well placed to function instrumentally with regard to its formal mandate is when what we will call 'operational time' is dominant in the temporal regime. We propose that organisations perform poorly when other temporalities come to dominate the temporal regime and/or when the temporal regime is chronically disrupted. We apply this framework to a study of Eskom, the state power company in South Africa. In Eskom, for example, we show how operational time was displaced by a political temporality that ultimately destabilised the temporal regime of the organisation as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing literature on the impact of Covid-19 on commercial and labour conditions at suppliers in apparel global value chains (GVCs). Yet much less is known about the implications for suppliers operating in regional value chains (RVCs) in the global South. In this article, we focus on Eswatini, which has grown to become the largest African manufacturer and exporter of apparel to the region. We draw on a combination of firm-level export data and interviews with stakeholders before and after the Covid-19 lockdown to shed light on the influence of private and public governance on suppliers' economic and social upgrading and downgrading. We point to the coexistence of two separate private governance structures: the first characterised by direct contracts between South African retailers and large manufacturers (direct suppliers); the second operating through indirect purchasing via intermediaries from relatively smaller producers (indirect suppliers). While direct suppliers enjoyed higher levels of economic and social upgrading than indirect suppliers before Covid-19, the pandemic reinforced this division, with severe price cuts for indirect suppliers. Furthermore, while retailers provided some direct suppliers with support throughout the crisis, this was not the case for indirect suppliers, who remain comparatively more vulnerable. In terms of public governance, the negative consequences of the lockdown on firms' income and workers' livelihoods have been compounded by the state's ineffective response. Our paper contributes to the research on RVCs in the global South, enhancing our understanding of how different governance structures and external shocks affect firms' and workers' upgrading and downgrading prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Separation of powers among the three branches of government, in most Constitutional democracies, is a design to avert the tyranny of a personalized rule. With specific roles, in relationships characterized by separated but shared powers, each branch of government is a watchdog against the other in case of any abuse. In the South African governing system, the Constitution guarantees functional power relationships among the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary branches of the government. Nevertheless, the dominant party system, in practice, has weakened the legislative oversight and accountability powers to tame the excesses of the executive, contrary to the intendments of the drafters of the Constitution. Judicial review of the various legislative and executive actions, however, has created precedents that seek to reassert legislative capacity to hold the executive accountable. At one time or the other, the judiciary had indicted the legislature and the executive of dereliction of duties. Using primary and secondary data from judicial pronouncements, constitutional provisions, and other public documents, with extant literature, respectively, this paper reviewed the environment that prompted the activist posture of the South African judiciary. An entrenched culture of party loyalty and the incapacity of the legislature to enforce accountability have bolstered the need for assertive judicial review in ensuring accountability. The failure of the legislature to exercise its oversight power has provided the platform for the judiciary to rise as a formidable accountability instrument. Judicial independence, guaranteed by The Constitution, would continue to sustain the tenets of South African representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sought to examine economic growth and governance in South Africa using GDP and selected governance indicators. The estimation techniques employed to achieve the research aim are; Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and granger-causality approaches. The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) unit root tests reveal that all variables are co-integrated at I(1), except for CC at I(2). The ARDL results ascertain the existence of a long run relationship among the variables, hence, the F-statistic is greater than the lower and upper critical bounds. The Granger-causality tests show a causal link between government effectiveness (GE) and gross domestic product (GDP). Corruption control (CC) was found to have a causal link with GE. In addition, the diagnostic tests confirm that the findings are reliable and valid. Accordingly, these findings are consistence with the widely shared notion that good governance is an impetus for economic growth and development. In essence, where poor governance thrives, it becomes difficult to practice good governance and to achieve prospects of economic growth. Therefore, appropriate governance mechanisms must be implemented in order to enhance sustainable good governance and economic growth. This calls for what this paper terms as a 'growth-enhancing' governance model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

District-level initiatives to improve maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH) generally do not take governance as their primary lens on health system strengthening. This paper is a case study of a district and sub-district governance mechanism, the Monitoring and Response Unit (MRU), which aimed to improve MNCH outcomes in two districts of South Africa. The MRU was introduced as a decision-making and accountability structure, and constituted of a "triangle" of managers, clinicians and information officers. An independent evaluation of the MRU initiative was conducted, three years after establishment, involving interviews with 89 district actors. Interviewees reported extensive changes in the scope, quality and organization of MNCH services, attributing these to the introduction of the MRU and enhanced support from district clinicians. We describe both the formal and informal aspects of the MRU as a governance mechanism, and then consider the pathways through which the MRU plausibly acted as a catalyst for change, using the institutional constructs of credible commitment, coordination and cooperation. In particular, the MRU promoted the formation of non-hierarchical collaborative networks; improved coordination between community, PHC and hospital services; and shaped collective sense-making in positive ways. We conclude that innovations in governance could add significant value to the district health system strengthening for improved MNCH. However, this requires a shift in focus from strengthening the front-line of service delivery, to change at the meso-level of sub-district and district decision-making; and from purely technical, data-driven to more holistic approaches that engage collective mindsets, widen participation in decision-making and nurture political leadership skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite South Africa's transition to democracy and policy vocabularies of co-governance, inclusivity and fairness in decision making that underpin both the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and national coastal policy – the White Paper on Sustainable Coastal Development – these principles remain elusive in the day-to-day governance of coastal risk and vulnerability. A basic quantitative investigation into the representation of civil society on government-led 'collaborative' forums and the application of an Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA) reveals that a state-centric mode of governance dominates. This mode of governance is being stimulated and reinforced by isolationistic provisions contained within South Africa's principal coastal legislation and policy instrument: the Integrated Coastal Management Act (No. 36 of 2014 as amended). This mode of governance is, in return, amplifying coastal risk and vulnerability in South Africa more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to critically examine and compare the structure, governance, and accountability's development and presentation by five non-profit organizations through their official websites for their stakeholders. These five non-profit organizations belong to South Africa, Ghana, and Zimbabwe are surveyed by applying content analysis as a case study and ranked between 1st to 5th position. We found that the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund that belongs to South Africa is at the top position in developing and presenting the best structure, governance, and accountability mechanism towards its stakeholders. The study presents theoretical contribution for non-profit organizations literature, with practical implications that the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund could be considered a model foundation by existing and prospective non-profit organizations. The findings of the study also open another useful debate that developing countries, such as Pakistan, Portugal, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan communities can use these models of non-profit organizations to overcome multiple community issues, like poverty, women and child harassment, clean water, and food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper aims to show that business intelligence (BI) is a key component of a sustainability-reporting framework for higher education institutions (HEIs).Design/methodology/approach Four questionnaires were administered to Registrars and managers at 21 South African HEIs and at selected international HEIs. The data analysis entailed both descriptive and inferential statistics.Findings The study confirmed that factors such as management buy-in, the availability of BI reports and the provision of reporting guidelines were positively related to effective strategic planning. The study shows that the use of BI by South African HEIs is still at a low maturity level.Research limitations/implications The case study used is the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The implications are relevant for all 26 HEIs in South Africa.Practical implications HEIs must invest in technological tools, including BI to provide information in understandable and usable formats for management and other relevant stakeholders.Social implications BI reporting can assist all stakeholders to obtain the relevant and required information relating to HEI operations and strategic management initiatives and activities.Originality/value The study concludes that HEIs ought to invest in BI technologies that can assist the sustainability reporting process to ensure stakeholder satisfaction and regulatory compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the extent to which South Africa utilises positive economic statecraft to promote human rights in the region – that is, the degree to which it mobilises its economic engagement to affect a desirable political outcome in its foreign engagements in Southern Africa. The country's reaction to crises in Zimbabwe and Swaziland over the past 20 years is a strong indicator of the limits of South Africa's statecraft in this regard. These engagements highlight the inevitable clash between the country's principled preference for ‘non-interference’ in the affairs of sovereign states and its constitutional mandate to respect and promote human rights. Despite eschewing the role of ‘regional hegemon’, there is an expectation that South Africa will play an integral role in securing regional stability. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that the country chooses to approach resolving regional challenges with a co-ordinated political and economic approach. This paper argues that, to be more effective in spreading a progressive regional agenda that encourages democracy, governance and human rights, South Africa needs to incorporate a stronger element of positive economic statecraft in its foreign policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the political economy of energy transition in South Africa. An economic model based around a powerful ‘minerals-energy complex’ that has previously been able to provide domestic and foreign capital with cheap and plentiful coal-generated electricity is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable. The paper analyses the struggle over competing energy visions, infrastructures and political agendas in order to generate insights into the governance and financing of clean energy transitions in South Africa. It provides both a rich empirical account of key policy developments aimed at enabling such a transition and provides reflections on how best to theorise the contested politics of energy transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main purpose of this paper was to establish the effectiveness of school management and governance structures in managing racial integration in public secondary schools. A qualitative study was conducted utilising Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Lewin's Change Management Theory. A sample of grade 10 learners and educators, which included members of the School Management Team (SMT), School Governing Body (SGB), which represented the four previous education departments, was purposefully selected. Semi-structured, individual interviews and focus group discussions, including a questionnaire with open-ended questions, were used to gather data. The findings, obtained through content analysis, indicate that SMTs and SGBs experience difficulty in managing and governing racial integration in public schools due to the following: policy and practice issues, poor interrelationships, need for capacity building of educators, and on-going racial conflict. Based on the findings, recommendations are made on how SMTs and SGBs could effectively manage racial integration in public secondary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: National community health worker (CHW) programmes are returning to favour as an integral part of primary health care systems, often on the back of pre-existing community based initiatives. There are significant challenges to the integration and support of such programmes, and they require coordination and stewardship at all levels of the health system. This paper explores the leadership and governance tasks of large-scale CHW programmes at sub-national level, through the case of national reforms to South Africa's community based sector, referred to as the Ward Based Outreach Team (WBOT) strategy. Methods: A cross case analysis of leadership and governance roles, drawing on three case studies of adoption and implementation of the WBOTs strategy at provincial level (Western Cape, North West and Gauteng) was conducted. The primary case studies mapped system components and assessed implementation processes and contexts. They involved teams of researchers and over 200 interviews with stakeholders from senior to frontline, document reviews and analyses of routine data. The secondary, cross case analysis specifically focused on the issues and challenges facing, and strategies adopted by provincial and district policy makers and managers, as they engaged with the new national mandate. From this key sub-national leadership and governance roles were formulated. Results: Four key roles are identified and discussed: 1. Negotiating a fit between national mandates and provincial and district histories and strategies of community based services 2. Defining new organisational and accountability relationships between CHWs, local health services, communities and NGOs 3. Revising and developing new aligned and integrated planning, human resource, financing and information systems 4. Leading change by building new collective visions, mobilising political, including budgetary, support and designing implementation strategies. Conclusions: This analysis, from real-life systems, adds to understanding of the processes involved in developing CHW programmes at scale, and specifically the negotiated and multilevel nature of leadership and governance in such programmes, spanning analytic, managerial, technical and political roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open data have the potential to improve the governance of universities as public institutions. In addition, open data are likely to increase the quality, efficacy and efficiency of the research and analysis of higher education systems by providing a shared empirical base for critical interrogation and reinterpretation. Drawing on research conducted by the Emerging Impacts of Open Data in Developing Countries project, and using an ecosystems approach, this research paper considers the supply, demand and use of open data as well as the roles of intermediaries in the governance of South African public higher education. It shows that government's higher education database is a closed and isolated data source in the data ecosystem; and that the open data that are made available by government is inaccessible and rarely used. In contrast, government data made available by data intermediaries in the ecosystem are being used by key stakeholders. Intermediaries are found to play several important roles in the ecosystem: (i) they increase the accessibility and utility of data; (ii) they may assume the role of a “keystone species” in a data ecosystem; and (iii) they have the potential to democratize the impacts and use of open data. The article concludes that despite poor data provision by government, the public university governance open data ecosystem has evolved because intermediaries in the ecosystem have reduced the viscosity of government data. Further increasing the fluidity of government open data will improve access and ensure the sustainability of open data supply in the ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

South Africa is a water-scarce country with increasing pressure on its water resources. Urgent interventions are needed to protect water security within this rapidly developing country. This paper reports on an interdisciplinary Water Security Colloquium, convened by the South African Young Academy of Science in 2014. A selected group of water professionals from academia, civil society and local government was brought together to discuss water security under three focus themes: 'public expectations and municipal obligations', 'water security and governance: challenges and advances', and 'water re-use: health and infrastructural considerations'. Participant perceptions were generated using a focus group methodology, combined with participatory data collection methods. Under each theme, inputs were categorised as 'challenges', 'gaps in knowledge', and 'solutions/recommendations' and these inputs were thereafter ranked in order of importance via a 'voting' process. Major challenges perceived included a lack of both skills and political will in government, a need to restore citizen trust in government intention and capability to deliver water-related services, and a failure to up-scale existing water re-use technology. Participants identified understanding of the process and implications of the Green and Blue Drop Programmes, knowledge transfer to the public, and the role of educators as major knowledge gaps. The top suggestions proposed included creating public awareness around and buy-in to initiatives to improve water security, accessible and user-friendly conversion of research results to implementation, and ensuring an active role for educators in creating awareness around water security. In view of the concerns identified, participants suggested as potential solutions: improving government and public understanding around water issues, incentivising water re-use and conservation, introducing rising block tariffs and improving human capacity development in the water sector. Developing the ecological infrastructure that protects both quantity and quality of water and building strong partnerships among all stakeholders were also recognised as key. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Similar to other countries in the region, South Africa is currently reorienting a loosely structured and highly diverse community care system that evolved around HIV and TB, into a formalized, comprehensive and integrated primary health care outreach programme, based on community health workers (CHWs). While the difficulties of establishing national CHW programmes are well described, the reshaping of disease specific and care oriented community services, based outside the formal health system, poses particular challenges. This paper is an in-depth case study of the challenges of implementing reforms to community based services (CBS) in one province of South Africa.Methods: A multi-method situation appraisal of CBS in the Western Cape Province was conducted over eight months in close collaboration with provincial stakeholders. The appraisal mapped the roles and service delivery, human resource, financing and governance arrangements of an extensive non-governmental organisation (NGO) contracted and CHW based service delivery infrastructure that emerged over 15-20 years in this province. It also gathered the perspectives of a wide range of actors - including communities, users, NGOs, PHC providers and managers - on the current state and future visions of CBS.Results: While there was wide support for new approaches to CBS, there are a number of challenges to achieving this. Although largely government funded, the community based delivery platform remains marginal to the formal public primary health care (PHC) and district health systems. CHW roles evolved from a system of home based care and are limited in scope. There is a high turnover of cadres, and support systems (supervision, monitoring, financing, training), coordination between CHWs, NGOs and PHC facilities, and sub-district capacity for planning and management of CBS are all poorly developed.Conclusions: Reorienting community based services that have their origins in care responses to HIV and TB presents an inter-related set of resource mobilisation, system design and governance challenges. These include not only formalising community based teams themselves, but also the forging of new roles, relationships and mind-sets within the primary health care system, and creating greater capacity for contracting and engaging a plural set of actors - government, NGO and community - at district and sub-district level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to a growing literature on the character of leadership, democracy and governance espoused by post-liberation governments, focusing on the African National Congress (ANC) as a political party. The article provides a brief overview of the two most common approaches to analysing the ANC's transition from a national liberation movement to a political party in an electoral democracy, the dominant party approach and what is termed the Fanonesque perspective. Neither is found to be wholly satisfactory, for largely the same reason – their tendency to present what is effectively a caricature of the ANC, by selectively highlighting features of its practices that conform to a pre-determined pathology, rather than acknowledging the ANC's complexity, variability and essentially contested nature. In developing an alternative approach, the paper draws from an earlier body of literature on single-party–dominant states in post-independent Africa that was empirically driven and comparative in nature. Such an approach can help us develop a more realistic, less sensationalist interpretation of ANC rule in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While South Africa has had a fairly consistent record of producing national-level strategic plans for human resources for health in the past 25 years, the country continues to face major problems of affordability, availability, distribution and management of its health workforce. There are several factors contributing to the state of health human resources in the country, but problems with governance stand out as one area requiring further research, analysis and critique. This paper presents a retrospective analysis of the historical patterns in national health human resources governance in South Africa, based on a desktop policy review spanning 25 years after democracy. The authors took a multi-pronged, iterative approach, reviewing policy documents alongside grey and published literature. This led to a timeline showing key legislation, relevant health system and human resource policies, interventions, reviews and evaluations from 1994 to 2018. The review identified three distinct periods that help to characterise the terrain of human resources for health governance over the concerned 25 years. Firstly, a foundational period, in which much of the constitutional and legislative groundwork was laid. Secondly, the HIV epidemic period, which presented a major disruption to the development of system wide governance interventions and improvements. Thirdly, the launch of National Health Insurance discussions and policy processes, which signalled a gradual return to a comprehensive systems focus in line with the founding principles of the first period. Using this periodisation, as well as a conceptual framework of health human resources governance functions based on international literature, the authors argue that South Africa has experienced both progress and challenges in human resources for health governance. This has affected the successful implementation of its policy and strategic planning over the past 25 years. Good governance for human resources for health requires capable stewardship, underpinned by an appropriate mix of technical and administrative skills and explicit political support. The review findings suggest that strengthening human resources for health governance roles, including fostering purposeful stewardship by the National Department of Health, may be key to shifting the terrain in the availability and performance of South Africa's health workforce going forwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]