Call for responsive local government

What South Africa urgently needs is a multi-democratic council

- XOLISILE NGUMBELA

DEMOCRACY is essential to ever’ aspect of the state, especially with south African Local Government elections around the corner.

Local government is the most visible branch of our government in each of our local communities and is typically the first place people turn to when they need assistance or advice.

For any developmental local government to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, it needs to have been creating new methods of operation that depart from obsolete conventional service delivery models. It should view the local government as an outcome facilitator with democratic accountability, well-governed, ethically led and, therefore, the right to make or approve sound democratic decisions.

This level of government aims to improve service delivery, boosts production legitimacy and performance, and is typically more noticeable and conspicuous than higher levels.

Studies of local administration are not carried out in a vacuum, but rather in conjunction with broader discussions of social, political, and economic issues.

Additionally, management through objectives based on performance indicators led to the neglect of other socially significant dimensions in favour of concentrating on certain characteristics of effectiveness (emphasis by indicators).

It is questionable if it is even possible to create a satisfactory set of quantifiable performance indicators for certain services, particularly social ones like healthcare, social assistance, education, and culture. There are instances where using faulty indications causes more harm than good.

As a result, it should not be shocking that local governments’ mistrust of the New Public Management (NPM) has grown along with the broader trend of the neo-liberal ideology’s increasing critique.