Abstract:
The South African White Paper on Local Government of 1998 spelled out the framework in
terms of which the local government system of that time would be transformed.
Municipalities were thereafter established and assigned powers and functions. After more
than a quarter of a century, there can no longer be any doubt that many municipalities are
to a significant extent failing in their primary purpose, i.e. to deliver services. The paper
examines assumptions made by the drafters of the White Paper in respect of key attributes
for service delivery, such as skills and funding, budgeting and effective spending,
leadership, and organisational stability. The paper finds that many of these assumptions
were highly optimistic.
