Localising the sustainable development goals (SDGs) : the role of local government in context

The United Nations (UN) has of late been debating the new international development framework that will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) post–2015. This process has been popularly referred to as the post-2015 development agenda. It is a fact that many of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) that have been identifi ed will impact on the role and responsibilities of local government, namely, poverty reduction; access to water and sanitation; health; education; economic growth; development of cities and human settlements; and resilience to climate change. A critical issue that was highlighted when the MDGs were introduced in 2000 was the implementation modalities as it was felt that the process and goals were primarily top down (CLGF 2014:3). Consequently, there has been strong advocacy for local government to be a key implementation partner in the achievement of the new sustainable development goals that would have been finalised in September 2015 (www.worldwewant2015.org/ localising2015; CLGF 2014:3; www.capacity.undp.org; Slack 2014:1). Key aspects of the debate and discussion to date have been how to localise the new development framework, evaluate the local impact of the future SDGs and ensure that the local dimension is prioritised and successfully implemented (UNDP 2014a:3). There is a firm belief that the issue of localisation has to extend beyond national, provincial/state/regional implementation and there should be a focus on how the new development agenda will be implemented locally and the implications for the local level of government in this regard. According to the UN, localisation denotes the “process of defining; implementing; and monitoring strategies at the local level for achievable global, national and subnational sustainable goals and targets” (UNDP 2014a:3). This process would involve the utilisation of distinct tools, mechanisms, strategies, platforms and innovations to ensure that the development agenda is effectively translated into firm action and concrete results at the local level to benefit communities. It is envisaged that it will be an inclusive process and will move beyond the municipal jurisdiction to draw in relevant stakeholders to create a strong and capable local authority. Viewed in this context, localisation is an integral part of the multilevel governmental system and more so in terms of attaining the sustainable development goals that will be shortly adopted by the international community (CLGF 2014:3)

Performance monitoring and evaluation : the eThekwini experience, South Africa

Monitoring and Evaluation is a management tool that tracks and assesses the performance of the public sector, thereby contributing to service delivery outcomes. Although it has been practised and has been relevant for many years, it is a fairly new applied concept to public sector organisations internationally. Stemming mostly from the lack of a clear and understandable minimum legal reporting framework, the results of performance management/monitoring has been highly subjective in the past. Furthermore, there was little or no assessment or evaluation of the impact of performance on the organisation or society in general. In addition, the information needs of the community to assess service delivery from different spheres of government were not clearly understood. With the implementation of various legislated frameworks on performance monitoring and evaluation of late globally, different stakeholders are provided with the means to ensure that service delivery is monitored and evaluated, thereby providing positive outcomes or impacts on society at large. The establishment of a dedicated Department of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation within the South African Presidency has been viewed as a fi rm commitment by the Government to address the on-going service delivery challenges. The policy, practice and systems relative to monitoring and evaluation have in turn cascaded to the three spheres of government thereby ensuring that it is integrated into all aspects of public sector governance. The Performance Management System (PMS) legislated for in South Africa will assist the municipality in monitoring and evaluating the implementation of its IDP which is also a legislative requirement. It will lead to increased accountability, continuous learning, and informed decision making as well as provide an early warning system of impending deviations from the plan. The ultimate aim of performance management is to ensure improved service delivery.”The IDP and Performance Management process appear to be seamlessly integrated. The IDP fulfils the planning stage of performance management. Performance management fulfi ls the implementation management, monitoring and evaluation of the IDPs” (Van der Waldt 2007:124). eThekwini City Council is one of the eight metropolitan municipalities in South Africa. It is a major port and industrial centre in the Province of Kwazulu Natal and is viewed as being “one of the best run and financially strongest municipality on the continent.” (KwaZulu Natal Province- Department of Economic Development and Tourism 2011:8). The article expounds on the eThekwini experience, reflecting on how through its institutional re-arrangement/process reengineering and automation resulted in an effective monitoring and evaluation tool for all levels of management in the organisation. It will also reflect on how the Municipality has implemented legislation on performance information in order to add value to the organisation and provide an evaluation tool for key stakeholders at the local sphere namely, the political and administrative component and local communities. It will also highlight some of the key challenges encountered in the implementation of the system and furthermore how they can be addressed

Failing the public through public policy : a review of the local government experience in South Africa

South Africa’s public policy approach since 1994 has been robust and forwardlooking. The policy process has been stretched over all areas of governance. Many policies have been translated into law, regulations and institutions aimed explicitly as serving the public good. The key is narrowing the gap between the institutions of governance and people’s needs. However, despite the good intentions, public dissatisfaction and mass protest in the local government sphere is endemic. Mass public protest consumes public capability and is therefore wasteful and counterproductive. The response of the authorities entering the contested space is usually reactionary and is hardly successful in addressing the core grievances of communities. Crucially, political representatives, that is, ward and proportional representative councillors, are crowded out of resolution processes. Communities argue that mass protest and the appropriation of public space is an essential tactic of gaining the attention of the highest authorities. Most community protests are accompanied by acts of violence. Sometimes, the presence of policing services and/or the media exacerbates the crisis. The concern is that communities are acting outside democratic processes as well as institutional arrangements meant to bridge local delivery issues and intended community beneficiaries. It is possible that communities are either unaware of public policy instruments or that they do not respect them as bona fide channels of engagement with the state. Consequently protest, usually lacking organisation, strategic direction and leadership pervades the local government landscape. Accordingly, the purpose of the article is to examine how and why public policy provisions fail the public. The focus is on policy provisions in local government legislation and the relatively recent (2007) local government policy review process, which was intended to address, among other aspects, good governance and public participation approaches, thereby enhancing service delivery. Overall, the article attempts to evaluate policy gaps at the local government sphere in South Africa

Community participation in Ethekwini Municipality with particular reference to ward committees

Local government has been constitutionalised as a sphere of government and this has signified a conceptual shift from serving as administrative service delivery agents to the promotion of developmental goals and principles, namely local democracy, sustainable development, a safe and healthy environment and co-operative government. The White Paper on Local Government mandates municipalities to involve communities in facilitating development. Participation is an integral part of local democracy and it is a legislative requirement for the local community to be drawn into the process through integrated development planning, budgeting, performance management and ward committees. However, there are serious disparities between policy and practice as the success of public participation will not depend on the regulation of the system, but through innovative and creative local policies and legislation. A participatory culture should be inculcated and furthermore the appropriate and relevant mechanisms, processes and procedures should be developed. EThekwini Municipality has created an environment for active participation through ward committees. However, the active participation of the rural populace is still problematic and there are challenges that have to be addressed. Given the fact that the largest percentage of developmental backlogs are in the rural areas, which are inhabited by the disadvantaged communities, it is imperative that they are actively involved in the process of addressing these backlogs through the formal structures of community participation that have been set up

Public accountability at the local government sphere in South Africa

One of the major challenges faced by municipalities in South Africa is quality service delivery and lack of accountability. Public accountability is an important component of local governance as it promotes community involvement and participation. Local government is viewed as the vehicle for service delivery given the notion of wall-to-wall local government. All programmes and projects such as, interalia, housing, water supply, sanitation and roads require accountable municipal functionaries, so that they gain the confi dence and trust of local communities who will then take ownership of it thereby ensuring that it is successful and in the final analysis sustainable. The continued success of a municipality is determined to a large extent, on the accountability of all key role players and stakeholders in the local governance process. Public accountability is a tool for participatory local democracy. The Government has introduced legislation to ensure that all the key local role players and stakeholders discharge their respective obligations and responsibilities to facilitate the delivery of quality municipal services. Despite these measures and initiatives, public accountability remains a buzzword and is certainly not taken seriously by particularly the municipal functionaries. The recent marches by the local citizenry in protest against poor service delivery countrywide bear ample testimony to this. This article critically reviews public accountability in the local sphere highlighting some of the key challenges that has to be addressed to ensure good local governance

A review of local government experience in South Africa : successes and failures

South Africa’s public policy approach since 1994 has been robust and forwardlooking. The policy process has been stretched over all areas of governance. Many policies have been translated into law, regulations and institutions which aimed explicitly as serving the public good. The key is narrowing the gap between the institutions of governance and people’s needs. However public dissatisfaction and mass protest in the local government sphere continue. Mass public protest consumes public capability and is therefore wasteful and counterproductive. The response of the authorities entering the contested space is usually reactionary and is hardly successful at addressing the core grievances of communities. Crucially, political representatives, i.e. ward and proportional representative councillors, are crowded out of resolution processes. Communities argue that mass protest and the appropriation of public space is an essential tactic of gaining the attention of the highest authorities. Most community protests are accompanied by acts of violence. Sometimes, the presence of policing services and/or the media exacerbates the crisis. The concern is that communities are acting outside democratic processes as well as institutional arrangements meant to bridge local delivery issues and intended community beneficiaries. It is possible that communities are either unaware of public policy instruments or that they do not respect them as bona fide channels of engagement with the local state. Consequently, protest, usually lacking organisation, strategic direction and leadership pervade the local government landscape. Accordingly, the purpose of the article is to examine how and why public policy provisions fail the public. The focus will be on policy provisions in local government legislation and the recent (2007) local government policy review process, which were intended to address, among others, good governance and public participation approaches, thereby enhancing service delivery. Overall, the article will attempt to evaluate policy gaps at the local government sphere

Perl module and PISE wrappers for the integrated analysis of sequence data and SNP features

Background There is a need for software scripts and modules for format parsing, data manipulation, statistical analysis and annotation especially for tasks related to marker identification from sequence data and sequence diversity analysis. Results Here we present several new Perl scripts and a module for sequence data diversity analysis. To enable the use of these software with other public domain tools, we also make available PISE (Pasteur Institute Software Environment) wrappers for these Perl scripts and module. This enables the user to generate pipelines for automated analysis, since PISE is a web interface generator for bioinformatics programmes. Conclusion A new set of modules and scripts for diversity statistic calculation, format parsing and data manipulation are available with PISE wrappers that enable pipelining of these scripts with commonly used contig assembly and sequence feature prediction software, to answer specific sequence diversity related questions

Environmental governance at the local government sphere in South Africa

There has been a relatively systematic and ordered development of the environmental legal regime in the past 17 years in South Africa. The first dedicated piece of legislation was the Environmental Conservation Act, 100 of 1982. However it was not particularly effective as it sought to co–ordinate environmental matters as opposed to focusing on environmental management (Glazewski 1999:13). It was replaced by the Environmental Conservation Act, 73 of 1989 which provided an impetus for equitable development and environmental protection. The Act is based on the Constitution, 1996 to promote the notion of co-operative environmental governance which constitutes the basis of South Africa’s environmental legislation. Critical to the process are four basic principles, namely fairness, accountability, responsibility and transparency. A particular focus is spreading the responsibility for the interconnection between social well-being and environmental protection across state departments and spheres of government. Considerable emphasis is placed on citizens’ rights to be granted opportunities for effective democratic and economic involvement in future development processes (Hamman and O’Riordan 1999:3). The Act provided an enabling framework for far-reaching reform in environmental governance and can be viewed as a flagship statute of the National Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT). This article critically reviews the legislative and administrative arrangements for environmental governance in the local sphere of government in South Africa, highlighting challenges that have to be addressed. The principles of cooperative governance and particularly the role of local government in responding to local environmental issues will also be critically reviewed

Evaluation of different cultivars of sorghum for fodder quality and agronomic performance in Semi-Arid Tropics

Thirty four improved sorghum cultivars were evaluated for fodder quality and agronomic performance using two cuts harvested during the rainy season 2014 at ICRISAT, Patancheru following randomized complete block design with two replications. Within cuts consistent significant cultivar difference were only observed for biomass yields which ranged from 17.3 - 33.8 t ha-1 in the first cut to 3.2 and 17.4 t ha-1 in the second cut. Within and across cuts cultivar-dependent variations in fodder quality traits were statistically largely insignificant and inconsistent