Political competition and local government debt: implications for human development: A case study of Eastern Cape municipalities
- Authors: Matapuri, Fadzai Valerie
- Date: 2024-04-04
- Subjects: Local government South Africa Eastern Cape , Municipal finance South Africa Eastern Cape , Public administration South Africa Eastern Cape , Municipal services South Africa Eastern Cape , Electoral competition , Human development
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435874 , vital:73208
- Description: South African Municipalities are currently in a precarious financial situation. The financial distress has intensified so much that local governments are on the brink of collapse. Municipalities in South Africa currently owe over 35.5 billion rands. Reports from the Auditor-General of South Africa portrayed a grim picture of the state of financial affairs in municipalities; only 33 municipalities out of 278 had received a clean audit, with over 30 billion rands in expenditure declared irregular. The report further revealed that there were numerous cases of non-compliance with key legislation in municipalities. The poor financial audits across the country have stressed the severe lack of accountability, government issues and political turmoil. Due to this state of affairs, municipalities cannot deliver services such as sanitation, electricity, and water. As a result, many service delivery protests have occurred over the years. Political factors have been highlighted as the leading cause of these local government woes. This study aims to investigate the relationship between political competition and local government debt and its effect on human development in Eastern Cape municipalities. The study used a panel data set for 32 municipalities and electoral data from 2009 to 2016. The panel vector autoregression model, generalized least squares, fixed and random effects methods were used to investigate the relationship between political competition and local government debt. The study found a positive unidirectional relationship between political competition and local debt. This was found using the normalized Herfindahl index, debt to asset, tress index, human development index, population and poverty variables. Moreover, estimated results showed that local governments in the eastern cape were characterised by a political monopoly that, in turn, increased local government debt through growth-hindering policies adopted by political leaders. Resulting in economic concentration, which hinders local economic growth and human development. , Thesis (MCom) -- Faculty of Commerce, Economics and Economic History, 2024
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- Date Issued: 2024-04-04
An exploratory study of barriers and enablers of strategy execution in the Eastern Cape Department of Education in South Africa
- Authors: Vena, Nomava Vinolia
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Strategic planning South Africa Eastern Cape , Business planning South Africa Eastern Cape , Public administration South Africa Eastern Cape , Corporate governance South Africa Eastern Cape , Government accountability South Africa Eastern Cape , South Africa. Department of Education
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MBA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63649 , vital:28465
- Description: Effective strategy execution is very important for the achievement of an organisation’s goals. Because it is a difficult task to translate a strategy into action, itis imperative for leadership to prioritize its strategic plan to ensure its success. The purpose of this study is to identify barriers and enablers of strategy execution in Basic Education in the Eastern Cape; its focus is on strategic goal number six: “Efficient administration ensured through good corporate governance and management”. The effectiveness of the Eastern Cape Department of Education (ECDoE) is measured by its service delivery, how strategy is executed in providing quality education. These are guided by the norms and standards like the National Education Policy Act: Norms and Standards for educators, as set by the National Department of Basic Education and the Treasury Acts. The motivation for the study was the Department’s poor performance as reported by the Auditor General (AG) in his 2015 audit report, that there has been a lack of good governance and accountability in the ECDoE. The study is qualitative: a sample of twenty-five (25) ECDoE senior managers were interviewed as the custodians of the execution of the strategic plan. Purposive sampling method selected the twenty-five from a total of forty-five (45) senior managers, some of whom were in Head Office and some in the twenty-three (23) districts. Data was collected through questionnaires and interviews and responses were captured on Excel Spreadsheet, and analysed with the Thematic Analysis. Major findings relating to barriers were on Human Resource Management, Poor Leadership, Resourcing (Tools of Trade), Improper Budgeting Systems, Poor Communication, and Organisational Structure. Some variables were interchangeably identified both as barriers and enablers, such as budgeting and resourcing. There were many recommendations, but for this study one, the Finance Section, will suffice: and that is that the Finance Section should analyse each directorate’s spending for each year before the new budget is allocated.
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- Date Issued: 2018