The Impact of Poor Governance on Public Service Delivery: A Case Study of the South African Local Government

Abstract

South African local government has seen numerous service delivery protests stemming from community dissatisfaction. Lack of accountability and consequence management has had a negative impact on good governance in the local government sphere, putting the provision of basic services at risk. South African citizens have expressed their dissatisfaction by forcibly removing high-ranking public officials from their communities, claiming that they failed to keep promises made during the election campaigning phase. Local government's financial situation has also been hampered by a lack of good governance, which has a negative impact on public service delivery. In the fiscal year 2020/2021, 41 municipalities received clean audits out of 257, demonstrating the extent of the lack of consequence management and poor governance in local government. This paper seeks to analyze the impact of poor governance on service delivery and propose strategies or areas for improvement in order to improve good governance for the prioritization of public service delivery in South Africa. This paper is timely because local governments are struggling to maintain their core function of being a vehicle for effective and efficient service delivery. Because of the higher rates of unemployment and poverty, the majority of South African citizens rely on public service delivery. Because poor governance leads to poor service delivery, marginalized citizens bear the brunt of the impact of poor governance in South African government.