Evaluating the role of Governance and Leadership on Service Delivery: Case of Ekurhuleni Municipality

Abstract

The study was a development of an effective leadership and governance framework that will improve the delivery of services in the Ekurhuleni Municipality. In accordance to the Constitution of South Africa, service provision as the primary task of local governments, and municipalities as frontline providers must play a leading and governing role in providing basic services to citizens. For a municipality to effectively and efficiently deliver the required services, it is vital that leaders know skills and capacities to possess and enable realisation of vision and ensure effective governance to navigate execution of roles and responsibilities. The addressing of the research objectives and research problem was addressed by inferences drawn from the reviewed literature and the primary study.

The research was a qualitative research where data was collected using interviews from a sample of 10 participants. The sample was reached using a non-probability sampling framework executed using a purposive sampling technique. The inferences were analysed using a thematic analysis. The study established that the current service delivery in the services were found ineffective as high density areas were posited as lacking clean water and also a dearth of water provisioning infrastructure. The public sector institutions are becoming unreliable and ineffective in terms of service delivery and are continuously failing to meet the needs and expectations of the services recipients.

More so, the leadership and governance in the Municipality is challenged by a model that excludes the community, politicisation of municipality leadership and lack of leadership capacity and development skills and competences. In this regard, it was determined in the study that the structures that can be adopted include aspects such as performance management system, integrated development plan and community development workers programme. The establishments informed the organisation that transformational leadership is essential and participatory mechanisms in the municipality as frameworks or models for effective governance and leadership. The study recommended adoption of a hybrid approach should be adopted where democratic style must be integrated with the charismatic style and it is crucial that the municipal council approves the policy regarding the public participation.