Evaluating the Efficacy of Municipal Policy Implementation in South Africa: Challenges and Prospects

Municipalities in South Africa are charged with the responsibility of identifying needs of the local communities through various avenues including public meetings, imbizos, ward committees, petitions and protests. Policies are then developed in the form of integrated development plans (IDPs) and municipal budgets to respond to the community needs identified. It is a legislative requirement that all municipalities in the country develop and approve such policies in order to adequately respond to the needs of their respective communities. The challenge for most municipalities is that they lack requisite capacity and political will to implement such policies. This conceptual paper seeks to evaluate the efficacy of policy implementation in the South African municipalities. The evaluation is undertaken through the review of existing literature and it assesses the application of the 7-C protocol during the implementation of the various municipal policies including but not limited to IDPs and municipal budgets. The paper concludes that the implementation of municipal policies is not effective and efficient hence the continuous backlog in as far as municipal service provision is concerned. To this end, several measures are proposed with the ultimate aim of appropriately addressing the challenges that hinders the adequate implementation of municipal policies in South Africa. Such measures include inculcating a sense of political will to the municipal executives by their respective political parties as well as punishing offenders of municipal prescripts to address corruption and maladministration