Abstract
Aim: This article seeks to understand the enablers and constraints to the effective use of data for planning in South African municipalities, by looking at an understudied empirical nexus between migration and the managerial systems of planning. Settings: Planning is an increasingly critical municipal function, with mobility and shifting settlement patterns reshaping South African municipalities. At the same time, local governance in South Africa is facing multiple crises. In 2019, only 18 out of 257 municipalities received a clean audit, and in 2018, there were more than 250 service delivery protests, a figure that has been increasing steadily for a decade. Methods: An iterative process of case study development through institutional ethnography took place in six South African municipalities, ranging from rural municipalities to mega-cities, but focusing on secondary cities and peri urban areas. Results: The need for stronger management systems at a municipal level in South Africa is well understood. The strengthening of public sector monitoring and evaluation systems is one tool for public sector reforms the government is implementing at all levels of government. However, its effectiveness is threatened by varied incentives to generate and use data to inform decision making. Conclusion: In doing so, it underscores the ways in which data systems are developed in socially embedded ways, and identifies some data-specific areas that could support municipal management systems to better respond to migration.
Highlights
Rapid urbanisation and the transformation of urban landscapes are the result of the residents of African cities moving
It may disincentivise recognising some of the ways in which migration can support development. It is somewhere in the middle, not effectively supporting some of the positive contributions migration could make to development and doing very little to set targets meaningfully across a range of changing demographic factors. It is not easy for emergent evaluation systems at a municipal level to be responsive to mobile populations
There are a range of challenges for effectively integrating migration in municipal planning systems
Summary
Rapid urbanisation and the transformation of urban landscapes are the result of the residents of African cities moving. It is increasingly common for people to live both mobile and multi-local lives. This is not reflected in the way the local government’s planning, monitoring and evaluation systems are being designed. Many municipalities have been unable to engage with robust, forward-looking demographic data, or even assumptions of mobility, to allow for proactive planning for the shifting populations (Landau 2018). As a result of this, the targets and indicators that are being set for municipal performance by largely autonomous administrations do not reflect the reality of a migrating populace and may not be enabling development of the actual population they are governing. Planning systems are largely centralised with upward accountability, not at all multi-local, and do not accommodate the varying needs and developmental diversity of different municipalities
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