Public participation and enhancement of service delivery in the Zululand District Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal Province

Abstract

Public participation and gatherings help as important measures used by municipalities to interconnect and cooperate with people in communities, particularly about services and significant programmes to be delivered to them. A local government will always be the fundamental place for the provision of basic services and life improvement. However, in various places, there is a continuous failure in community participation, and amongst the places suffering from such a failure, ZDM is not excluded. The paper assessed the effectiveness of public participation in service delivery. The theoretical framework used in this paper included Arnstein’s ladder theory of participation as well as Agency theory to underpin the current study. The qualitative research approach was useful when collecting data by means of in-depth interviews and analyzing it using a Qualitative Content Analysis. A qualitative approach in this paper involved an interpretative paradigm. Social constructivism as one of the interpretive frameworks was also used when the analysis of data was carried out in this paper. The focus was on selected 5 Local Municipalities within ZDM. Conducting interviews and having in-depth interview sessions with 20 participants from the study area enabled a possible data collection for this paper. Collecting data in this research relevantly explained useful processes on public participation programmes and measures for better improvement of citizens. A qualitative content analysis ensured the coding of items or caused a proper manner through a systematic approach. The ultimate result of analyzing data was through identifying possible groupings, themes and arrangements. Therefore, collected data from interviews were grouped into themes. The findings indicated that a few programmes for public participation implemented in ZDM have not achieved the goal of the institution to deliver efficient services to the community. This is merely caused by a lack of knowing the significance of public participation in efficient service delivery by the community members, it is also a result of community representatives and municipal officials not having an interest to serve the community. Thus, it is concluded in this paper that it is vital for the community to be included in every plan that ZDM arranges for its people for rendering adequate services to them. Keywords: Public participation, service delivery, Zululand District Municipality (ZDM).