Successes and Failures of the University-Community Partnership: A Case Study of Imbali Semi-Rural Settlement

Abstract

Universities should conduct research and provide services to the society in their environment. In this article, the relational leadership model was used to evaluate a University-Community partnership in a semi-rural context in South Africa. The relational leadership model is an aspirational model supporting a healthy, ethical, and effective group. It comprises five components necessary for sustainable positive change in an organization. The model advocates for five components of which four were used to evaluate the project which the article is based on. Data were produced through interviews with two main university leaders of the project and the results show that the partnership has lost momentum in recent years based on non-conformity to some of the principles of the components suggested by the relational leadership. Through the rich experiences from participants, the article reflects on methods and recommendations in which the threads facing the partnership can be circumvented.