Towards Sustainable Service Delivery by South African Local Authorities: A Community Participation Strategy

Abstract

With the advent of democracy in 1994, the South African government introduced various initiatives as part of youth skills development intervention programmes, and one of such programmes is the internship programme, which is aimed at exposing graduates to workplace dynamics and getting young people to develop their practical skills to nature careers. This programme, however, has its own challenges, especially on the part of the students, who, after completion, appear to struggle finding sustainable employment, which, in turn, renders the programme questionable. The aim of this study is to analyse the skill relevance of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) internship programme in preparing interns for permanent employment in the employment sector. This study was empirical and used qualitative methods to analyse the skills acquired by interns during the internship programme at DHET. The sample from which data was gleaned consisted of senior managers and interns placed in different units within the department. While the concept of an internship is admirable for exposing graduates to various employment sectors, the study discovered some flaws in its implementation. For example, it was established that the process of placing interns in the DHET was almost done haphazardly, with little consideration of the linkage between their educational background and the units where training occurs. Therefore, this defeats the general mission of the programme itself and is the cause of the diminished future employment prospects of the students. The study recommended, among other things, that DHET provide graduate interns with technical and strategic training opportunities tailored to their specific career needs in order to improve their employability prospects. Possible ways to overcome the internship-related problems identified in the study are outlined towards the end of this article.