Public administration and service delivery reforms: a post-1994 South African case
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2010
TITLE AUTHOR(S): Z.Tshandu, S.Kariuki
KEYWORDS: POST APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, SERVICE INDUSTRIES
DEPARTMENT: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 6463
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/4152
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/4152
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
This paper is an analysis of South Africa's public service improvement strategies since 1994. It first describes the historical factors that underpinned South Africa's service delivery initiatives before 1994. It is argued that the pre-1994 public service sector was racialised and highly politicised, as opposed to being people-centred and service delivery oriented. The transition to democracy in 1994 necessitated a complete revision of South Africa's public administrative system in order to meet the developmental challenges of service delivery needs. However, this transition also coincided with global reform initiatives that were taking place in the public sector, as informed by the new public management (NPM) paradigm with its emphasis on cost effectiveness, accountability and transparency. The primary argument of the paper is that commendable legislative reforms have been enacted in South Africa's public administration system in the post-1994 period, based on the NPM, but the fragility of the state bureaucracy as manifested in the silo approach characterising the South African government operations, as well as capacity limitations, encumbers the success of these reforms. The Community Development Worker (CDW) programme, operating in South Africa's Eastern and Western Cape Provinces, is used as a case study to illustrate this argument. A brief look at India's experience of the NPM also informs the discussion. The significance of the case study lies in the fact that it was conceived in the interest of increased responsiveness and accessibility to government services, a vital pillar of the NPM framework.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Facts, fiction and fabrication: service delivery in South Africa: 1994-1999
- Don't bite the hand that feeds you: South African education NGOs in a period of change
- A better life for all?: service delivery and poverty alleviation
- Observations on defining a developmental state administration in South Africa
- Squalor and its cohorts
- 'Tomorrow will be better than today': delivery in the age of hope
- Service delivery as a measure of change: state capacity and development
- Future directions in urban policy
- Introduction: political and governance challenges
- Improving rural service delivery: can traditional institutions of governance contribute?: Giyani case study
- Winters of discontent?: attitudes towards service delivery
- Race, class and housing in post-apartheid Cape Town
- Exploring challenges of municipal service delivery in South Africa (1994-2013)
- Party disintegrations & re-alignments in post-apartheid South Africa
- Overcoming constraints on the delivery of services to children and young people
- Cost recovery and the crisis of service delivery in South Africa
- Review of schedules 4 and 5 of the constitution: executive summary
- Opening the doors of learning: where is the principal?: a position paper
- Public appraisal of social and economic infrastructure delivery
- The politics of water management: the case of the Orange River development project