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HSRC Annual Report 2016/17
To date, the methodology has provided the opportunity for the City of Cape Town and communities to jointly identify
problems and potential solutions regarding service delivery.
Most of the identified problems centred on the lack of consultation, communication problems, poor response to
complaints lodged by residents, unsatisfactory billing systems, lack of or old meters, illegal connections and poor
workmanship by contractors.
It has been noted that most of these problems can be solved through increased citizen engagement, including more
consultation, communication and relationship building. It is hoped that the scorecard implemented in Nyanga can be
replicated in other municipalities across the country.
Citizen Engagement (CE) – The City Support Programme
(CSP) Project
The CSP was an initiative of National Treasury to address spatial inequalities and development challenges at the city
level. The CSP project aimed to harness capacity to improve planning, implementation and innovation to ensure that
cities are more inclusive and liveable. The project covered areas of governance relating to citizen engagement (CE),
integrity as well as social and environmental management. The key objectives of CE were to support cities to review
and enhance their approaches to and instruments for engagement, with the aim of strengthening city capabilities in
service delivery and management of the urban built environment.
The project built a body of practice through which alternative governance and citizen engagement mechanisms and
approaches may be generated and strengthened. After successfully implementing a thorough assessment, which
provided a better understanding of existing citizen and community engagement practices in the City of Cape Town and
of the institutional, legislative and policy set-ups and constraints, a draft citizen engagement framework was developed
that is applicable to all the metros.
The draft framework for assessing participation in local urban governments in South Africa constitutes a valuable working
document to guide local urban government in South Africa to assess and improve their participatory processes, structures
and initiatives in response to service delivery.
South African Social Attitude Survey (SASAS)
Results emanating from the SASAS series, which consists of nationally representative, repeated, cross-sectional surveys
that have been conducted annually by the HSRC since 2003, were widely cited and discussed in the local print media and
on radio during the period under review. In addition, the 14
th
annual survey round in the series was successfully fielded.
PART B: Performance Overview