By Modjadji Seabi and Paul Smith
There are three very important developments that are reshaping local government over the short, medium, and long term. The first is the implementation of Operation Vulindlela II, the economic reforms programme led by National Treasury and the Presidency, which has the reform of local government as one of its key pillars.
This is referred to as Priority 5 in the Operation Vulindlela II: Strengthen local government and improve the delivery of basic services.
The second development is the legislative reform with the review of the Local Government White Paper, which is aimed at resetting the local government systems to enhance governance, service delivery, infrastructure management, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and financial standings of municipalities.
The third event is the local government elections, now set to take place on November 4 this year.
Taken together these three developments offer South Africa an opportunity to reimagine local government and improve the quality of service delivery and the lives of citizens by enhancing governance.
Across metros, small towns and rural areas, service delivery failures, governance deficiencies, institutional weaknesses, and instability are prevalent, contributing to widespread community dissatisfaction and at times, violent protests.
The Kagiso Trust (KT) believes that the proposed reforms need collaborative governance to succeed. The Kagiso Trust, with over 40 years of experience influencing South Africa’s development landscape, implements the Local Governance Support Programme (LGSP) under the Institutional Capacity Building Pillar, as one of its key programmes.
In 2025, the Kagiso Trust undertook a study to understand what contributes to outstanding performance in some municipalities. The study titled, Unravelling Municipal Attributes for Success: A Focus on Best-Performing Local Municipalities in South Africa, offers illuminating insights to what leads to good performance in the third tier of government in South Africa.
The challenges facing local government are well documented and frequently articulated by institutions such as the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA). The AG found that only 39 municipalities (15%) achieved clean audits in 2024–25.
It is worth noting that a clean audit does not inherently imply exceptional performance of a municipality overall, but they do serve as crucial indicator, signaling financial prudence and governance excellence, and thus offers valuable insights into the mechanisms fostering success within these municipalities.
Key metrics such as service delivery performance may not be fully or directly reflected through an audit. However, the principles that enable clean audit are the robust foundation for exceptional performance.
Our study focused on five municipalities that have developed a record of consistently obtaining clean audits. The municipalities are in Gauteng, Kwa Zulu Natal and three in the Western Cape.
The research focused on a small sample of municipalities and excluded metros.
These municipalities had been declared dysfunctional and had been under administration at some point, but have all since gone on to attain between five and ten consecutive clean audits. These municipalities exhibit a strong citizen-centred approach to internal governance and deliberate community engagement and communication processes.
Kagiso Trust acknowledges that audit opinions do not offer a fully comprehensive perspective of best performance attributes.
For example, the Governance Performance Index (2024) of South Africa indicates that there are municipalities that perform well as an average of the total provincial performance ranking despite not having achieved a clean audit.
In the GPI, the administration and governance ranking that cascades to service delivery levels, there are four provinces (WC, KZN, GP, and LP) that are ranked above 3 out of 5.
The research was conducted through focused group interviews with both the Administrative and Political Leadership Teams as well as through comprehensive analysis of publicly available financial and performance data.
A wider net approach for the purpose of selecting the best-performing and most improving municipalities was followed.
These are municipalities that responded and opened their doors to share their best practices, and their performance is reinforced by other sources.
For example, Cape Agulhas, which was engaged by Kagiso Trust, was ranked by Good Governance Africa as the best-performing municipality in South Africa in its 2021 rankings, out of 205 local municipalities.
While the findings of the Kagiso Trust’s study may extend beyond the studied municipalities, it is important to note that the research does not directly assess performance but rather offers insights into success factors from officials’ and councillors’ perspectives.
The research interest was on overall municipal governance in relation to the Kagiso Trust’s collaborative governance model for local government development.
The draft Local Government White Paper is very strong on collaborative governance.
The first key requirement that was observed among the municipalities is collaboration between the political office bearers and administration officials, especially where there is a coalition government.
A municipality where there is collaboration seems to have governance underpinned by strong, visionary political leadership, and one that tends to have long tenure, starting with full term of office between elections.
This allows for long-term planning. This collaboration leads to a strong relationship between political and administrative leadership with clear boundaries and lines of responsibility and no interference while appointments place emphasis on competence.
Successful municipalities also have a community-centric engagement approach and rely on quality data to run processes such as the Integrated Development Plans (IDP) and Budgeting process.
As one member of the Political Leadership Team in one of the engaged municipalities noted, “If you are in government, you must be a community worker first, and then a politician. You must aim to change people’s lives. You must ask yourself how you can add value to people’s lives.”
Another approach to implementing turnaround strategies is setting stringent but attainable key performance targets and a change in recruitment processes in order to bring on board capable organisational culture-fit officials.
Culture fit – both political and administrative officials will have a shared common goal and commitment to citizen-centred collaborative governance.
The municipalities studied also show commitment to their turnaround plans.
One municipality started its process with a skills audit then built a positive organisational culture. This is then followed by establishing fully funded budgets that allow for the delivery of services.
Other commonalities across these municipalities include robust policies and procedures and financial sustainability, having staff development programmes in place, and a low turnover on the administration side.
These municipalities also have a strong monitoring and evaluation culture and function.
These municipalities show the importance of regular empowerment and transformation workshops for both political and administrative leadership teams.
In addition to adopting a community-centred governance approach, the municipalities also participate in collaborative and advocacy events such as conferences or media assets such as podcasts, which can be used to share information, experiences, and ideas between municipalities.
The most encouraging aspect of these findings is that all these municipalities have a common history of dysfunctionality and being placed under administration before they turned their fortunes around.
That, more than any initiative put in place, shows that almost any municipality, including the more complex Metros, can improve themselves, with the right conditions in place, starting with political will.
In addition, the difference with municipalities centred on collaborative governance is that the people who govern these institutions and their respective performance is a direct reflection on institutional leadership functionality.
Modjadji Seabi, Head: Project Management Office, Kagiso Trust (mseabi@kagiso.co.za), and Paul Smith, Head: Local Government Institutional Support Programme, Kagiso Trust (psmith@kagiso.co.za)
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