One District, One Plan, and One Budget: Towards a Capable Government in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa continues to battle against issues of service delivery, poverty, unemployment, and inequality. These issues persist despite numerous efforts of the South African government to become a capable, responsive, and accountable state that is characterised by transparency. Hence, the South African District Development Model (DDM) was introduced in 2019 as a cooperative governance framework aimed at building a capable, ethical, and developmental state. While this model is designed to address South Africa’s development issues, its challenges and prospects remain largely unknown. This paper aims to critically analyse the potential of DDM in building a capable South African local government. It is informed by a qualitative research approach in which government documents, newspaper articles, journal articles, books, and book chapters sourced through Google search and scholarly databases were consulted. The findings indicate that while DDM can capacitate local government, it is likely to face challenges in implementation in some contexts. These challenges include, but are not limited to, poor coordination, lack of resources, lack of capacity, and lack of community participation. Therefore, the successful implementation of DDM requires, inter alia, effective intergovernmental coordination, substantive community participation, and stakeholder capacity development.