Nature of Alternative Service Delivery in Merafong City Local Municipality, South Africa: An Engaged Scholarship Perspective

Abstract

In an attempt to advance engaged scholarship in the University of South Africa (Unisa), this article introduces a community engagement project in the Merafong City Local Municipality (MCLM), in the Carletonville area of Gauteng in South Africa. The locus of the research is geologically underlain by dolomite rock and extensive mining for gold and uranium. Gold-mining has been a significant activity in this region since the 1930s. Despite its rich mining culture and heritage, recent observations by the Department of Public Administration and Management (PAM) at Unisa revealed a significant disparity in the five municipalities located in the West Rand area’s infrastructure and local government sphere. This disparity is relevant to basic municipality-delivered services such as roads, stormwater and sanitation facilities, provision of water, public housing, and the overall environmental landscape. The deterioration of the natural and the physical environments over the past century has reached concerning levels. The PAM, through its engaged scholarship project ES CH5200, which started in 2017, aims to affect positive changes in the MCLM communities through, among other things, principles of more effective community engagement, alternative service delivery (ASD), and more effective municipality management. Research for this article employed diverse methodologies, including site visits, literature reviews, geographical tools, comprehensive databases and observation. This article confirms that engaged scholarship and ASD are closely interconnected. It highlights that opportunities for learning and knowledge exchange emerge through the active involvement of communities and stakeholders in the local context, which forms the foundation of an engaged scholarship approach.