Abstract
The local government in South Africa is plagued with many problems, some of these problems are attributable to incompetence of the employees and politicians. In the Freestate province, most of the municipalities have been placed under administration due to unclean audits experiences for some time. This paper investigates the drivers of failure and collapse of service delivery in Matjhabeng local municipality. The study adopted a mixed method approach to review strategic documents. The web of science was used to conduct a systematic search for literature based on co-occurrences and key word analysis. It appears that based on the key themes including local government and service delivery in South Africa only 7 articles were relevant. The results reveal that the local government is faced with service delivery challenges. The paper provides an opportunity for further research and improvements on policy analyses. The paper recommends that the municipalities should implement performance management systems to improve service delivery.