Abstract
M.A.
One of the tasks of local government has always been to provide services which will
ensure the well-being of its communities. Given the history of the legacy of apartheid,
however, it becomes imperative that local governments' responsibility transcends to a
new role of socio-economic development designed to address the manifestations of
poverty which were caused by the repressive apartheid policy and which currently
permeate South African society. Issues such as literacy, malnutrition, low standards of
education and training levels, welfare dependency, violence and crime are some of the
manifestations of poverty that warrant attention from local government.
The White Paper on Local Government as well as other government initiatives have set
a framework of a developmental local government and this study seeks to discover
whether recreation, as one of the social sectors of a multi-sectoral local government,
fulfils this requirement.
Qualitative methods were employed to examine and analyse the provision of recreation
by local government with the aim of discovering whether this provision addresses
some of the manifestations of poverty. The technique of a case study was utilised to
focus on the provision of recreation by local government to the Zakariyya Park locality
and by so doing, to achieve greater insight into local governments' recreation
provision.