Abstract
Abstract : Change is not easily accepted – neither in the Republic of South Africa nor within the entire world. Leadership that is prescient and visionary, skilful, affiliated and dedicated are the significant ingredients to the accomplishment of all change programs as well as in the progression of assisting workers to realize the reason why change is necessary. The lack of provision of sustainable services continues to be a challenge and a primary determinant of poverty in our country. The South African Local Government has tried to demonstrate a continuous commitment to ensure that this problem is addressed effectively and efficiently. The attempt by the Government to bring down poverty in the last few years has been seen through interventions that have taken place on national, provincial and local levels. However, these attempts have not borne enough. The Vhembe District in Limpopo Province is a prime example where the Government’s attempt has not succeeded. Moreover, some of the primary causes of the Local Government failure within the Vhembe District have been found to be corruption, which has prevented the ambitions of Government to build the district. The study is based on Thulamela Local Municipality, which has also been affected by corruption and has been struggling for a number of years, together with other municipalities having a poor performance in the Auditor General’s books. However, in recent years, the Thulamela Municipality’s public financial accounting may have been improving, although service delivery continues to show low observable transformation. In this study a series of diverse techniques were used, considering the fact that quantitative and qualitative research techniques had been located to be paired rather than be adversarial tactics. By using both a well-known and a less-known series approach, the techniques applied proved to be practically useful. Moreover, this study took a closer look at the impact of change management facing the municipality when creating jobs and tried to indicate sensible methods and an approach of bringing solutions to the issues faced by Local Government while providing the community with efficient service delivery. The study has also contributed to knowledge by developing a model for the Local Economic Development cycle and a concept, which can assist in translating policy into a significant practice so that Local Municipalities have a high impact on improving service delivery. The study recommended that top management's function should be to only create conditions for the service delivery strategy plan, but also to continuously monitoring the implementation process to ensure harmony among the influencing factors.
M.Sc. (Engineering Management)