Consolidating Developmental Local Government: Lessons from the South African Experience

Consolidating Developmental Local Government documents the dynamics of local government transformation and captures the key themes of the debates about policy options, lessons and key strategic decisions. These debates are aimed at ensuring that municipalities play a key role in creating more democratic, non-racial, equitable and sustainable communities, towns and cities.

Compiled and written by people who participated in one way or another in the experience of democratic consolidation, this text will be an indispensable resource for government officials, students, researchers, specialists, community leaders, businesses and the general reader. Critical questions are raised throughout the book about the kinds of challenges that all those involved with the future of local governance will face in the years ahead.

We are confident that policymakers, researchers and practitioners alike will find Consolidating Developmental Local Government a useful, thoughtful contribution to making local government and other spheres of government work better together to overcome poverty and inequality.

Solomon Lechesa Tsenoli, MP, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Provincial and Local Government

Consolidating Developmental Local Government should be required reading for scholars and practitioners everywhere who care about inclusive and poverty-oriented development and are alert to the complexities and rewards of achieving democratic local government in cosmopolitan societies and complex institutional arenas.

Professor Jo Beall, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics