With the Provincial Government of #Bokone-Bophirima (North West) under administration, the pertinent question therefore is; which consulting firms stand to earn Billions of Rands from this inexplicable overreach?

What Public procurement Processes were utlised to hire those Consulting firms for this lucrative contract???

It has been established that #SouthAfricanGovernment spends in excess of R32 Billion/Year on #ConsultingFirms, Most of which are white and even foreign owned.

It's highly suspicious the #Section-100 Decision on the Government of #North-West Province is a ruse to loot and profiteer.

Public policy is a nucleolus or heartbeat of any state. Thus public policy is a fundamental aspect in the development of any country, however in countries such as South Africa, deeper concerns have emerged that public consideration in the formulation of public policy is skewed to the ruling elite only, making it difficult for non-state actors and other stake holders in the society to democratically participate in the formulation of public policy.  This blog seeks to critically dissect the anatomy of South African public policy and vehemently argue whether its process of formulation is inclusive or not, considering the dominant party dynamics in the country’s political landscape. This blog will further seek to demonstrate in depth the role of Non- state and state actors in the formulation processes and the hegemonic contest between theory and practice.

Many people gripe about the laws and politics South Africa, but what separates good from bad public policies? Few people have anything to complain about in regards to complex issues such as the merit of rural electrification or the national weather service, but many more hot-button issues create a divided public, especially when lobbying interests advance a particular agenda. Placing personal opinions aside, how do we know which public policy initiatives most effectively benefit us on a personal and national level?

Here are the ten most important South African policy issues:

• Climate change

• Energy

• Health care

• Jobs

• Medical care

• Public land

• Crime

• Social security

• Poor quality schools

• Government Corruption

Some may matter more to an individual, some may not matter at all, yet they take up the bulk of attention of national lawmakers.

What Is Good Policy?

In a nutshell, a good policy is one that solves problems without creating a political rift. Whenever it is believed that it can solve a problem without one party disagreeing with its inception, it can go forward without issue. This policy should solve a public problem without violating the legal boundaries set down by federal, state, and local laws. It must encourage an active citizenry, furthermore, as well as the democratic process.

Successes Or Failures

Questions of whether the policy solves the problem and whether or not it is legal affect the successes and failures. For example, South Africa's attempt to reduce on gun crime saw a ten year foundation that cut down on the gun violence rate by fifty percent; since the foundation did not attempt to restrict gun ownership it had no questions about constitutionality.

Public policy can be referred to all exposed aspirations of an administration which are propelled by the wish of the people[i]. However public policy can be defined by more ways than one, for which by their actual nature satisfy different aspects. The actual objective of public policy is to greatly satisfy the welfare of the nation or particularly aimed to positively touch the lives of individuals[ii]. Public policy exists in the mainstream due to other components such as public participation or political participation which gives life to the formulation process. Therefore it can be widely accepted that public policy is a matrimonial executive and public decisions which involve public consideration or political participation through state and non-state actors.

Ever since transition from the oppressive regime, public policy has been opened to everybody in the pursuit of inclusivity, transparency and the spirit of accountability, all of which entail democratic principles. Hence since the transitional period, public policy has been contested by both state and non-state actors whom have an influential nature in the formulation process. In lieu of the above, this on its own imply that public consideration through stake holders have been took into cognizance and furthermore an opportunity for democratic participation has been considered in the formulation process

Whereas most commend the institutionalized nature and structure of public policy making in South Africa, there are fundamental questions asked whether public policy formulation is only dominated by the comprador bourgeoisie and the ruling elite rather than the citizenry of the republic. This paper would therefore resonate under the ambits of seeking to explore or rather scrutinize the extent in which state and non-state actors are involved in South African public policy making. Furthermore with regard to the state actors, the paper would place emphasis on chapter nine institutions, the local and provincial government. This paper would further seek to dissect the role of non-state actors in the form of interest groups under Nedlac (National economic development and development council).

The role and Impact of chapter nine institutions in public policy formulation

A prerogative task is bestowed upon chapter nine institutions to be vanguards of the constitutional democracy by portraying a character of impartiality and subjecting themselves to the rule of law, however this noble course is defeated by the brutal truth of a dominant party system. The ANC populate a larger portion of the NA  and therefore decisions to be made within the august house would on continuous basis serve the interests of the ANC and the ruling bourgeoisie[iii]. These decisions include among others the appointments of heads of chapter 9 institutions, reconciling reality with the latter; it is most likely that partisanship play a vital role in determining the decisions of the president who is both the executive head and the political head of both the state and the ANC.

Provincial and Local government on public policy formulation

The provincial government has a responsibility to facilitate public participation with regard to public policy formulation at the provincial level as a state actor, they do this through an institution called the legislature, having note of that, it is a well-known phenomenon that the ANC lead majority of the provinces in south Africa, thus making it simple to dictate policies which are in their best interest and serve their purpose[v]. The same wavelength gives meat to the untouched story of local government which encounters the same reality as the provincial government. Having also conscious of the fact that South Africa is borne out of a multiparty system that does not give expression to the dominance of the ANC whom use clientalism to advance their policies through cadre development to government post. The true reality is that participation in the formulation of public policy is only skewed to the few ruling elite to safeguard their interest in strategic sectors of the economy.

The National Assembly and the dilemmas of ANC dominance

The focal point on public policy formulation takes a momentous and emphatic turn inside the parameters of the national assembly. The national assembly is also charged with the duty to ensure proper public facilitation and participation in the formulation of public policy through institutions assembled by the constitution such as the NCOP (National council of provinces) and the legislature itself. The ANC operates on the principles of clientalism and that castrate what the house seeks to achieve, however with dominant membership, most would on several cases vote  based on loyalty rather than rationality, this is called partisanship, furthermore these acts defeats the purpose of a participatory democracy in the national assembly, through which parliamentary representatives should advance their policy positions of the ordinary people, hence an act of dominant party system is un avoidable when dealing with public policy formulation

Involvement of non-state actors in the formulation process

Nedlac is a forum within which government and various non-state actors interact to harmonies their views and inputs with regard to public policy and other related matters. The interests of Nedlac are broad and range from labour, business and non-governmental formation. It is however important to put into perspective the role of nedlac again in public policy formulation. It basically serves the purpose within which the voices of interest groups are took into account, however it is within this turpitude that the participation of nedlac on the government forums does not cover the interest of the vast majority but of the few petty bourgeois[viii]. Hence a phenomenon of vasectomized democracy takes to the fore.  Only the interest groups whom have monetary stability are able to make a considerable impact in pursuing a democratic agenda as defined by them, and those who are not financially stable suffer the consequence of a vasectomized process.

                                                            Conclusion

The process of public policy formulation is perceived to be democratic due to a lineage they go through. However the brutal reality is that South Africa find itself within a dominant party system and therefore voices heard on the echoes of the policies reflects that of the ANC, moreover, those whom are non-state actors are only concerned with their own field or interest than of the entire citizens. Theoretically public policy formulation in South Africa seems to be much more democratic and inclusive but practically it does not reflect theory it is perceived with.

MUNICIPALITY DESCRIPTION

 The JB Marks Local Municipality is a Category B municipality situated within the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District in the North West Province. It is the largest municipality of three in the district, making up almost half its geographical area. It was established by the amalgamation of the Ventersdorp and Tlokwe City Council Local Municipalities in August 2016.
The N12 route that connects Johannesburg and Cape Town via the city of Kimberley runs through the municipality. The main railway route from Gauteng to the Northern and Western Cape also runs through one of the municipality’s main cities, Potchefstroom. The City is 145km south-east of OR Tambo International Airport but has its own airfield, which can accommodate bigger aircraft and was formerly a military air base.
Gold mining is the dominant economic activity in the district, with Potchefstroom and Ventersdorp being the only exceptions. While Ventersdorp to the north-west of Potchefstroom focuses on agricultural activity, Potchefstroom’s economic activity is driven by services and manufacturing. A big role-player in the provision of services in Potchefstroom is the world-class North-West University, which has its main campus in Potchefstroom.
Potchefstroom’s industrial zone has many companies, focusing mainly on the industries of steel, food and chemicals, with big entities such as King Korn, Kynoch, Naschem and the Soya Protein Process (SPP) company. Within the city centre, the infrastructure of Potchefstroom supports roughly 600 businesses.

Area: 6 398km²

Cities/Towns: Potchefstroom, Ventersdorp

Main Economic Sectors: Agriculture, community services, manufacturing, trade, finance, transport, mining

VENTERSDORP's DETERIORATING AND UNMAINTAINED ELECTRICITY INFRASTRUCTURE

The Ventersdorp local municipality was expected to pay R49,478,502.26 to avoid power being suspended in Ventersdorp, Tshing township and three villages, Boikhutsong, Boikhutso and Appeldraai. What was even more alarming was the fact that the collection rate in Ventersdorp was very low and due to under spending, additional funding from government was being held back. The council had failed to honour its payback agreement with Eskom.

Tlokwe was said to have a 91 percent service payment record and does not owe Eskom any money. This again emphasizes why the Democratic Alliance strongly resists the merger between Tlokwe and Ventersdorp into one municiplaity.

The Tlokwe community cannot be held responsible for bailing out a town that is down on its knees due to consistent mismanagement and poor revenue collection facilities. To My opinion, Tlokwe Municiplaity cannot afford to tap into its investments in order to help another municipality get on its feet. Tlokwe will have to use at least 23 percent of their investments to pay Ventersdorp's Eskom account.

The Democratic Alliance would request Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan (then Minister of Finance) to pay the amount owed to Eskom from the Ventersdorp municipality's equitable share. The Democratic Alliance opposed the merger of Tlokwe and Ventersdorp stating it would be a financial burden to Potchefstroom ratepayers. The party approached the court in an attempt to stop the merger but lost.

The South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) called on municipalities to settle Eskom debts to avoid interruption of bulk electricity supply. The Communities should not be victimised or suffer inconvenience caused either by alleged maladministration or failure of municipalities to settle outstanding debts due to Eskom. Implementing regulated interruptions and disconnections will leave consumers with no option but to demand direct electricity sales from Eskom to eliminate the risk associated with purchase of electricity through municipalities.The Madibeng local municipality would be able to settle its electricity debt amounting to R22 Million.

The merger of Tlokwe (Potchefstroom) and Ventersdorp was said to be politically motivated. It [was] aimed to prevent the Democratic Alliance from gaining a majority in Potchefstroom during the 2016 election. Ventersdorp would be a financial burden on Potchefstroom tax payers if the merger was to be implemented.

The Ventersdorp municipality has been stripped by the ruling party during the 2016/2017 financial year. Their collection rate was almost non-existent and they were virtually bankrupt with no cash reserves [and] with an outstanding debt of R40 million. The Democratic Alliance therefore opposed this move through every and all legal means Indications were strongly laid out that the Democratic Alliance would triumph in Potchefstroom in the 2016 municipal election. An aim of stopping the ANC from gaining 50 percent of the vote was on the cards. The Democratic Alliance would take control of the municipality again. The Democratic Alliance controlled Tlokwe for seven months in 2013, after Annette Combrink was voted in as the mayor. The African National Congress (ANC) had won Tlokwe through local government elections in 2011, but the Democratic Alliance-led coalition of opposition parties took charge in June 2013, after some ANC councillors participated in voting out former mayor Maphetle Maphetle by a motion of no confidence. The party Democratic Alliance had a track record of excellent, clean governance and brought positive change while they were governing Tlokwe for seven months. (Then) Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Pravin Gordhan said a third of all municipalities were not financially viable and another third was at risk, hence his proposals for redetermining municipal boundaries – which would possibly see some municipalities be disestablished.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcLwmTrnOYM

DISSERTATION MODEL PRESENTATION OF MR MOGAU MPHAHLELE (POLICY ADVISOR OF JB MARKS LOCAL MUNICIPALITY) FOR MR KGOTSO KHUMALO (MAYOR OF THE JB MARKS LOCAL MUNICIPALITY - POLITICAL HEAD) AND MR CYRIL P. HENRY (ACTING MUNICIPAL MANAGER - ADMINISTRATIVE HEAD)

a)  The rational evidence-informed model can be applied towards analysing and assessing the development of policy content in the JB Marks municipality. This model is based upon the assumption that the policy makers must make an effort to identify in a very systematic way and as comprehensively as possible a range of alternative policy. The model will initially provide the municipality with:

1. DATA INPUT OF JB MARKS LOCAL MUNICIPALITY

It provides full details regarding values, wants, demands, problems, and resources

2. OPTIONS ANALYSIS OF JB MARKS LOCAL MUNICIPALITY

Goal determination: assigning weights to values; alternative courses of action

3. POLICY OUTPUT OF JB MARKS LOCAL MUNICIPALITY

Selection of policy with highest output and lowest input

4. ASSESSMENT OF JB MARKS LOCAL MUNICIPALITY

Calculation of costs and benfits of each alternative; priority determination

b) The elite/mass interaction model will best be appropriate for the model analysing and assessing policy making stakeholders. The merging of Tlokwe (Potchefstrrom and Ventersdorp is said to be politically motivated and this was pioneered by an elite group of the governing party. The elite/mass interaction model is based on the assumption that a small elite group (usually government) is soley responsible for policy decisions and that this group govern an ill-informed public (the masses). Policy decisions made y the elite flow down-ward to the population at large and are executed by the bureaucracy.

The elite/mass model contends that a policy-making and policy-executing elite is able to act in an environment characterised by apathy and information distortion, and thereby to govern a largely passive mass of people. Elites share a common interest/values that differentiate them from the masses, and prevailing public policies reflect elite values, which are dedicated to preserving the status quo.

c) Public policy comprises of a programme of action by government to try to improve a current situation that is not acceptable. It is important for Mr Kgotso and Mr Cyril Henry to engineer an agenda setting that would explain the most appropriate, rational policy response. JB Marks municipality has the role to lay out improvement goals and objectives in order to develop policy programmes, project content, and strategies to achieve those goals and objectives of merging. These policy programmes and projects are supposed to transform the current, unnacceptable status quo into a more acceptable or desired future siutation. A model that can be applied towards the merger of Potchefstroom and Ventersdorp municipality into JB Marks can be the Kingdon's policy streams model also known as the Theory of Change (ToC).

Theory of Change is an ongoing process of reflection to explore change and how it happens. It has the following responsibilities:

• It locates a programme or project within a wider analysis of how change comes about,
• It draws on external learning about development and how change happens after different levels.
• It articulates an understanding of change, but also challenges and opens it up.
• It acknowledges the complexity of change: the wider systems and actors that influence.
• it is often presented in diagrammatic form with an accompanying narrative summary.

Theory of Change comprise different combinations of "subjective", normative beliefs, values and principles as well as objective facts and figures that constitute emperical evidence to substantiate the assumptions and proposals for specific types of interventions. In order for the application of this model, there needs to be a specific, fundamental theoretical and practical understanding of the social problem to be addressed.

The model of Kindon's will thus have an intermediate attempt to describe, explain or predict activities and changes at community, regional or sectoral levels. It will include alternative or competing explanations and proposals for very specific policy, programme or strategies. With the implementation of this model towards he merger, it will aim to:

• Develop a stable, vibrant and sustainable communities
• Improve community participation in municipal service delivery
• alleviate poverty with the communities of Potchefstroom and Ventersdorp
• reduce crime in the communities
• improve regional economic development
• improve regional public health conditions
• maximise agricultural harvests
• improve educational literacy levels of both Geographical Areas
• stimulate optimal economic growth
• protect and manage the environment within and without the Potchefstroom and Ventersdorp area

Benefits of applying this model within the municipality of JB Marks

• Well a clear and testable hypothesis about how change will occur that encourages learning and innovation and enables the municipality to demonstrate accountability for results.
• It will provide a visual presentation of the change you want to see in the municipality and how you expect it to come about.
• It is a powerful communication tool to capture the complexity of the municipality's initiative.
• Serves as a justification for developing organisational capabilities of the municipality.
• Serves as an agreement clause among stakeholders about what defines success in the municipal area and what is takes to get there.
• The Kingdon's model will provide a clear framework for developing the Municipality's strategies in regards of the merger and a blueprint for monitoring the performance of the municipalities with constituents due to measurable indicators of success.

What is a model? How do you invent one? What are some common models in the social science and Public Policy? How do you apply them in new situation? What makes a good model? This blog attempts to answer such questions by engaging the reader in the process of invention. By the end of this Blog, I will have presented enough examples of models to make a definition superfluous. At the outset, however, I begin with an inelegant characterization:

A model is a simplified picture of a part of the real world. It has some of the characteristics of the real world, but not all of them. It is a set of interrelated guesses about the world. Like all pictures, a model is simpler than the phenomena it is supposed to represent or explain.

A scientific model is a causal explanation of how variables interact to produce a phenomenon, usually lineally organized.  A model is almost always an oversimplified map consisting of a few, primary variables that will be tracked, measured, and perhaps controlled for experimentation.  A model is used to create various hypotheses, which can be used to test in a laboratory study, or which can be used for explanatory purposes in a case study.  There has been a debate over the validity of casual, linear models in the social sciences (e.g. are they even possible due to the epistemological problem of the generalization of human behavior), but models are generally straightforwardly accepted as an important methodological tool in the physical sciences

 

In everyday use, the word "theory" often means an untested hunch, or a guess without supporting evidence. But for scientists, a theory has nearly the opposite meaning. A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts. The theory of gravitation, for instance, explains why apples fall from trees and astronauts float in space. Similarly, the theory of evolution explains why so many plants and animals--some very similar and some very different--exist on Earth now and in the past, as revealed by the fossil record.

 

Theory in general as defined by Kerlinger (1986) “ is a set of interrelated constructs

(concepts), definitions, and propositions that present a systematic view of phenomena by specifying relations among variables with the purpose of explaining and predicting

phenomena.” (p. 9). Behaviorism, Progressivism, Developmentalism and ... are some theories in education. Models are practical guidance for realization theories. for example Ralf Tyler Model in the context of Behaviourism or Hilda Tabba.  Strategies can be viewed as a set of techniques and procedures in models. 

 

Why is theory Important

Theory provides concepts to name what we observe and to explain relationships between concepts. Theory allows us to explain what we see and to figure out how to bring about change. Theory is a tool that enables us to identify a problem and to plan a means for altering the situation.

2. Theory is to justify reimbursement to get funding and support - need to explain what is being done and demonstrate that it works - theory and research

3. Theory is to enhance the growth of the professional area to identify a body of knowledge with theories from both within and with out the area of distance learning. That body of knowledge grows with theory and research. Theory guides research.

4. The theory also helps us understand what we don't know and, therefore, is the only guide to research. Relating to theory, it increases its ability to solve other problems in different times and different places.

Mphahlele, M: 28102789