cities

While these dynamics are critical aspects of governance, addressing social exclusion and ensuring
accountability requires stronger collaboration with local communities and stakeholders (Heller, 2015).
Evidence of effective and transformative city governance might include the following:
• Institutional arrangements (formal and informal, and public and private) that collaborate to
provide the optimum conditions for economic growth and social development. This may include,
for example, IDP processes, as well as spatial development plans.
• The will to push through development and modernisation projects aimed at lifting the widest
number of people out of the poverty in the quickest time. Political and public leaders must be
seen as accountable for driving development that favours the poor.
• Pragmatic governing strategies that promote city, rather than factional, ethnic or patronage,
interests. Honesty, merit and hard work are key pillars of governance.
• An effective bureaucracy with low levels of corruption and a strong sense of accountability.
Sufficient administrative, technical and economic capacity and competence exist to set goals and
implement policies.
• Long-term development plans that have broad public and stakeholder legitimacy linked to
well-established coordinating, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
• Strong anti-corruption and oversight measures to ensure that the city is able to resist being
captured by special interests, supported by dynamic stakeholder and government alliances.
• Public participation based on a reciprocal relationship between the city and its communities that
leads to negotiated agreements on priorities and publicly valuable outcomes.
• IGR and devolutions that support the autonomy of cities and ensure that developmental
mandates are met.
• Fiscal independence evident in an ability to manage revenue generation and debt, comply with
Treasury regulations, report and achieve clean audits.
Williams (2000: 175) argues that socio-spatial transformation is layered with complexities that are
linked to the quality and focus of governance in cities:
If it is true that urban transformation is aimed at fundamental change in South African cities, it
should be reasonably obvious that all forms of government, at all levels of society, should
experience similar change in order to foster and sustain democratic practice (the substance of
urban transformation).
Social and spatial transformation (an important outcome of good governance and explained in detail
in Chapter 2) requires institutional transformation, a shifting of political and power relations, and
specific management and technical capacities (Williams, 2000).
Figure 6.4 represents graphically the governing strategies that support social and spatial transformation,
clustered into three broad categories: development and delivery, institutional and operational
capability, and coordination and participation. These categories echo Williams’ requirements of
institutional change, democratic and inclusive politics, and integrated planning. In this understanding,
well-governed cities are integrated, inclusive, productive and sustainable. To achieve this will require
governance practices that are democratic, equal and developmental.
208 State of South African Cities Report 2016