City Management, Civil Service
Overcoming corruption, Making services accessible, Organizing a municipal center of government, Revenue generation, Managing Diversity, Depoliticization, Sequencing Reform, Corruption in the Civil Service, Performance Management System, Downsizing, Delivering Services
Case Studies
Michael Woldemariam
infrastructure, revenue, performance management, coalition building, decision-making framework
Abstract
In March 2006, the Democratic Alliance won elections in the city of Cape Town, taking over administrative and political control of the municipality following four years of rule by the African National Congress, South Africa’s dominant party. Helen Zille, Cape Town’s new mayor, stepped into a difficult situation. Crumbling infrastructure had eroded service delivery for years, undermining public confidence in the city government and jeopardizing the long-term economic prospects of the Cape Town metropolitan area. Lacking the revenue and administrative capacity to address Cape Town’s infrastructure crisis, and facing a politically charged racial climate, Zille and her Democratic Alliance government initiated a package of innovative and far-reaching reforms. This case study recounts these efforts from 2006 to 2009, and describes how tough decisions to raise local revenue interacted with a program to stabilize an underskilled and demoralized city bureaucracy, reversing Cape Town’s precipitous decline.
Michael Woldemariam compiled this policy note on the basis of interviews conducted in Cape Town, South Africa, in March 2011. Ayenat Mersie, Sam Scott and Jennifer Widner provided assistance. Case published July 2011.
