Strangulation of Local Government

This paper argues that the sheer volume, style, nature and scope of the legislative framework for local government impedes the achievement of local government’s developmental mandate. The legal regime is impeding two key values of decentralisation, namely that municipalities are best placed to gauge community needs and secondly, that they should be sites of innovation and creativity in formulating localised responses to meeting those needs. It is argued that the current plethora of laws may be guilty of strangulating local government, preventing it from executing its developmental mandate.