The Draft White Paper on Local Government (WPLG), currently open for public comment, offers a historic opportunity to reshape South Africa’s local governance system.
Volume 21, Issue 2, May 2026 [Special Issue on the White Paper on Local Government]
The Draft White Paper on Local Government argues that the two-tier system of local government does not serve South Africa well.
A central thrust of the Draft White Paper on Local Government is to strengthen intergovernmental cooperation to advance local governance and development.
This article examines the proposals introduced in Chapter 3 of the Draft White Paper on cooperative governance, intergovernmental relations, and planning for collective impact.
The Constitution provides that national, provincial and local government are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated.
The Draft White Paper on Local Government seeks to undertake a major overhaul of the system of local government, which includes strengthening the Codes of Conduct. The purpose of this article is to comment on the proposals put forward to achieve this objective.
In Chapter 2, the Draft White Paper proposes a differentiated approach to the powers of municipalities.
“Consequence management” has become a familiar phrase within South African governance discourse. It is repeatedly invoked in response to corruption, maladministration, audit failures, and service delivery collapse.
Chapter 8 of the Draft White Paper on Local Government identifies several important challenges affecting municipal financial sustainability.
According to the Draft White Paper on Local Government, "transparency is too often reactive. Communities struggle to access, ahead of time, basic information about budgets, projects, contracts, land-use decisions, audit findings, and disciplinary outcomes."
The central policy shift in the Draft White Paper on Local Government is to move from loosely defined consultation and participation arrangements toward structured, enforceable partnerships between municipalities and traditional and Khoi-San leadership institutions, grounded in local government functionality and democratic accountability.
