Prof Jaap de Visser delivers a lecture on local government in Ethiopia

The director of the Community Law Centre, Prof Jaap de Visser lectured a group of honours and LLM students on the place of local government in the South African system of multilevel government at the Ethiopian Civil Service College in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia yesterday (7 November 2013).

His lecture looked the history of local government in South Africa, the constitutional and legal framework, conflict in local government (including service delivery protests) and the challenges surrounding improving the capability of the local public service and intergovernmental relations.

The students took a keen interest in the lecture and were particularly interested in South Africa's ambivalent attitude towards federalism, given the fact that the Constitution displays federal elements. The intersection between service delivery protests and xenophobic violence also featured prominently, presumably because immigrants from the Horn of Africa have been targeted by xenophobic violence.

The mandate of the Ethiopian Civil Service College is to build capacity in the Ethiopian civil service. The students are all full-time civil servants from all over Ethiopia that have been granted study leave to pursue in-residence studies at the College.