Voices It’s time to practise Batho PeleWhen, in 1997, the government launched the Batho Pele – People First – initiative to transform public service efficacy and effectiveness, the citizenry’s expectations were raised but then morphed into huge disillusionment. The Batho Pele slogan became a tardy rhetoric with dire consequences, largely manifested in shoddy governance and municipality underperformances. When South Africa became a democracy in 1994, we recommitted to usher in selfless delivery of public services underpinned by the Batho Pele approach. As citizenry, we are equally complicit in the degradation of municipality governance and services. Reframing consequence management approaches to mitigate accountability lapses will create a conducive environment for engaging municipalities as key levers of governance.

Source: News 24 February 21, 2019 23:26 UTC