Youth development performance management in municipalities : a Nkangala District Municipality case study

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Like in many developing countries, youth development in South Africa is advancing towards becoming the central focus of government. The population figures illustrate a demographic dividend, or youth bulge as others would want to call it. A more pragmatic and aggressive approach to youth development for South Africa has never been more urgent than now. Municipalities by design are at the grassroots and the gateway for providing direct development interventions to the masses of the peoples of South Africa. Most of the municipalities in the country have started to take up this responsibility. There is, however, evidence that success in implementing youth development programmes is limited, owing mainly to the lack of performance management application at the local government level.This study is intended to explore a research problem defined as follows: 'The absence of a tailor-made performance management for youth development leads to limited or no achievement of the set targets for youth development.The study is started by exploring the literature on both the underlying areas of the study: youth development and performance management. Though youth development is a fairly new area, there has been progress in defining and conceptualizing both performance management and youth development in South Africa. Youth and youth development are defined respectively as young people between 14 and 35 years of age, and deliberate interventions to enable the youth to participate in the socio-economic wellbeing of the country and the world. Performance management is further defined as the process towards ensuring there is a concerted effort in the implementation of the predetermined plans.The researcher opted for the case study approach, using Nkangala District Municipality (NDM) as the case to explore the extent to which municipalities apply the prescripts and principles of performance management to the youth development programmes. The study sought to establish whether municipalities have performance management frameworks and systems, whether youth development matters are included and whether there are specific youth development performance measures in place. The literature shows that there is extensive work done on the area of performance management in local government in South Africa. The legislation compels all municipalities to have performance management systems and frameworks in place and adopted by the councils. The document review shows that in Nkangala District Municipality there is still a need to trickle down the application of the systems and framework. There is a need to ensure that youth development is included in the performance management process.Evidence from the study shows that there are still gaps to be addressed in as far as the district is concerned. Their application of the performance management framework and systems still needs to be cascaded to all staff members; the application must still be applied to youth development programme and youth development units. There is a need to align municipal planning with youth development. Youth participation still remains a challenge throughout the process of planning, implementation and reporting.Municipalities are suffering from attitudes that suggest that youths are simply recipients of hand-out products and services. Finally, the study suggest a Youth Development Performance Management Framework which will also integrate youth participation, monitoring and evaluation.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University