THE STUDY AREA AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
at 30 June 2013
4.2.2.2. Background to eThekwini Municipality’s strategic planning process
Robinson (2007: 4), in her commentary on Durban’s visioning process, makes the point that
“eThekwini, on many criteria South Africa's second city, routinely falls off the map of urban studies, and specifically of global and world cities (GAWC) analyses”. The reason for eThekwini Municipality’s exclusion, Robinson (2007) postulates, is due to a predominant way of viewing cities which has dominated urban analysis over the last twenty years. With the growing importance of globalization projects, and encouraged by both business and policy-makers; scholars of cities, Robinson (2007) further argues, have come to privilege the global outreach of cities, especially those that are part of certain selected trans-urban networks. What is refreshing about the conceptual approach of Robinson (2007), Smith (2001) and Amin and Graham (1997) is their alternate way of looking at cities as ordinary. Useful too, is their focus not just on the city’s specialization, but on its diversity, and more importantly tracking networks beyond the physical place of the city to include engaging with the very diverse socio-economic aspects of the city.
The details of eThekwini Municipality’s approach to strategic planning is well documented in two of its publications, Making City Strategy Come Alive (eThekwini Municipality, 2004) and The Power of Imagination (eThekwini Municipality, 2011a). From these publications, it can be argued that this aspect of engaging and even celebrating diversity, allowing for different voices in the city to be heard, and acknowledging competing interests in a visioning process is one of the defining characteristics of the eThekwini Municipality’s strategic planning approach. According to the eThekwini Municipality, its explicit intention was to develop a visionary plan aimed particularly at “inspiring citizens, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), business and government to work together to achieve long-term goals” (eThekwini Municipality, 2009: 3). This is an interesting starting point that sees citizen involvement not as part of a consultative process where the Council itself is seen as the driver of a plan that merely requires the buy-in from its stakeholders.
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The thinking behind its participatory approach to development, it is argued, is embedded in its complete redefinition of the goal of the entire organization in as early as 2001. According to Dlamini and Moodley (2002: 7), a new purpose statement for the eThekwini Municipality was crafted, in which “a new understanding of people being the focus of local government’s existence was developed”. What has inspired many other cities about the eThekwini approach is its design of a “single holistic process that moves from strategic and visionary statements of intent, through to a process that combines planning and budgeting for development, through to implementation and evaluation” (Dlamini & Moodley, 2002: 7).
As depicted in Figure 4.3 below, the strategic planning approach focuses on a clear separation of what is strategic from what are more operational issues. The planning process commences with the determination of a long-term vision initially set out for 20 years in the eThekwini Municipality’s (2001) Long-Term Development Framework (LTDF), and then reworked to longer timeframes to achieve longer term outcomes of up to 60 – 80 years and contained in its Imagine Durban Long-Term Plan (eThekwini Municipality, 2009). The strategic priorities for five years are informed by a detailed needs assessment process where engagements are done with the community, business and other city-wide stakeholders. The emerging strategic focus areas then inform the strategic budget allocation of the municipality which drives the operational Council programs and projects. The entire process is cyclical with monitoring and evaluation processes built into the system.
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Figure 4.3: The eThekwini Model: A single holistic developmental management approach (Dlamini & Moodley, 2002: 8) STRATEGIC
OPERATIONAL
Filters:
• Spatial Development Framework and technical assessment
• Community Needs Assessment process STRATEGIC BUDGET
ALLOCATION to 4 block sums and strategic
splits therein
Strategic Issues within each Focus Area Business
Residential Strategic platform
Operational
1st Level 2nd Level
MONITORING and EVALUATION
IMPLEMENTATION (Overseen by Sub councils)
EXCO AND COUNCIL APPROVAL OF PRIORITIZED PROJECTS
PROJECT AND PROGRAM PRIORITIZATION
• Implementers, customers and Councillors determine how to spend
what is allocated
(informed by the Community Needs Assessment process)
STRATEGIC PRIORITIES FOR 5 YEARS NEEDS ASSESSMENT PROCESS
• community • business
• city-wide
LONG-TERM DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK
(LTDF)
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This longer term planning process directly informs its medium-term planning process that sets out its strategic priorities for five years, as articulated in each of its IDPs prepared over the longer term. This persistent adherence to the translation from vision to action appears to remain a recurrent theme. This is evident even in the eThekwini Municipality’s (2014a: 80) latest revised IDP that reiterates the eThekwini Municipality’s “commitment to developing a ‘caring and liveable city’ will be the focal point of the 2012/13 – 2016/17 IDP, with a specific emphasis on the alignment of the Municipal Vision, strategy and implementation”.
In contrasting Johannesburg’s 2030 planning initiative with Durban’s LTDF and IDP process, Robinson (2007: 9) again acknowledges the bottom-up approach of Durban, observing that Durban’s strategic planning process was shaped by a strong participatory approach, part of which actually involved “adjusting budget splits - the proportion to be spent on different council priorities”. Beyond its ability to translate vision into implementable action, some of the other unique characteristics of the strategic planning process included the “fostering of partnerships with key stakeholders in the community in order to develop strong ties of trust, engaging political leadership, working with schoolchildren, taking risks and experimenting and embracing new opportunities” (eThekwini Municipality, 2011: 18-28). These factors are important to highlight here, as the eThekwini Municipality’s narrative of a participatory long-term planning process is what forms the basis of learning and mentorship with the Namibian and Malawian cities, as will be explored in the next chapter.
In this section, a short summary of the eThekwini Municipality profile and the defining characteristics of its strategic planning process have been provided. In the next section, more details on the background to Mzuzu City and its strategic planning process are given. Whilst both cities in this case study are grappling with complex sets of urbanization challenges, most notable in a comparison of the cities is the contrast between the size and complexity of the challenges.
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