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Issue Nineteen - May 2011 - Making Local Gavernment Work

Francis Antonie, Director of the Helen Suzman Foundation and Chair for the evening, began by noting that as the evening’s roundtable takes place on the eve of the Municipal Elections, questions around the efficiency, effectiveness and the role of local government are up for discussion. He laid the foundation for the discussion by outlining several questions to frame the debate. These included questions around the capacity of local government, funding issues, the appropriateness of the structures of local government for dealing with corruption, and the susceptibility of the administrative structures to pressures from economic and political elites. He ended by posing the question, “Have we not set local government up for failure?”