Exploring Water Service Delivery by Leveraging Strategic Leadership and Social Cohesion: A Case of KwaZulu-Natal Municipality

This article explores the challenges and constraints in water service delivery at the local municipality, which is the custodian of water service provision to the citizens. Integrating the water resources value chain, water resources design and infrastructure facility, with effective implementation of the operation and maintenance to the satisfaction of customers, is a major challenge for the policy-makers and practitioners who are the custodians on behalf of the customers and end-users. The objective of the study is to unlock the complexities and constraints that are confronting the effectiveness and seamless delivery of this strategic commodity for both economic prosperity and civil society contentment. The methodology selected was interpretivist, which encapsulates the unobtrusive hard empirical data contribution by the research participants. The results and key findings indicate an avalanche of behavioural and action-oriented misdemeanours that could be attributed to the root causes of the dissatisfaction from the customers of the water service delivery as a public good. The result further signified that there needs to be addressed. lack of institutional gravitas and the explicit abdication, as well as the dereliction of honouring the execution that the practitioners and the direct stakeholders are mandated to perform, as another major constraint and impediment.