An Evaluation of the Effectiveness and Impact of the Executive Management Committee of eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality

All municipalities (257) in South Africa have Executive Management Committees that are called different names and the main objective and authority of these committees is to support the municipal manager in discharging his or her fiduciary duties as per applicable legislation in local government administration and management. These committees are meant to discuss and take decisions on strategic issues of the municipality which span across all functions of the municipality. They are therefore expected to focus on transversal coordinated functioning of the municipality as a whole rather than just focusing on the functions of different departments. More often than not is the fact that some Executive Management Committees become a platform where executives defend their departments’ or directorates’ performance and relay their departmental frustrations to the municipal manager to the detriment of the strategic focus which will help improve performance of the municipality to deliver services better. More often than not different executives are blamed for silo mentalities and this is an existential reality in many municipalities. There is also a concern whether these executives really have time to digest and process issues properly in these meetings given the limited times they have in general since their schedules are always extremely tight. This then talks directly to the quality of decisions taken in these meetings and whether or not they do help municipalities to deliver services better to their communities. It is for these reasons that there must be periodical reviews and assessments of the effectiveness of these management committees. The study therefore evaluated the effectiveness and impact of the Executive Management Committee of eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality.