The Local Government Turnaround Strategy, recently adopted by Cabinet, identifies the need for strengthened community oversight and monitoring over service delivery projects. It also calls for interventions to deepen People-Centered Government through greater powers and responsibilities for ward committees. Community based planning (CBP) is crucial to the development of ward plans.

Some of the key intervention and focus areas in the new Local Government Turnaround Strategy (LoGTAS), as adopted by cabinet, are:

• Better planning and oversight over local service delivery - through a ‘Social Compact’ where information emerging from the ward is generated by the people and is incorporated into the new Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) with the people. This leads to changed IDPs with strengthened community oversight and monitoring over service delivery projects
• Improved governance - where ‘People-Centered Government’ includes (amongst other things) greater powers and responsibilities through ward committees, and direct community oversight of development projects

To ensure the success of this strategy, proper participatory planning is needed at ward levels, nationally.  Khanya-aicdd  have internationally and nationally pioneered and implemented  'Community-based Planning (CBP)'  as an approach to development planning. This approach is crucial to the development of ward plans.

What is Community based planning?

The Municipal Systems Act 2000 (South Africa) introduced the process of municipal planning for district and local munipalities and the Integrated Development Planning (IDP) Process, through which Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) are developed.

Community-based planning (CBP) was developed for the National Department of Provincial and Local Government (now CoGTA) and the South African Local Government Association, among others, is a specific form of ward planning involving all people in a ward which has been designed to promote community action and make the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) of a municipal area more people-centered.

It is an intensive process and it can lead to a stronger Social Compact between the people and the municipality, with communities claiming their rights but also exercising their responsibilities for their own areas, in a spirit of voluntarism.

What will Khanya-aicdd offer?

• Increased capacity for Community-development workers through accredited training on how to lead and facilitate community-based planning processes;
• Support to actively generating ward plans and linking them to the IDP, complemented with hands-on assistance for trained personnel, as specified in LGTAS;
• Support towards developing local economic development projects and products at Ward level, as indicated in LGTAS, and
• Preparing house-hold level profiles at ward level.

Contact Us

For more information about Community based planning or to discuss how we can assist you please call Masebotsa Lesoli or Sam Chimbuya on +27 (0)51 430 0712, fax +27 (0) 430 8322 or send an email to capdev@khanya-aicdd.org requesting for more information.

CBP Work Undertaken