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Local government is the second or third tier of government deliberately created to bring government to the grassroots population, as well as give its members a sense of involvement in the political process that controls their daily lives. Decentralization is a natural indispensable counterpart to pluralistic democracy, i.e. it extends the work of democracy and fulfils democratic aspirations. Consequently, any political reform aimed at democratizing institutions, will only be effective if it is accompanied by far‐reaching administrative reforms which effectively redistribute power. In South Africa’s political circumstances as a country of almost 40 million, constituted of heterogeneous cultural and political groups, the need for effective decentralized democratic local government as a vehicle for development and national integration is imperative. The current interim constitution reflects a certain degree of decentralization. It exhibits a highly visible effort and a bold move towards full autonomy. The country currently has nine provinces and approximately 700 transitional non‐racial local authorities. The November 1995 and May/June 1996 local government elections was a watershed in political history and was the last chapter in the democratization of the South African State. The relationship between central, provisional and local authorities has been debated and the view is that elected officials must wield real power and the State wishes to protect local government. Details powers, functions and structures of local government will be defined in terms of provincial legislation. However, although local governments are creatures of provincial legislation and provisional government will exercise control over them, they will still have a reasonable amount of autonomy. The process has therefore been underway to determine the constitutional and legal position of local government in relation to central and provincial government. An important issue was the possible devolution of powers and functions to local government. The State is nurturing a co‐operative system where measures to harmonize relations between central, provincial and local governments are encouraged and promoted. The new South African State as defined by the new Constitution will be highly centralized as provincial power over local government is limited. Central government’s legislative competence over local government is strengthened as the former must determine the appropriate fiscal powers and functions of each category of local government. However, the final analysis, the purpose of the Constitution should not be forgotten. It is intended to define the basic rules in terms of which the country should be governed. The Constitution proposes the idea of recognizing distinct “spheres” of government as opposed to “levels” of government. The implication of this is that one tier of government is not inferior to the other. Each sphere of government is given definite responsibilities on which the other spheres are not allowed to encroach.

This study aims to analyze major concerns facing the Palestinian local governments in order to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency in managing local governments.

A special questionnaire was developed to collect the perception of the municipalities' officials; thus qualitative data analysis has been done to analyze the answers.

The study found that the efficiency of local government is still limited in the Palestinian municipalities, including the absence of an internal auditor, the absence of written job descriptions for municipality functions, the weakness participation of the public. The study pointed out that the major‐managerial problems are similar to other experiences of emerging countries such as the undefined local‐central relation, the low participation and involvement of citizens in municipalities' activities and plans, and the lack of existing transparency aspects.

There is a need for open public‐official sessions of municipal councils and the need for periodical meetings for senior officials with the Mayer of the municipality; in addition, there is a need to conduct annual periodical evaluation for measuring the performance of municipal employees.

This paper presented the features of the local‐government performance in Palestine in order to enhance the management efficiency of local governments and enhance the contribution of the related groups of communities.

Based on classroom learnings from a course lesson on de/coloniality of African and Black diasporas in higher education at a small private historically, predominantly white university in the rural United States, this chapter is an invitation to critically and meaningfully engage with our own higher education institutions (HEIs) as ideal laboratories for individual, community, and institutional transformation. Engaging in a university scavenger hunt, co-designed by faculty and students, various meanings, and implications of ‘decoloniality’ and ‘decolonisation’ within contexts of higher education are interrogated and reimagined through individual and collective counternarratives in the shape of a Black feminist decolonial ‘archive’. This archive challenges and reimagines narratives in/visibilised in the university’s current archival records, which are characterised by anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, colonial innocence, and white supremacy. This chapter focuses on un/learning varying (de)colonial and decolonising worldviews of HEIs and academia through participatory narrative and archival reproduction.

The purpose of the chapter was to examine the impact of customer care chatbots on customer satisfaction levels in the mobile telephony industry in Zimbabwe, with a special focus on the company Econet Wireless. This chapter shows the conceptual framework used. An online questionnaire was administered to a sample of 100 Econet Wireless subscribers who were selected using probability stratified random sampling from Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces. The research data were collected and analysed for correlation, and a multiple regression analysis was carried out to identify the relationship between customer satisfaction and the three customer service improvements brought in by the introduction of customer service chatbots. The study discovered that there is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction levels and each of the three customer service improvements brought in by customer service chatbots, namely customer service convenience, speed of response, and omnichannel strategies. This study thereby proves that the introduction of customer service chatbots in the mobile telephony industry in Zimbabwe can lead to an improvement in customer satisfaction levels. However, addressing service quality only as a determinant of customer satisfaction in isolation is not sufficient to fully improve customer satisfaction levels. Therefore, organisations that seek to improve their customer satisfaction should consider strategies that address all determinants of customer satisfaction, namely price, product quality, service quality, situational factors, and personal factors. This study contributes to the body of knowledge, particularly regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for customer service in developing economies.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how North Western University (NWU) Library used Facebook and Twitter to inform, educate and communicate with library users during the students’ protests #FeesMustFall Campaign.

This paper follows a case study approach to examine how Facebook and Twitter were used to inform, educate and communicate with library users during the #FeesMustFall Campaign. Data was obtained from the NWU Library’s Facebook Insights, the Facebook page itself and Twitter account, after which content was analysed.

The paper provides insights that the teaching and learning (educational) aspect still lags behind on social media usage in libraries. Given the period in question, the expectation would have been a higher percentage of posts that could be categorized as educational.

The study is confined to one campus library of the NWU Libraries and the results cannot be generalised to the NWU.

Social media use policies should be developed and awareness created on their availability and meaning/implications to users.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how social media can be used by academic libraries. The literature currently focuses on how Twitter has been used in library campaigns. This paper shows how Facebook can be used in a university setting during crises time.

The landscape of teaching, learning and research has changed requiring the need for diverse information resources. Given the current budgetary constraints and financial conditions prevailing in many universities, sharing of information resources has become a necessity. The Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services have thus become an important service to meet the immediate needs of library users. The aim of this paper is to analyse the ILL services of the North-West University in South Africa from 2006 to 2016. Using statistical data, the paper shows the emerging pattern in borrowing and lending between institutions as well as determines the existence of correlations between borrowing and lending libraries. The results of this study show that ILL amongst libraries has decreased in the past 11 years. A need exists for increased awareness of ILL and there is need for technological innovations that will ensure that library users are able to request for information resources seamlessly.

This is a quantitative study that uses ILL data from the North-West University. Data were downloaded from the SABINET ILL system using the three NWU JC codes. They were then collated and uploaded on excel spreadsheets. In the main, the excel spreadsheets were used to interpret the data. Further, the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, in particular Spearman’s Correlation Analysis, was used to test correlations between data from libraries that requested information resources from NWU and data from libraries that supplied information resources to NWU during this period using Rumsey’s guidelines to interpret the correlations.

The findings of the study reveal that ILL among libraries in South Africa had generally declined owing mostly to the proliferation of online resources resulting to changes in user information-seeking behaviour. The decline is despite the challenges of low budgets received by most libraries for the acquisition of information resources. It can also be concluded that public university libraries still value ILL as demonstrated by the high number of items requested from other libraries. The findings also reveal that most ILL activities were conducted by public universities.

It was not possible to obtain the list of titles that have been requested and also to obtain the user’s details. This would have enabled the authors to determine the type of titles that are being requested, and the users that request them.

ILL should continue to be enhanced in view of the challenge of dwindling library budgets against the escalating prices of information resources. There is also a need for user education so that they become aware of the ILL service. From experience, library users normally give up once they realize that what they wanted is not available through the local catalogue and this calls for librarians to create an awareness to users that ILL could help solve their frustrations.

These results show that ILL can play a significant role to level the playing field between the well-resourced libraries in urbanized regions or provinces and the poorly resourced ones in rural regions or provinces. This social justice aspect of ILL is probably the reason why better resourced libraries in South Africa have decided to remain in the scheme unlike other countries where better resourced libraries opted out of reciprocal arrangements with small and medium-sized institutions.

The study adds to a very limited number of studies emanating from Africa. A study of this nature has never been conducted in Africa, as previous studies were nationwide studies. As far as the authors know, this is the first study that uses ILL data to research the impact of the global financial crisis on libraries in Africa.

The Government of Eswatini (GoE) civil service wage bill has continued to rise in recent years. The personnel budget is still the largest single recurrent expenditure item in the budget in Eswatini. To control the civil service wage bill, the GoE introduced Lean Service Principle through Management Services Division (MSD). The civil service wage bill continues to rise despite the implementation of the Lean Service Principle. So far, there are no tangible outcomes that indicate that the principles applied have been effective in the reduction of the wage bill. Thus, this research aims to examine the question of why the Lean Service Principle failed to effectively slow the rampant growth of the civil service wage bill in the Kingdom of Eswatini. This study used the quantitative research approach to collect data on amounts spent on wages, the percentage increase of the wage bill for the period 2010–2017, and the percentage increase in the number of civil servants as per the Establishment Registers, 2010–2017. The study investigated the wage bill push factors, the shortcomings of the Lean Service Principle, and the Just-In-Time (JIT) Technique in the management and reduction of the GoE civil service wage bill. The study found the MSD has been applying the wrong methodologies in wage bill control, which has been evident in the continued yearly increase of the wage bill. The study recommends that the MSD should consider the utilisation of Human Resources Forecasting and Planning Techniques instead of using the Lean Service Principle and the JIT technique. This study will enable the Cabinet to make an appropriate decision on the mandate and future of the MSD, as there have been growing calls to disband the division due to the failure to reduce and/or control the wage bills as that is the core mandate of the division.

This paper aims to offer practical, data-led guidance for the decolonisation of marketing strategy, especially as it relates to customer engagement. It does so with an acute understanding of the constraints of brand legitimacy.

The findings of this paper are informed both by a conceptual unpacking of institutional, decolonisation and customer engagement literature, as well as an empirical methodology that presents an embedded single case study of a top-ranking banking brand, using in-depth qualitative interviews as well as content analyses of brand communications.

The paper examines the notion of institutional brand legitimacy alongside the decolonisation of customer engagement. It offers five empirically driven decisions that marketers must consider when they attempt to decolonise their customer engagement strategies. These revolve around a decolonised bottom-up approach; establishing new biases for customer insights; the management of opposing forces; being strategically transformative; and going beyond diversity.

A single brand case study is offered that uses a relatively small sample of interviewees and does not include customers of the brand. Further research is therefore needed to reflect other organisational contexts and stakeholders. Just so, the paper specifically looks at the ways in which decolonisation and institutional legitimacy intersect for customer engagement. Further studies that focus on other organisational concepts impacted by decolonisation would be thought-provoking.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical investigation that offers practical guidance for the decolonisation of marketing strategies – as it relates to customer engagement or any other facets of marketing.

This study aims to investigate the adoption of waste-to-energy (WtE) technologies in South Africa (SA), focusing on identifying the key drivers, barriers and potential solutions for commercial uptake. The ultimate aim is to propose an implementation framework that promotes renewable energy while reducing landfill reliance.

A systematic literature review (SLR) of papers published between 2020 and 2023 was conducted to identify factors impacting WtE adoption in SA. The conceptual model developed from the SLR was tested using a qualitative case study approach. Data was collected through 15 semi-structured interviews with commercial entities and WtE experts from four regions of SA.

Anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis are identified as the most suitable waste-to-energy technologies in the South African context. Among the financial challenges of WtE in SA, the availability of cheap coal, low landfill tariffs, high capital costs, funding constraints and regressive economic incentives are critical. The lack of government support, insufficient incentives, regulatory burdens, weak policies and limited innovation capacity are considerable non-financial barriers hindering WtE technologies’ growth. The successful adoption of renewable energy also requires adequate infrastructure, increased sustainability awareness and technical expertise.

Although the sample size is diverse and consists of a range of organisations, it may not capture the thoughts and experiences of other SA businesses in their entirety. It is important to note that the lack of existing research on the implementation, benefits and impacts of WtE technologies limits the authors’ ability to interpret and benchmark the findings of this study. Yet, this study contributes by developing an implementation framework to encourage WtE adoption, recommending policy actions such as regressive taxation on fossil fuels and landfills and promoting renewable energy through subsidies, awareness and energy credits.

This study provides a practical framework for businesses and policymakers to adopt WtE technologies by addressing key barriers. The research suggests that businesses could reduce waste management costs and generate new revenue streams by adopting anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis. Policymakers are encouraged to disincentivize landfills and promote WtE through financial incentives such as subsidies and energy credits. The implementation framework offers clear recommendations for integrating WtE into SA’s energy and waste management strategies, supporting both sustainability and economic goals.

The main social contribution is the potential for WtE adoption to improve waste management practices and generate new job opportunities within the renewable energy and waste sectors.

This study provides a novel contribution by developing an implementation framework tailored to SA’s unique regulatory, economic and social contexts. The research highlights the importance of aligning WtE adoption with sustainability goals, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and promoting renewable energy. The framework serves as a practical guide for policymakers, businesses and industry leaders seeking to implement sustainable waste management solutions in SA.