When government intervention fails to fix dysfunction, what happens next? 
 

Authors:

YT Fessha, L Draga & J De Visser
 

Summary: 

The Constitution of South Africa gives senior levels of government the authority to intervene in the powers and functioning of lower levels of government, with the aim of allowing those levels of government to deal with and correct dysfunctionality and bad performance at lower levels of government. This article discusses the law and politics of intervention in South Africa, exploring both the grounds for intervention and the procedural safeguards that the Constitution provides to protect lower levels of government from unwarranted intervention. Although there has been an alarming rate of intervention, this article argues that this rate is not surprising given the level of dysfunctionality that has plagued lower levels of government. The troubling truth about interventions in South Africa, the article concludes, is that in many cases the governments that have been subjected to intervention come out of it in a worse shape than they were in.


Link to Book chapter