Integrated development planning as a strategy for poverty alleviation: the dilemma within the ambit of South Africa

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether integrated development planning can be used as strategy for poverty alleviation at the local level. This paper first appraises the unsurpassed concerted and planning exertions of the preceding, whilst poverty on the other hand is still declared as a devastating phenomenon that endure manifest in different ways and further culminates and demoralises precipitously the well-being of the local communities. Worth noting is the fact that contemporary poverty reduction strategies diverges from the usual rhetoric in the poverty discourse as contrary to putting forwards the fundamental of what the local communities through the integrated development planning would consider as an appropriate response to the daunting and an alarming issue of comprehensively addressing poverty as a multi-dimensional and a nebulous concept. This paper therefore, put forward the argument that there is a cognitive convergence to the notion that the efforts of the technocentric and macro-level development thinking did not respond positively towards the attainment and transformation of people lives. Therefore, the latter signals a shift of the planning trajectory to more of a micro-level participatory approach. Continuously, the South African government is envisaged to be developmental in nature with the purpose to overcome the unprecedented planning practices of the past and contemporarily focuses on putting the interest of the local people at the forefront of any development planning initiatives. It is therefore, against this backdrop that various policy prescripts have been put in place which includes inter alia: Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, 32 of 2000 and the Local Government Structures Act, 117 of 1998 in which they all support and aid the alleviation of poverty on the local sphere of government. The formulation and the implementation of integrated development planning as a distinctive local government initiative aid to assist municipalities to alleviate poverty at the local level.