Communication tools used by municipalities to communicate with external stakeholders : a case of King Sabatha Dalindyebo Municipality (KSD)

Abstract

South Africa has experienced an increase in service delivery protests during the last decades. Ineffective communication tools are considered, inter alia, the factors fuelling these protests. The most important function of this study is to assess the effectiveness of communication tools used by King Sabatha Dalindyebo Municipality (KSDM) in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa. This study employed a mixed methods approach whereby a structured questionnaire was distributed to KSDM external stakeholders and an interview was conducted with the KSDM Communications Officer. The structured questionnaire was distributed to a 434 households; all the questionnaires were returned, leading to a response rate of 100%, and a sample size of 434. The Cronbach’s alpha score of the test items was 0.979 which exceeds the recommended Cronbach’s alpha of 0.700, indicating high reliability and internal consistency. Interpretation of findings in this study revealed that 32% of respondents felt that council meetings were the most common channel used by the community to communicate with the municipality, while the municipal website was hardly utilised (0.2%). Managerial implications for municipal communication managers is ongoing evaluation of the relationship of the municipality’s communications with the public. The study contributes to the field of academia regarding effective communication in municipalities and improving the municipal effectiveness of policy-making processes in community interventions