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The Journey to Transform Local Government is about the challenges and opportunities for municipalities in South Africa as they journey towards delivering on the promise of developmental local government. It deals with various issues on the continuum of local government transformation in South Africa, for example, what does Sustainable Development Goal 11 mean for a municipality? Given that good governance is essential for success, are municipalities implementing anti-corruption policies and are the Municipal Public Accounts Committees functioning? How do we staff municipalities with professionals who see local government as their career of choice? And, given that our ageing infrastructure poses risks for the future, what should municipalities do to ensure proper maintenance? How do we manage the overlapping roles of traditional leaders and municipalities? Can traditional land use allocation and building practices co-exist with municipal planning and building regulations? And, when municipalities insist on town planning and building regulations, how does this affect local entrepreneurs? Lastly, how do we measure spatial transformation in practice? The authors grappling with these questions come from universities, government, civil society and the private sector. They fill the pages of this book with some of the latest research on local government, grounded in the reality of today’s South Africa.