| Summary: | Albeit in its infancy, South Africa’s LED practice is a benchmark of a large number of African countries in general and Sub-Saharan African countries in particular. The LED practice stands out, for widespread decentralisation of powers, massive and growing LED budgets, robust legal frameworks that govern its implementation and development of LED structures, amongst others. This study seeks to answer three critical questions: What theoretical LED facets (particular aspects) are available in literature? Are these facets being implemented in Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMBM) and Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM)? Besides the effort and monies invested in ingraining LED in South Africa, are the levels of LED practices of the two municipalities deeply embedded in literature? The study utilises a purpose-built tool to measure the level at which LED practice of respective municipalities is ingrained in LED literature. The thesis employed both qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to provide scientifically adequate answers to this research. The former method was employed in identifying available LED facets while, the latter was useful in measuring the level at which LED practice in the two metros is embedded in LED theory. The research findings reveal presence of 6 LED facets, namely, enterprise development, locality development, livelihoods development, workforce development, community development and LED Governance. However, this study discovered that the aforementioned facets fail to cover other general items like the availability or unavailability of LED strategy, functional location of LED within municipal directorates and availability of a budget to drive the LED functions. In light of this, the researcher decided to group all the other key LED functions that he felt were not finding expression under the 6 facets identified in LED literature. This, then, led to the introduction of “General LED” facets. This facet, besides presenting a pre-cursor to the 6 other facets, manages to capture some key factors that are equally behind the success or failure of LED e.g. the LED strategy factor, a factor which a number of sources name “The heart” or “guiding compass” of successful LED implementation. The “General LED” facet contained other factors like: other plans that aided LED, experience of LED practitioners, budget allocation of the LED function, amongst others. The research found that all the 7 facets are being implemented in both municipalities, albeit to varying degrees. The two metropolitan municipalities’ LED practice, with respect to all the identified LED facets, provided some measure of their respective levels of embeddedness in LED theory using a purpose built tool. The embedded (ness) outcome proved that Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality’s LED practice was embedded in the LED theory across all the 7 facets, namely: general LED, enterprise development, locality development, community development, livelihood development, workforce development, and LED governance. The same analysis proved that Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality’s LED practice was embedded in LED theory in all the other facets bar community development. The survey results revealed that there are inadequate or limited initiatives in Buffalo.
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