Design Thinking as a Catalyst to Improve Community-Based Monitoring in South Africa’s Public Sector

Description

Page: 1520-1530

Lesedi Senamele Matlala (School of Public Management, Governance and Public Policy, University of Johannesburg, South Africa)

Persistent challenges in South Africa’s public service delivery-especially in social protection, policing, and healthcare-underscore the urgent need for more responsive, citizen-engaged monitoring. While government has institutionalised Citizen-Based Monitoring (CBM) through the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, these models often follow technocratic, linear, and top-down logics that fail to capture the complexity of lived realities. In contrast, civil-society initiatives demonstrate more adaptive, user-centred, and locally embedded approaches to accountability. This paper analyses three initiatives: the Community Monitoring and Advocacy Programme coordinated by Black Sash and the Social Change Assistance Trust; the Khayelitsha policing campaign led by the Social Justice Coalition and Ndifuna Ukwazi, which culminated in a Commission of Inquiry; and the Stop Stock-Outs Project spearheaded by the Treatment Action Campaign and Section 27. These initiatives reveal a bottom-up monitoring logic rooted in empathy, rapid feedback, and contextual problem-solving. Although not explicitly framed as design initiatives, their practices mirror principles of Design Thinking-emphasising immersion, iteration, and co-creation-while also aligning with Complexity Theory, which highlights non-linearity and adaptive systems in governance. By examining these cases, the study reframes citizen monitoring as a site of innovation and adaptive governance, exposes the limits of state-led CBM, and proposes policy shifts to institutionalise citizen-led design practices in service monitoring.