Importantly, both the Constitution (1996) and the White paper on Local government (1998) gave birth to developmental model to local government. According to Old field(2002), developmental local government was constitutionalised in order to reverse the legacy of underdevelopment of the majority of the population).The developmental local government (DLG) was viewed as an ambitious vision for local government set out in the Constitution (Pieterse et al (2008). Pieterse et al (2008: 2) define DLG as the custodian of the public interventions necessary to ensure the realisation of social and economic development, while at the same time section 24(b) of the Constitution insisted that development must also be ‘ecologically sustainable’. According to de Visser (2005: 258) post-apartheid local government moved from being a retailer of services to become the key agent for development. The White Paper on Local Government (1998) provided a foundation for a new DLG system committed to working with citizens, groups and communities to create sustainable human settlement s which provide for a decent quality of life and meet the social, economic and material needs of communities in a holistic way (Government Gazette 1998: 15 in Reddy and Maharaj 2008: 193). In addition to working with citizens it is committed to decentralise the national and provincial governments by devolving power and function to the local government (ibid).