LOCALISING THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS: EVALUATING ITS PRAXIS.

South Africa is one of the countries that contributed significantly to the development of the global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the 2030 Agenda) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to eradicate poverty, protect the environment and work towards peace and prosperity. In its commitment to contribute to the 17 SDGs, the country has, together with the United Nations, finalised the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for 2020-2025 under the new guidelines released in 2019. Domestically, the country recognises the importance of local government, as the sphere closest to the people, in administering government duties, making it a potentially significant role player in localising the implementation of the SDGs. The question that frames the contention of this paper is whether South Africa has administrative provisions for local government to meet its SDG targets. The paper is largely informed by a qualitative methodology that adopts a discourse analysis approach. Theory building and a critical scholarship review of journal articles, official government documents and books are methodological ways of obtaining data. The realist epistemology of the study undertaken presumes that some of the SDGs are embodied in the basic local government functions. However, this research found that South Africa has no lucid mandate for municipalities to implement its SDG obligations. It therefore recommends ways as to how municipalities can strategically localise and drive the SDG agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]