To provide for the core principles, mechanisms and processes that are necessary to enable municipalities to move progressively towards the social and economic upliftment of communities, and ensure universal access to essential services that are affordable to all; to define the legal nature of a municipality as including residents and communities within the municipal area, working in partnership with the municipality’s political and administrative structures; to provide for public participation; to provide for the manner in which municipal powers and duties are exercised and performed; to establish a simple and enabling framework for the core processes of planning, performance management, resource mobilisation and organisational change which underpin the notion of developmental local government; to provide a framework for local public administration and human resource development; to empower the poor and ensure that municipalities put in place service tariffs and credit control policies that take their needs into account by providing a framework for the provision of services, service delivery agreement and municipal service districts; to provide for credit control and debt collection; to establish a framework for support, monitoring and standard setting by other spheres of government in order to progressively build local government into an efficient, frontline development agency capable of integrating the activities of all spheres of government for the overall social and economic upliftment of communities; to provide for legal matters pertaining to local government; and to provide for matters incidental thereto.