The purpose of the study was to investigate the extent to which Gauteng local government benefits from the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) and the challenges that prevents the municipality from achieving of full service TQM potential. The Gauteng region experiences poor service delivery and social delivery protests that plague Gauteng. The municipality regularly experience employee strikes and billing crisis. The implementation of TQM will eliminate these factors and enable the Gauteng municipalities to carry out its mandate as per the constitutional requirements.

Data was collected using semi-structured interviews. The data collected from the interviews was analysed using thematic analysis which is a qualitative data analysis technique. The target population for this study was 16 Organisational Development staff at the Gauteng municipality and the sample size was 14.

The results indicated that TQM had been poorly implemented to an extent that usage in Gauteng municipality was not visible. The other key finding was that top management did not support TQM implementation and this was a major contributing factor to the failure of the TQM programme. Furthermore, the study revealed that TQM had been poorly implemented hence its benefits had not been realised. In addition, the study revealed that the challenges that were encountered in TQM implementation included lack of leadership commitment, ineffective communication strategy, organisational culture which was not conducive for TQM implementation and politicians meddling in municipal business