In South Africa, local governments are primarily responsible for service delivery. The purpose of this research was to look into the factors that contribute to poor service delivery in South African local government, with the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) serving as the unit of analysis. Fundamentally, two critical questions had to be addressed: what are the major factors contributing to the CoJ metropolitan municipality's poor public service delivery? Second, what strategies can be implemented in the CoJ metropolitan municipality to improve public service delivery? The study used quantitative research methods with the support of the survey research strategy. Online questionnaires were distributed to 100 participants via the Google forms platform, yielding a useful response rate of 56%. Poor public office ethics, a lack of adequate resource capacity, a lack of strategic awareness by key personnel, a lack of staff training and development, undue political interference, a lack of digital transformation, and a lack of accountability and transparency were among the top-ranked contributing factors to poor public service delivery, according to the findings of this study. Finally, the study's findings and recommendations are hoped to assist the CoJ metropolitan municipality and provide a paradigm shift in the South African local government sphere in terms of improving public service delivery.