Service Watch
Terence Pillay launches a new feature looking at The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in Service Delivery in South Africa.
There are so many complaints when it comes to service delivery in South Africa. And it seems like the people hardest hit by this are the poor communities, that ironically need it the most. If you were to live in a really small town, a rural area, a township or a squatter camp, can you call what you get service delivery?
First of all we need to decide what the expectations are in terms of service delivery. So, what should our minimum expectation be, as a citizenry, in terms of what we should get? The constitution of the country guarantees things like housing, education, water and electricity – those are the fundamentals we need to live. And we have a minimum expectation to have decent housing, access to education, the right to dignity at work and at home. The question we need to ask is: is what I’m getting making sure that I have a dignified life, post 1994?
In order to answer that, we need to understand that this country’s democracy is only 22-years-old. And 22 years into this democracy and we are still trying to deal with the legacy of apartheid. And it’s important to understand that that legacy is about separate development and the fact that our town planning was deliberately set up to separate people and ensure that there were different levels of development. So you can’t have a society where you continue to have people living on the periphery and you only service the needs of the middle classes.
I read a very interesting article recently in which a former vice chancellor of the University of the Western Cape shared some interesting information that showed that when the ANC government took over in 1994, what they thought they would do is open up a vault and find bars of gold, which they would then use to rebuild the country. But in fact what they found was an IOU for R340-billion, which is what the National Party government had done. They had basically pillaged the government pension funds of this country, because we lived under sanctions for about fifteen years. We were cut off from the entire international community and had no access to loans or bailouts or anything. So in order to prop up our very unequal society, we borrowed against our pension funds to the tune of R340-billion. And that is what government inherited.
What we could have said then was “we’re not going to pay it back” but we did. And currently, we’re not sitting in a very good position because the debt is still something like fifty percent of our GDP and its getting worse because we keep borrowing in order to prop up our social grant system. We have grown our social grants from two million to nineteen million, which is staggering. And this is exacerbated by our chronic unemployment; I think the official figure sits at about thirty or forty percent and that doesn’t include people who have given up looking for work. And all this has come off the back of separate development and a state which was largely set up to fail.
Now this is not to say that our current government hasn’t made some stupid policy decisions and we are trying to deal with that. The fact that we have such rampant corruption is obviously a huge problem, and the fact that we have an economy and a labour system, like the unions, that doesn’t encourage the creation of large scale, low-skill work because that’s where the majority of our population is, is also cause for concern.
Instead, what we’ve done is focused on building an economy based on high-skilled work and there are just not enough people. The education system doesn’t support the delivery of high-skill employees, so that means a lot of people are unemployed.
And this is where the lack of service delivery comes in. We have a state, a bureaucracy that’s just not capable of delivering services to communities. And we’ve also created a society that expects everything to be done for them. I don’t believe we have an entrepreneurial spirit here.
But when you look at the huge amounts of money that government wastes or spends or steals for that matter, it homes in on the fact that that money could be used elsewhere for good. You simply can’t spend R240-million on security upgrades for a presidential home and then say we can’t provide sanitation in the same area. It doesn’t make any sense. And obviously, there’s a lot of wastage.
So we have this chronically unequal society. South Africa is rated in terms of the Gini coefficient, which is the measure of inequality – that’s the gap between the richest and the poorest – and we were found to be the most unequal society in the world. So the richest people are far too rich and the poorest people are far too poor, even above India. And our growing middle class is still way too small.
So when it comes to service delivery, government keeps harping on infrastructure investment, which I have to admit is poor. But take the water crisis for example; the drought is the drought. I know people are saying we should have built more dams, and we should have collected more water, but all this is in hindsight.
And then there are areas like Copesville that’s been without electricity for a while because the cables are constantly being stolen by the surrounding community. It’s a huge problem and there should be measures in place to curb this scourge. I chatted to someone from the Ethekwini Municipality about this very issue once and he was saying that globally cable theft is a huge problem because copper is so valuable on the black market. It is already illegal to buy copper without documentation, but these sales are slipping through the cracks and unless we get rid of the demand, the supply will not stop. The punitive measures for the illegal sale of copper wire should be stronger.
And lastly, let’s talk about these service delivery protests... The issue for me is how unresponsive government is. There seems to be no process that allows people to voice their concerns and see that there is action being taken. We have now reached a point where people start to destroy property like we’ve seen in Vuwani with the schools. And while this wasn’t a service delivery protest, it was about municipal demarcation, but it was certainly an example of what the other protests have been like.
But the point is, it seems to me that government is very reactionary and the only thing they listen to are these violent protests. So when people are in the streets burning cars and tyres, throwing stones and generally being violent and destroying property, that’s when government steps up and says “we have to listen”.
And their response is usually to send in the police first and arrest people, which we know is clearly not working. Should they not be listening and actually acting? So when a representative of the community says to them “we have a problem and we need to deal with it”, they need to be available to listen to concerns and they need to be seen to be acting on them. And this in partnership with the community. One message that needs to come through is: if we’re going to deal with this issue we have to do this in collaboration with communities. So community, government and civil society need to work together to solve these problems. Otherwise we’re always going to be in a state of opposition.
So in the next three months, I am going to be tackling the issue of service delivery and holding accountable those responsible for poor service delivery and applaud those who are actually doing a good job.
First of all we need to decide what the expectations are in terms of service delivery. So, what should our minimum expectation be, as a citizenry, in terms of what we should get? The constitution of the country guarantees things like housing, education, water and electricity – those are the fundamentals we need to live. And we have a minimum expectation to have decent housing, access to education, the right to dignity at work and at home. The question we need to ask is: is what I’m getting making sure that I have a dignified life, post 1994?
In order to answer that, we need to understand that this country’s democracy is only 22-years-old. And 22 years into this democracy and we are still trying to deal with the legacy of apartheid. And it’s important to understand that that legacy is about separate development and the fact that our town planning was deliberately set up to separate people and ensure that there were different levels of development. So you can’t have a society where you continue to have people living on the periphery and you only service the needs of the middle classes.
I read a very interesting article recently in which a former vice chancellor of the University of the Western Cape shared some interesting information that showed that when the ANC government took over in 1994, what they thought they would do is open up a vault and find bars of gold, which they would then use to rebuild the country. But in fact what they found was an IOU for R340-billion, which is what the National Party government had done. They had basically pillaged the government pension funds of this country, because we lived under sanctions for about fifteen years. We were cut off from the entire international community and had no access to loans or bailouts or anything. So in order to prop up our very unequal society, we borrowed against our pension funds to the tune of R340-billion. And that is what government inherited.
What we could have said then was “we’re not going to pay it back” but we did. And currently, we’re not sitting in a very good position because the debt is still something like fifty percent of our GDP and its getting worse because we keep borrowing in order to prop up our social grant system. We have grown our social grants from two million to nineteen million, which is staggering. And this is exacerbated by our chronic unemployment; I think the official figure sits at about thirty or forty percent and that doesn’t include people who have given up looking for work. And all this has come off the back of separate development and a state which was largely set up to fail.
Now this is not to say that our current government hasn’t made some stupid policy decisions and we are trying to deal with that. The fact that we have such rampant corruption is obviously a huge problem, and the fact that we have an economy and a labour system, like the unions, that doesn’t encourage the creation of large scale, low-skill work because that’s where the majority of our population is, is also cause for concern.
Instead, what we’ve done is focused on building an economy based on high-skilled work and there are just not enough people. The education system doesn’t support the delivery of high-skill employees, so that means a lot of people are unemployed.
And this is where the lack of service delivery comes in. We have a state, a bureaucracy that’s just not capable of delivering services to communities. And we’ve also created a society that expects everything to be done for them. I don’t believe we have an entrepreneurial spirit here.
But when you look at the huge amounts of money that government wastes or spends or steals for that matter, it homes in on the fact that that money could be used elsewhere for good. You simply can’t spend R240-million on security upgrades for a presidential home and then say we can’t provide sanitation in the same area. It doesn’t make any sense. And obviously, there’s a lot of wastage.
So we have this chronically unequal society. South Africa is rated in terms of the Gini coefficient, which is the measure of inequality – that’s the gap between the richest and the poorest – and we were found to be the most unequal society in the world. So the richest people are far too rich and the poorest people are far too poor, even above India. And our growing middle class is still way too small.
So when it comes to service delivery, government keeps harping on infrastructure investment, which I have to admit is poor. But take the water crisis for example; the drought is the drought. I know people are saying we should have built more dams, and we should have collected more water, but all this is in hindsight.
And then there are areas like Copesville that’s been without electricity for a while because the cables are constantly being stolen by the surrounding community. It’s a huge problem and there should be measures in place to curb this scourge. I chatted to someone from the Ethekwini Municipality about this very issue once and he was saying that globally cable theft is a huge problem because copper is so valuable on the black market. It is already illegal to buy copper without documentation, but these sales are slipping through the cracks and unless we get rid of the demand, the supply will not stop. The punitive measures for the illegal sale of copper wire should be stronger.
And lastly, let’s talk about these service delivery protests... The issue for me is how unresponsive government is. There seems to be no process that allows people to voice their concerns and see that there is action being taken. We have now reached a point where people start to destroy property like we’ve seen in Vuwani with the schools. And while this wasn’t a service delivery protest, it was about municipal demarcation, but it was certainly an example of what the other protests have been like.
But the point is, it seems to me that government is very reactionary and the only thing they listen to are these violent protests. So when people are in the streets burning cars and tyres, throwing stones and generally being violent and destroying property, that’s when government steps up and says “we have to listen”.
And their response is usually to send in the police first and arrest people, which we know is clearly not working. Should they not be listening and actually acting? So when a representative of the community says to them “we have a problem and we need to deal with it”, they need to be available to listen to concerns and they need to be seen to be acting on them. And this in partnership with the community. One message that needs to come through is: if we’re going to deal with this issue we have to do this in collaboration with communities. So community, government and civil society need to work together to solve these problems. Otherwise we’re always going to be in a state of opposition.
So in the next three months, I am going to be tackling the issue of service delivery and holding accountable those responsible for poor service delivery and applaud those who are actually doing a good job.
You can email your stories or complaints to [email protected] or follow me on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and tweet me your contact details and I will endeavour to investigate every submission.
CORRECTION - At the time of airing this segment, the eThekwini Municipality case studies and the construction company in question claimed the construction work in Wyebank was being carried out by Esorfranki. We have since learned that EsorFranki no longer exits and that Esor Limited and Franki are now two separate companies.
Paul Pearce from Fanki, says, "Please note: There is no such company as Esorfranki. Esor and Franki are two different and un-associated companies and Franki is NOT involved in pipeline works in the Wyebank area.
As an ISO9001 and OSHAS18001 accredited company Franki prides itself in maintaining the highest safety and quality standards. You can therefore understand our concern with the confusion and reputational damage which the report caused."
We apologise for the oversight.