The delivery targets for essential services announced by President Thabo Mbeki appear impressive, but they cannot be assessed without addressing their quality and sustainability.
The ministries of housing, water and forestry and minerals and energy have similarly in the past rattled off impressive-sounding figures for houses built and water, sanitary and electricity services provided.
But much has been written about the poor quality of the Reconstruction and Development Programme houses — the result of haste by private developers wanting to make a profit; paltry government subsidies and poor materials and workmanship. Yet we hear nothing of the thousands of poor people who lose their homes because they cannot afford to pay their loans.
The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry knows of many new communal tap connections in both rural and urban areas that are not working properly or are neglected. Again, this is because of poor materials, workmanship and maintenance budgets. This is aside from the fact that, because of meagre capital expenditure, communal standpipes instead of taps were installed inside homes or at least in yards.
On the sanitary side, we hear nothing about the significant health drawbacks of ventilated improved pit latrines. These are the preferred sanitary option in poor areas because the government says these people cannot afford commercialised pricing for higher levels of service.
We hear nothing about the problems of shallow sewers, which have been introduced in poor communities like Orange Farm as another low-cost sanitary option. Though the government and water companies tell us they operate on the same principle as water-borne sanitation, these sewers differ in several respects. Every two months residents have to open the manholes and remove the build-up of faeces in pipes to prevent blockages, which these sewers are susceptible to because of the use of narrow pipes to cut costs.
On the electricity side, the introduction of pre-paid meters has led to serious problems in poor communities. These areas mostly comprise big households that can consume the miserably small lifeline of 50kWh in only a few days. Many households go without electricity for days until they have enough money to buy recharge vouchers.
Similar problems apply to pre-paid water meters, which are being rolled out in many parts of the country. So devastating were the health consequences of these meters in the poorer areas of Britain that the government banned their installation in 1998.
Only an approach that sees the fulfilment of basic needs as a human right — not dependent on income and affordability — can lead to building a better life for the poor majority, millions of whom languish in the doldrums of joblessness.
World experience has shown that poor infrastructure is not a temporary phenomenon waiting to be upgraded to higher levels of service, but becomes permanently embedded on the peripheral urban landscape.
Permanently embedded, too, are the dangers to health of discriminatory third-rate services and low standards of living. In fact, the trend in the Third World is that these services deteriorate further because of poor maintenance.
Ebrahim Harvey is a doctoral student and freelance writer