More South Africans than ever before have electricity, water and sanitation — but local government is failing to run these services properly, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) said on Friday.
”Local government has proved to be a most unreliable custodian of existing infrastructure,” said the IJR’s 2006 transformation audit, Money and Morality, released in Johannesburg.
”Maintenance is neglected and planned capital expenditure is delayed to such an extent that expensive replacement of infrastructure becomes necessary.
”In areas with rapid growth in demand, key facilities are constantly close to failure.”
The IJR said 3,5-million homes got electricity since 1994, water reached 90% of homes and the sanitation backlog was declining, but even the best-resourced municipalities could not keep up.
This was partly due to corruption, but mainly due to maladministration.
The report looked at two case studies in the country’s wealthiest cities — the sanitation crisis in Cape Town and the power failures in Johannesburg.
In Cape Town, the water treatment and sewerage system was showing signs of systemic failure by 2006.
”When failures are regular and sustained they begin to affect people,” said the IJR report.
It said officials had failed to provide ”sufficiently forceful advice” to politicians, politicians had rejected technical reports and diverted funds elsewhere and political squabbling in the council blocked delivery.
In Johannesburg, there has been a cascading series of persistent power cuts for years, said the report.
”City Power knew exactly what the problems in Johannesburg were, but failed to act with the speed and seriousness that the situation required.”
The report said the network had deteriorated so badly by the time City Power took over that breakdowns were inevitable. This was because of the city’s financial crisis of the late 1990s, which meant that maintenance was delayed and capital expenditure halted.
Parts of the network are now 70 years old.
There was severe overloading from illegal connections and vandalism.
IJR said the problems were made worse by mismanagement.
It said the Johannesburg case showed how long it took for a city to recover from a lapse in maintenance spending. — Sapa