Service delivery since 1995 has not failed, the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), said on Thursday.
Releasing the results of a new survey, the SAIRR said service delivery numbers ”discounted any argument that delivery had been an absolute failure”.
”More than 4,4-million households have received electricity connections since 1995, four million received access to clean water, 2,1-million to improved sanitation facilities and 2,5-million to refuse removal facilities. In addition 2,5-million more households now live in formal housing, most of which was provided by the state,” the survey said.
More than 10-million South Africans also receive social grants from the state — up from three million six years ago.
The institute said that the successes suggested that relative deprivation, and not the failure of delivery, was behind the wave of delivery protests that had swept the country since 2006.
By relative deprivation, the institute suggested that the government had been successful enough in demonstrating that it could deliver on its promises in certain areas — which had sparked protests in those areas which had not experienced such delivery.
”In a sense, and no doubt quite controversially, it is true that the government is in this case a victim of its partial success,” Cronje said.
Recently violent service delivery protests took place across SA.
In Alexandra in Johannesburg and outside Zeerust in the North West, people protested against Reconstruction and Development Programme housing allocation delays.
In Zeerust people also complained about the lack of water supply in the area.
Institute researcher Kerwin Lebone said that government’s delivery task had been complicated by ”falling household size” which had added further to already existing delivery backlogs.
”We now have an average of three people living in a house, as opposed to five people, in the past. This has increased the demand for formal housing, as younger people now want to live on their own. This in effect increases service delivery,” Lebone said.
He said that average household size has fallen from 4,7 people to 3,7 people or by almost a quarter since 2005.
”As a result in many cases the increase in the proportion of households with access to services has not risen at the same rate as the increase in the number of households with access to that service,” Lebone said.
Citing formal housing as an example, Lebone said that the proportion of households living in formal houses had remained largely constant at around 70% since 1995, despite the massive increase in the construction of low-cost houses. – Sapa