Mismatch: There is a widening gap between what the public is expected to do and what the government is held accountable for delivering.
South Africans are doing more than ever, so why does the system feel like it’s doing less?
South Africans are no strangers to responsibility. Citizens are conserving water, installing solar panels, organising refuse collections, banding together to protect community assets and even repairing basic infrastructure with their own labour and funds.
Yet while individual and community efforts have multiplied, the systems meant to support and respond to citizen needs have not kept pace. Instead, there is a widening gap between what the public is expected to do and what government is held accountable for delivering.
The gap is not abstract. It shows up in potholes that swallow cars, in sewer overflows that run unchecked, in sporadic electricity and water supply where self-provision becomes the norm and in rising municipal tariffs that seem to buy less service every month. A retired South African recently shared how his municipal bill climbed from about R6 500 to nearly R7 500 without any improvement in services, even as potholes, outages and refuse issues persist.
An unbalanced contract
Over decades, the social contract in South Africa has been clear: citizens pay rates and taxes and the government delivers basic services, from clean water and electricity to waste removal and road maintenance. In recent years, however, the contract has become unbalanced.
On the one hand, communities are increasingly expected to step in.
In some areas, residents organise borehole schemes; in others, volunteer groups keep streets clean or repair playgrounds abandoned by local authorities.
The efforts reflect civic ingenuity and resilience, strengths of South African society that deserve acknowledgement.
On the other hand, the accountability mechanisms designed to ensure service delivery across government tiers are weakening or worse, failing outright.
Mounting evidence of service delivery
Multiple independent analyses paint a stark picture of systemic dysfunction:
- Municipal budgets are regularly unfunded or based on speculative revenue estimates. In 2024/25, 116 municipalities submitted unfunded budgets, meaning they planned to spend money they did not have.
- Financial mismanagement is pervasive. Billions in unauthorised, irregular and wasteful expenditure have been recorded, draining resources meant for maintenance and upgrades.
- Audit reports show that only a small fraction of municipalities receive clean audits, with many reporting material misstatements in basic financial accounts.
- Large amounts of infrastructure funding go unspent. In one year, R3.8 billion in infrastructure grants were not used, depriving communities of better roads, sanitation improvements and water system upgrades.
The failures are not confined to one service area or region. They extend across sectors and provinces, from sanitation and refuse removal to roads and electricity grids, illustrating that the problem is not only what services are delivered but how accountable the system is for delivering them.
Why accountability matters more than ever
In the context of decentralisation where municipalities are expected to take increasing responsibility for basic service delivery the lack of accountability is not a technical problem, it is a democratic crisis.
True decentralisation implies not only that responsibilities are distributed closer to citizens but that those who exercise the responsibilities
are answerable to the people they serve, with real consequences when they fail.
- Instead, South Africa’s local governments often operate in a space where:
- Politicised appointments trump merit in key technical roles.
- Oversight bodies repeatedly flag the same issues year after year, with little follow-through.
- Service failures are normalised and blamed solely on limited resources rather than poor planning, weak enforcement and strategic inertia.
When citizens are held responsible for conserving water, reporting leaks, paying ever-higher rates and tariffs but government systems do not reciprocate with timely repairs, transparent reporting or performance consequences, trust erodes.
People stop engaging with formal avenues for accountability and either give up, withdraw or take matters into their own hands.
The dynamic breeds frustration, apathy and in some cases, open hostility toward the institutions meant to protect public welfare. It fuels service delivery protests, community vigilantism and the perception that “nothing ever changes”.
A call for balanced responsibility and reinforced accountability
South Africans do not need to be told to care about their communities, we already do. What we do need is for the government at all levels to reciprocate the commitment with:
- Clear performance standards for service delivery, with publicly accessible targets and timelines.
- Consequences for failure, including disciplinary measures for officials and councillors who neglect core duties.
- Real-time reporting systems that show progress (or lack thereof) on basic service metrics.
- Collaborative problem-solving with community structures, not blame, when things go wrong.
Accountability should not be a buzzword. It needs to be measurable, enforceable and visible from municipal council meetings to national performance dashboards.
Reciprocity restores trust
South Africans are rising to the challenge. Across towns and townships, neighbours support one another when the system falters. But goodwill alone cannot sustain a functioning society.
Responsibility without accountability does not strengthen democracy; it hollows it out.
If decentralisation is to mean anything more than abandoned obligations and magnified frustrations, our collective contract must be balanced: citizens will continue to do their part and the government must be held answerable for doing theirs.
That is not just a plea for better service delivery. It is a call to safeguard the trust that underpins a democratic South Africa.
Otshepeng Mazibuko is a South African social scientist, development practitioner and doctoral researcher working in municipal government. Her work focuses on decentralisation, basic service delivery and community accountability at the intersection of research, public engagement and local government practice.