2021 was the worst year on record for Eskom, South Africa's energy provider. According to some reports, an estimated 15 percent of the year was marked by power outages. The company's failures are part of a broader crisis in the delivery of basic services including water, sanitation, refuse management, and housing. All of these services, which are primarily the responsibility of municipal governments, have progressively worsened in recent years.

News24's Out of Order Index, which aggregates data on municipal governments across South Africa, put these governments’ average efficacy score at 45 out of 100, with predictions that these conditions are worsening. Poor and working-class South Africans who live in informal settlements are on the worst end of those infrastructural challenges. The Social Justice Coalition, whose work we spotlighted last year, continues to organise around these infrastructural issues.

Multiple factors contribute to the challenging circumstances, including gaps in technical knowledge among politicians and their appointees, and financial stress on local governments.

To manage some of these financial challenges, officials have been pivoting public institutions like Eskom toward privatisation, a direction that Brian Kamanzi'18, who works as a renewable energy engineer, finds perplexing. He observes that these moves come with pricing frameworks that only further burden working-class and middle-class energy users.

More broadly, the financial challenges facing governments across South Africa are, at least, partially linked to the size of sovereign national debt. By 2026, debt will account for nearly 80 percent of South Africa's GDP. But as Alex Fitzgerald’20 writes in the inaugural issue of Moya, that amount of debt severely curtails the government's ability to devote funds toward public goods.

In her piece, Debt That Remains, Alex considers what might happen if South Africa and other governments from the global south were to cease debt payments as an act of resistance against inequities baked into the global financial system. Such action could also, importantly, free up crucial resources to support public projects and programmes.

For a debt strike to translate to material changes on these infrastructure and service delivery problems, however, local and national governmental accountability must also be strengthened.

For the second year in a row, the Auditor General's 2021 report on municipal finances called for greater accountability from political leaders. "The responsibility to turn local government around is entirely in the hands of its leadership,” it says. “To bring about change and create a culture of accountability, administrative and political leaders must step up and set the tone from the top.”

Achieving such democratic accountability begins, Axolile Notywala'20 observes, with the critical work of building sustained mass movements.

Learn more:

Out of Order Index from News24; Brian Kamanzi's writing on energy policy at New Frame; Alex Fitzgerald speculates on the possibility of a debt strike in AFRE’s literary magazine, Moya

Lead Image by Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

This piece is part of our 2022 Policy Slate for Racially Equitable Futures. Click here to visit the summary page and explore other issues.

Tackling South Africa's Infrastructure Issues