South Africa at local level

In n the last ten years 4.5 million households have been provided with free basic water, 4 million have been
given access to sanitation (flush or chemical lavatories), and 2 million have been connected to the national
electricity grid. Despite these successes, discontent with local government is increasing and citizens are no longer content to wait patiently for the promised improvements to their lives.

According to Municipal IQ, an organisation that monitors and assesses local government in South Africa, between January and July 2013 there had been 97 protests sparked by issues that are the responsibility or the perceived responsibility of local government.

This is compared to 10 in the whole of 2004. Also, according to the 2013 South African Reconciliation Barometer, only 49% of respondents said they had confi dence in local government.

Serious challenges such as corruption, skills shortages, large discrepancies between municipalities in the provision of services, increasingly violent service delivery protests, and mismanagement abound. This helps to explain why protests, specifi cally against local government, have been on the rise since 2004.

In his keynote address at the National Summit for Organised Local Government in 1996, Nelson Mandela said that local government was the vehicle through which citizens could ‘make their voice heard and [that
should] provide an effective instrument for them to improve their lives’. The challenges that confront local government impede its ability to deliver on its mandate to provide services, such as water and electricity,
which improves the lives of its citizens. This is in evidence in the vast differences in service delivery between the municipalities.

Courtesy of South African Institute of Race relations

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