Value+ANC+successes+without+denying+failures,+Makgetla,+B+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 10 March 2006
=Value ANC’s successes without denying its failures=


 * Neva Makgetla**

IN THE run-up to the elections, some commentators expected the electorate to reject African National Congress councillors on the grounds of poor service delivery. That view ignored the fact that for millions of South Africans, the past 12 years have seen vast improvements in basic services.

Surveys on infrastructure conducted since the 1990s by Statistics SA show this.

Comparing the 1996 October Household Survey and the 2004 Labour Force Survey indicates the growth in services. According to these surveys, between 1996 and 2004:


 * The number of three-room houses (Reconstruction and Development Programme, or RDP houses) rose from 900000 to more than 2-million. One family in five now lives in an RDP house, up from one in 10 a decade ago.
 * The number of households reporting they had piped water on site climbed almost 3-million. And 2,3-million more said they had a flush toilet.
 * The number of households using electricity for lighting increased by more than 4-million.
 * Some 3,5-million more households said they received some kind of social grant, mostly an old-age pension or child-support grant, raising the total receiving grants from about 1,3-million to close to 5-million.

Of course, many South Africans still do not have adequate basic services. African communities, in particular, faced severe deprivation under apartheid and even more spectacular expansion in service provision is needed to overcome the backlogs.

In addition, the expansion in services has been partially offset by a rapid increase in the number of houses needing service.

Between 1996 and 2004, the average household shrank from five people to about 3,5 people. African households dropped from about 5,5 members to fewer than four.

The decline apparently results from a combination of rapid rural-urban migration and the growth in the number of RDP houses.

The fall in household size means that the number of households has risen 4% a year, or about twice as fast as the population. This has slowed growth in the share of households with access to services.

For instance, the proportion of African households with piped water on site rose from 48% to 60% between 1996 and 2004.

If the number of households had risen only as fast as the population in this period, 80% of African households would today have access to water.

A further problem lies in the allocation of new infrastructure across the country. The bulk of new infrastructure has gone to the relatively rich districts, while the former homeland regions have lagged behind.

Between 1996 and 2004, the poorest quintile of districts got only 12% of the new RDP houses, 2% of the growth in piped water to houses and 16% of the expansion in electricity for lighting.

This pattern of deepening inequality largely reflected the failure to provide sufficient national funds for the poorest regions that cannot raise their own revenues to pay for new services.

Thus, the picture is reversed for social grants, which are paid from national funds primarily on the basis of need.

Between 1996 and 2004, 27% of households gaining access to social grants were in the poorest quintile of district councils. In 2004, almost two-thirds of households in these areas received a social grant — mostly old-age pensions and child support grants.

Even in the face of the ANC’s victory, a number of commentators suggest that poor service delivery led to low voter turnout.

This argument is just strange. The turnout this year was significantly higher than in the 2000 local government elections. Some 13-million people voted, compared with about 11-million five years ago. That means around 46% of adults went to the polls, compared with about 42% in 2000.

True, these figures are low compared with the national elections. But local and regional elections worldwide have a lower turnout than national ones. For all the talk about the importance of the local state in bringing democracy to the people, it seems most people don’t see it as vital in their lives.

Certainly there are substantial problems with service delivery, from high costs to households to spatial inequalities to low standards in many areas. Yet progress has been real.

We need a more balanced view that can value achievements while not denying the shortfalls.


 * Makgetla is a Congress of South African Trade Unions economist.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A166915**

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