An infrastructure master plan: A blueprint for SA’s infrastructure rejuvenation
7 May 2024
The collapse of South Africa’s infrastructure under the ANC, and particularly over the past 20 years, has been systemic and it has been across all infrastructure categories of our country.
The most appropriate metaphor is that of a new car. In the early days it drives beautifully and without incident. With each service missed, the car functions increasingly problematically and the cost to restore its mechanical condition increases.
It is evident that renewal of aged infrastructure, along with repairs and maintenance, was deemed to be of low electoral priority resulting in the shelving of this vital responsibility of government.
The disruption of water that does not flow, electricity that does not come on, sewage that flows through the streets and broken roads have become the greatest issue impacting the daily reality of an increasing number of South Africans.
South Africa’s water infrastructure threatens our national security with the Lesotho Highlands phase project projected to run over 10 years behind schedule, our national water supply remains in jeopardy.
The main water distribution networks have not seen pipe replacements with larger bore pipes to address the rising demands of a larger population and this is being mitigated with higher pressures through older pipes.
South Africa’s municipal water management is the true disaster with provinces averaging between 45% and 55% water losses through leaks and bursts. 34% of our municipal or district water supply systems are in a high or critical risk category and over 40% of our ground water has become contaminated by the failure to manage our sewage infrastructure.
Our sewer infrastructure has fared even worse. According to the Green Drop Report, 39% of wastewater treatment plants are in critical condition requiring urgent intervention, up from 29% in 2013.
The problem has been compounded by load shedding impacting treatment plants, lack of expansion of treatment plants and the failure to respond rapidly to blockages. The consequence is far too many communities living with sewage in their streets and properties, like we see in Emfuleni, Welkom, East London and eThekwini to name a few and the contamination of rivers and coastlines.
The cost of this problem is almost immeasurable to an economy like eThekwini, against which ActionSA will be in court soon, as restaurants and hotels operate at low capacity because tourists, domestic and international, cannot enjoy its beaches or swim in its seas.
The road infrastructure I have witnessed in my tours to provinces has been an eye-watering experience. The first reality is that, 30 years into our democracy, 79% of our roads are gravel.
I could not even begin to give you data on the condition of provincial roads because it is not tracked in any central repository, but South Africans know all too well the condition of provincial roads hammered by heavy vehicles that should be on rail, poor quality workmanship and simply no maintenance.
The consequence of this alone is that enormous distances of South Africa’s provincial roads will need to be entirely reconstructed from the base layer increasing the cost per kilometre by a factor of 10.
Under the delinquency of PRASA and Transnet, our rail network has become a disaster.
To demonstrate the quantum of the problem, in 2017 the Transnet Freight Rail Network (TFRN) was transporting 219 million tonnes of freight per year. In 2022 this figure had declined to 173 million tonnes per year.
Nowhere has this been more keenly felt than right here, on this 688km Container Corridor that runs between the Port of Durban and Gauteng and forms the backbone of our economic railway network. As recently as last year it was determined that only 13% of containers transported out of Durban Harbour are being moved by rail, with 87% being moved on trucks on the N3 to Gauteng. In 2023, this railway line operated at just 25% capacity.
The cost of all of this is an estimated R353 billion or 4.9% of our national GDP.
The impact of this collapse has had a profound impact on our road network with export coal transported on rail having decreased from 73 million tonnes in 2017 to 58 million tonnes in 2022. That export coal is being moved by trucks, particularly from Mpumalanga to the North of KwaZulu-Natal, and has wreaked havoc on our provincial road network.
PRASA has fared even worse with passenger numbers falling through the floor. In 2022, metro passenger journeys were recorded at just 5% of the levels that PRASA was achieving in 2017. The consequence of this failure is more financial pressure on South African households who must spend more on other means of public transport.
The challenges of our electricity infrastructure are well documented. Load shedding has been a reality for 17 years in South Africa, chiefly, because ESKOM is producing only marginally more electricity in 2024 than it was in 1995 for a country that has increased in population by over 50%. This has been compounded by the declining national grid availability factor (how much of the grid is online at any time) decreasing from 88% in 2006 to 64% in 2021.
The lived reality of an increasing number of South Africans is systemic infrastructure unreliability experienced across at least two or more of these infrastructure categories. This is why infrastructure, and the basic service delivery consequence of its failure, has become the greatest issue facing South Africans. This is why the silence of nearly all other political parties on this issue has become deafening in this election.
ActionSA in government, will place at the core of our agenda, the complete rejuvenation of infrastructure at a national, provincial and municipal level by undertaking the following steps:
Immediate budget reprioritisation by implementing a zero-based budgeting approach and redirecting all budgets from the wastages of international travel, conferencing, consultants, subscriptions and catering. This includes the actions to untether South Africans from sinking State-Owned Entities.
Private Sector Investment in Public Infrastructure by amending legislation to efficiently facilitating Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) that leverage the balance sheets of the private sector through long-term investments. ActionSA will amend the Protection of Investment Act of 2015 to reduce bureaucratic barriers and limitations to foreign direct investment.
Reform the procurement system by making the process transparent, considering only experienced bidders with a track record in delivering infrastructure projects and requiring that the best bid receive the tender.
Protecting our infrastructure by declaring strategic water, rail, power and road infrastructure as national key points and amending criminal legislation to introduce the crime of economic sabotage, with a mandatory life sentence, for any offense relating to infrastructure theft or damage or corruption in the procurement system relating to infrastructure. ActionSA will also establish a specialised Infrastructure Protection Unit under the command of the SAPS, and supported by deployments of the SANDF, to gather intelligence, protect our infrastructure and investigate infrastructure theft or damage.
Develop the National Infrastructure Planning Unit that is responsible for developing the National Infrastructure Master Plan and overseeing its implementation and that gathers the engineering, financial and project management skills across National Departments and Provincial Government.
Address Skills and Capacitation by initiating a skills audit, changing the organisational culture of government to ensure the principle of the best person being appointed into the role, rationalising of the civil service and addressing skills shortages in key engineering, financial and project management functions.
Reforming Cooperative Governance to ensure vertical integration of infrastructure management by placing minimum requirements on municipal and provincial budgets for infrastructure renewal, maintenance and repairs and overseeing the provincial and municipal implementation of these budgets.
Ending the buddy-buddy intergovernmental relations by adopting harsh measures of placing failing municipalities under administration and appointing skilled administrators capable of directing the turnaround of failing municipalities. Critically, this needs to take place with budgetary reforms and allocations.
The silence of political parties in this election campaign on infrastructure is beyond comprehension when one considers its impact on our economy and on the lived reality of basic services in communities across South Africa.
South Africans can benefit from world class infrastructure that drives our economy and provides stable basic services to all communities. However, it must begin with cosigning the ANC into the opposition benches for the turnaround of our infrastructure to begin.
Issued by Michael Beaumont, ActionSA Team FixSA Member for Infrastructure, 7 May 2024
