SAIRR says ANC government doing well on service delivery

01 Feb 2016 | Admin Author

The SA Institute of Race Relations says the ANC-led government deserves more credit for improving the living conditions of poor black South Africans.

The Institute's deputy chief executive Frans Cronje says he agrees with statements made by President Jacob Zuma yesterday that South Africa has outdone other African countries in terms of service delivery.

"A myth has taken hold in South Africa that service delivery was a failure. However research we have published over the past several years suggests that this is not the case," Cronje said.

Data published by the Institute shows that between 1996 and 2010:
.. The number of households living in formal houses increased from 5.8 million to 11 million or by 89.9%. Over the same period the proportion of all households living in a formal house increased from 64% to 76%.
.. The number of households with access to electricity increased from 5.2 million to 11.9
million or by 127.9%. The proportion of all households with access to electricity increased from 58% to 83%.
.. The number of households with access to piped water increased from 7.2 million to 12.7 million or by 76.6%. The proportion with access to piped water increased from 80% to 89%.

Cronje said, "Increases of a similar magnitude are true for all 15 service delivery indicators tracked by the Institute. These improvements are corroborated by Living Standard Measure improvements which show equally dramatic improvements in the number and proportion of people in higher living standard brackets."

"Together with increased access to social welfare, which now reaches over 15 million people, service delivery successes are responsible for the fact that the proportion of South Africans living on less than $2/day has declined from 12% in 1994, and a peak of 17% in 2002, to just 5% today."

"On service delivery protests Cronje said that "there is no contradiction between the successes we identify and the protests that are now commonplace around the country. These protests are not a function of the failure of delivery but rather of its success in that this success has raised expectations that cannot be met because of shortcomings in the school system and the labour market."

Cronje added that, "the ANC may be accused of lot of things, and it can be debated whether State led delivery is the best development model for a country to follow, but the data we have published in unambiguous that the ANC and the Government it leads deserves considerably more credit for improving the living standards of poor and black South Africans than it has received."