Special Report: Service Delivery

One of the hot topics from 2009 was service delivery. Monitoring reports on municipal service delivery protests reveals that such activity appears to have more than doubled since 2007. This raises questions regarding actual service delivery on the ground. Specifically, what levels of delivery are municipal residents experiencing and are these improving or is the situation worsening? At what pace is the delivery of adequate services taking place?

Measuring service delivery over time and across municipalities poses significant challenges. The first dilemma is obtaining accurate data on service delivery at a municipal level. The second is the comparison of delivery over time and across municipalities, specifically when comparing different services to one another. For example, if we assume that in one municipality all households have electricity but none of them are having their refuse removed, whilst in another municipality, all of the households are having their refuse removed but none of them have electricity, how does one account for these differences and come to a conclusion regarding total service delivery?

In order to solve the immediate data availability dilemma, IHS Global Insight draws on a number of sources, including all the relevant StatsSA surveys and censuses, municipal capital and current expenditure, non-financial and institutional data (such as statistics from NERSA, Eskom, the Dept. of Water Affairs, etc.).  These datasets cover all available aspects of South African service delivery and are used in a combined, singular model that takes into account private and public infrastructure development, as well as individual household experiences of service delivery.

The second dilemma is solved by the construction of an Infrastructure Index. The index takes into account the four service delivery measures (i.e. electricity connections, refuse removal, sanitation and water infrastructure). Each service is weighted according to the cost of providing it at a 'basic' level (defined as the minimum RDP). The weighted index allows for the comparison of service delivery across different municipalities and over time regardless of population levels and types of services delivered in that region. Essentially, the index measures the total access to services that communities in different municipalities are experiencing.

The National Situation
A look at overall national service delivery is a good starting point. The following chart depicts the national level of the Infrastructure Index over time, with a breakdown of the components and their contribution to the final figure.

Clearly household access to infrastructure in South Africa has improved fairly consistently since 1996. In fact, the Infrastructure Index shows a 20.5% improvement in household access to infrastructure over the period (1996 to 2008). Considering that the number of households in South Africa has increased by over 41% over the same period, this could be considered a fair achievement. 

Also of note is (a) the large role that electricity connections play and (b) the significant improvement in access to those electricity connections. In fact, of the four service delivery indicators, access to electricity has improved the fastest with households receiving new electricity connections more than any other service. This translates to a 91.3% increase in households using electricity between 1996 and 2008. In other words, over 5 million South African households have received electricity connections since 1996. (On a separate note, this massive electrification rollout does serve to illustrate the vast demand for electricity that needs to be met. Household electricity connections have essentially doubled in only 12 years.)

It would be useful to compare the rollout of electricity connections to other services at a national level. The following chart compares household infrastructure access across the four service delivery domains - a larger the diamond presents better service delivery in the country. If every household had access to every service, the diamond would fill the area within the grey lines. We can see, for example, that water delivery has improved the least (right hand of diamond) and that electricity has certainly shown the largest improvement (bottom of diamond.) However, by looking at the green diamond we can see that piped water had the highest penetration in 1996 and might not have been considered as high a priority as electrification at the time.

On a whole, the long term trend at a national level is encouraging. Not only is the total infrastructure index higher now than it was in 1996, but each of the four services have shown improved penetration to some extent. In even the poorest improving metric (access to piped water) has improved from 74% in 1996 to almost 79% in 2008. However, taking into account the increase of 41% in the number of households due to population growth, the total increase in the number of households with access to piped water from 1996 to 2008 was 50%.

Service delivery across the metros
The six metropolitan municipalities house almost one third of the entire South African populace. These metro areas typically also experience higher rates of urbanisation due to the perceived better economic prospects the cities have to offer. It is therefore useful to compare service delivery across metros as well as metros compared to non-metro areas. The following chart gives us just such a comparison.

By comparing the index values across the metropolitan areas, we can gauge total service delivery in each metro. As expected, the metro regions fare far better than their non-metro counterparts. This is due in part to capacity and funding constraints in more rural areas, as well as the higher cost of servicing non-metro areas. It is physically more expensive to install an electricity connection in Msinga than it is in Johannesburg.