South Africa’s constitution promises all citizens access to adequate housing and basic services – water, security, sanitation and electricity. In practice, people from rich to poor experience persistent water cuts, sewage overflows, electricity blackouts and uneven policing. Fiona Anciano, Charlotte Lemanski, Christina Culwick Fatti and Margot Rubin are urban researchers who investigated how and why households in South Africa are going off-grid in almost every way. They speak to The Conversation Africa about the long-term problems that could result from people being compelled to provide their own basic services.
How has service delivery failed in South Africa
For low-income households, services may be available but too expensive to afford. Government subsidies are too low or inaccessible. For example, in South Africa a free basic monthly amount of electricity is supplied to residents who can prove that they are indigent. But it’s not even enough to power a fridge for one month. And roughly 70% of indigent households don’t receive the free electricity, due to lack of awareness and complex application processes.
Even when basic services are delivered, they can be unreliable. In many areas residents don’t know from day to day when, or if, there may be water or power cuts. This is disruptive to everyday life.
Middle- and high-income households are frustrated because of the unreliable services that cost more and more. Thus the state is increasingly seen as unable to guarantee electricity, water or adequate policing.
There is also a strong sense that service provision is getting worse and that infrastructure failure is becoming more widespread. Electricity shortages, water interruptions, failing sanitation and overstretched policing have become part of daily life.
What services have people started to procure for themselves?
Our research investigated how people are providing their own services across four different affluent and poor communities in South Africa. These are Imizamo Yethu (Cape Town), Westlake Village (Cape Town), Parkhurst (Johannesburg) and other affluent households in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Security: Imizamo Yethu is a densely crowded and impoverished low-income shack settlement where unemployment is high. Here residents rely on community patrols for safety and personal security because the police are often absent. Patrols depend on local residents being available. However, residents are determined to secure their safety where the state falls short. At times this may mean using violence to “police” suspected perpetrators.
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Sanitation and refuse: The one-bedroomed houses in Westlake Village (Cape Town) are state-subsidised and fully serviced (they each have an indoor toilet, electricity and water, plus street lighting and weekly collection of a refuse bin). However, each plot typically hosts about 20 people (in the house and backyard structures accommodating family and tenants). This means one toilet and bin is not enough. Consequently, residents build backyard toilets, illegally dump waste and add rooms to their houses without planning permission. These strategies supplement, rather than fully replace, insufficient state services.
Electricity: Parkhurst (Johannesburg) is a wealthy suburb where residents invest individually in private infrastructure like solar panels and boreholes. Households pay a monthly fee for private security companies. The community has even explored managing its own electricity supply as a collective. This signals a deliberate move away from dependence on the municipality.
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Water: Other affluent households in Cape Town and Johannesburg are increasingly investing in rainwater tanks, drilling boreholes, and recycling bath and dishwashing water. These solutions mark a clear shift towards private control over resources once considered a collective public good.
How has the government responded?
The state often ignores or overlooks these practices. This is either because it lacks the capacity to intervene or because tacit acceptance seems easier than confrontation. Sometimes, the state negotiates permissive spaces, where citizens’ actions are not formally authorised but are tolerated.
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For example, police turn a blind eye to informal security patrollers in Imizamo Yethu who punish criminals themselves. Municipalities ignore the private solar energy systems in Parkhurst despite losing municipal revenue. And homes and businesses that fail to register their water boreholes with the municipality face no penalty because the sector is under-regulated.
What’s wrong with citizens having some control over services?
Power in South Africa is increasingly shared, contested and renegotiated between citizens and the state. Rather than the traditional notion of sovereignty, where the state holds supreme authority to govern without external interference, our research demonstrates that sovereignty is now diffuse.
In other words, citizens are taking on roles once reserved for the state. These acts might look like technical fixes, but they represent political shifts: when infrastructure failures are both technical and political, so are its solutions.
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People expect the state to provide services, and when it doesn’t, it gives up some of its authority. Residents who then start setting up their own water and electricity supplies begin to question the role of the state in their lives. This blurs and destabilises the idea of what the state is and leaves a sense of insecurity.
What needs to happen next?
South Africa faces a crucial choice. If citizen-led service substitution continues unchecked, the risk is a deeply fragmented urban landscape that echoes the country’s apartheid history.
Affluent communities can partially insulate themselves from state failure through private systems, while poorer communities are left with piecemeal, precarious solutions. This potentially deepens inequality and undermines the principle of shared citizenship.
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The state could reassert its role by investing in new approaches to infrastructure, renewing political will, and partnering with communities to build a new social contract for equitable service delivery. What is at stake is not simply technical service provision but South Africa’s social contract.
Christina Culwick Fatti receives funding from the National Research Foundation, South Africa.
Charlotte Lemanski receives funding from the British Academy and the National Research Foundation, South Africa.
Fiona Anciano receives funding from the National Research Foundation, South Africa.
Margot Rubin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Spoiler Betty
Melktert – milk tart. One of South Africa’s most popular desserts consisting of a sweet pastry crust and a creamy milk filling, topped with cinnamon powder. Absolutely delicious!
Stallion Patton
Fun South African Fact: For an unforgettable bucket-list activity, search for the famous Big 5 (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo) on safari in one of South Africa’s national parks or private game reserves. A South African safari is an experience like no other!