Public trust in national and local government is declining, with the failure of infrastructure and systems leading to increasing disengagement.
Experts on governance say the decreasing trust levels can be reversed through improved service delivery, but there is an overwhelming feeling that services are collapsing.
Bongani Qwabe, a local government expert from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said service delivery in terms of good governance had failed post-1994.
“There are many loopholes that should have been identified and addressed by now and we should have seen positive developments. Infrastructure is failing. If you look at Eskom, the issues with the Transport Department’s driver’s licence card printing machine, and major problems with water infrastructure. There must always be a plan that looks at the growing population and whether the infrastructure that is in place is adequate and capable of providing services,” he said.
Qwabe said public officials had failed to look into the infrastructure gaps that existed and so there was a state of continued chaos.
“The priority is on party political issues rather than infrastructure development. The National Development Plan was adopted and set out to reach certain targets with time-lines, but the reality is that those targets will not be achieved. This has placed a greater burden on society, whether it be socio-economic or business, and this has led to greater unemployment,” he said.
Qwabe said people were hoping the government could achieve some targets, but this was not taking place.
“Things are only getting worse – day to day things are crumbling.”
Another local government expert, Professor Thokozani Nzimakwe, said South Africans were being overwhelmed by governance failures, from load shedding and mismanagement at Eskom to the failure to repair and maintain basic infrastructure in many municipalities.
“South Africans still have some hope that basic services can be fixed, but right now we are going through a tough phase with so many service delivery challenges. We are definitely not on track with the goals set out in the National Development Plan,” he said.
Nzimakwe said there could not be a one-for-all solution to the challenges.
“We need to go back to basics, especially in the delivery of services, including water and sanitation, at local government level. Things are failing, because there is a disconnect between local government and the national sphere. If local government does play its part there will be an improvement in the trust deficit that exists,” he said.
Nzimakwe said the growing trust deficit between the citizenry and government was as a result of people not having hope that their material conditions and circumstances would improve.
The 2021 Afrobarometer survey revealed that most South Africans did not have confidence in public institutions. It showed that trust in the state changes and responds to political developments.
Public trust in local government scored the lowest on a recent Human Sciences Research Council survey that looked at the promises made by those during election campaigns compared with the implementation when they took office.