South Africans are bailing on government services

The public sector in South Africa has become increasingly overwhelmed and “stretched in every direction” – with degradation or critical failures leading to citizens turning away from public services wherever they can.

Despite typically being created to be “stable and unwavering”, South Africa’s public institutions have fallen to political power shifts, technological changes and corruption, which threatens to completely overwhelm them, according to advisory group PwC.

In the group’s South Africa Economic Outlook for 2024, PwC said that the state is no longer able to deliver the quantity and quality of services that it previously could – as a result, South Africans’ use of public services has declined across the board between 2019 and 2023.

This trend is likely to continue in 2024, it said.

PwC said this situation provides an opportunity for South African companies to make an impact on their communities by partnering with the government to assist in addressing socio-economic issues.

This is not a new concept and builds on the developments between the private and public sectors in 2023, where they partnered to address major crises in the country.

Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) and other business leaders have been engaging with the government to suggest solutions and offer help in addressing challenges faced in delivering services associated with energy, logistics and crime.

This has led to several public-private partnerships, which have paved the way for things like third-party train operators being able to enter the rail logistics market in 2024. This aims to ease pressure on the logistics sector, which has been facing devastating constraints.

PwC suggests going further with this and implementing a complete “public-private collaboration model” in South Africa

This model is premised on an equal partnership basis, which means that the government and private sector provide shared funding and have shared control over the resulting assets.

“This approach supports the government in executing their mandate of public service delivery and provides private entities with a social licence to operate,” said PwC.

The company gave various reasons as to why it believes this model is the best fit for service delivery.

From a financing perspective, “the new collaboration model involves innovative funding models that reduce the impact on the fiscus [whilst] ownership of the relevant infrastructure assets reside with the government”.

PwC also suggested setting up an independent execution body with representation from all partners to “ensure strong governance structures and equal participation by both the public and private
sector parties.”

This would be done in hopes of not overwhelming the sector and increasing confidence in public service companies following its drastic decline in use by South Africans.

Public-private partnerships are not unchartered waters for the government.

Most recently, the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure turned heads when it announced its intentions to work with private companies to refurbish run-down buildings owned by the government.

Read: Government wants the private sector to fix up its broken buildings