Hollowing out the local state: Managerialism and Skills in the Water Sector

The report examines the crisis in municipal water and sanitation management in South Africa, noting that while infrastructure access has expanded, service functionality remains uneven. It argues that the 'skills shortage' is not merely a lack of training but a result of historical devaluation of technical trades and the adoption of New Public Management (NPM) reforms that prioritise senior managers over operational staff. This 'hollowing out' of the local state has left municipalities without the essential artisans—such as millwrights and plumbers—needed for routine maintenance, exacerbating service failures in historically disadvantaged areas.

• Despite significant increases in infrastructure access—with piped water access rising from 85% in 2001 to 91.3% in 2011—community dissatisfaction remains high because statistics reflect infrastructure availability rather than functional services.
• Water and sanitation service performance remains spatially uneven, with the best-performing municipalities typically being those that did not originate as homelands or black local authorities under apartheid.
• The most critical skills shortages in the water sector are not in senior engineering but in basic technical operational roles, specifically artisans such as millwrights, plumbers, and electricians.
• A long-standing cultural and political devaluation of technical trades and a specific stigma against waste water work have discouraged people from entering these professions.
• The transition to 'competency-based' modular training and learnerships has weakened artisan development by replacing all-round professional expertise with fragmented 'units of competence'.
• The adoption of New Public Management (NPM) reforms in the 1990s shifted the focus of municipal staffing toward senior managers, leading to the 'culling' of elementary and technical positions to balance salary budgets.
• Municipalities are increasingly relying on private consultants and contractors, which 'dehusks' them of internal technical skills and leaves them unable to oversee the quality of work provided.
• The process of municipal amalgamation during the democratic transition caused a significant loss of institutional capacity and operational data, such as infrastructure maps.

APA

Public Affairs Research Institute (2015). Hollowing out the local state: Managerialism and Skills in the Water Sector. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PARI-waterreportweb-1.pdf

Chicago

Public Affairs Research Institute. Hollowing out the local state: Managerialism and Skills in the Water Sector. 2015. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PARI-waterreportweb-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Public Affairs Research Institute |title=Hollowing out the local state: Managerialism and Skills in the Water Sector |date=2015 |url=https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PARI-waterreportweb-1.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{publicaffairsresearchinstitute2015hollowing, author = {{Public Affairs Research Institute}}, title = {{Hollowing out the local state: Managerialism and Skills in the Water Sector}}, institution = {Public Affairs Research Institute}, year = {2015}, url = {https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PARI-waterreportweb-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }