New Money, Old Buckets: Anger South Africa's Poor

The paper examines how South Africa's failure to deliver basic services, such as sanitation in the Free State province, persists despite available funding. It highlights a critical gap between national policy goals and local implementation, driven by widespread municipal corruption, a lack of skilled personnel in project management and engineering, and the inability of local governments to utilize infrastructure grants. The author uses this situation to critique the Commission for Africa's proposal for increased aid, suggesting that without a realistic assessment of implementation capacity, additional funds will not effectively reduce poverty.

• Despite national government commitment and the allocation of grants to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014, a significant portion of funds remains unspent; for instance, as of December 2007, only 56% of Municipal Infrastructure Grant funds provided to provinces for local service delivery had been allocated.
• South Africa's local and provincial governments suffer from a severe shortage of skilled personnel, with 61% of senior management posts in service delivery departments vacant and only approximately 8% of government workers classified as 'highly skilled'.
• Service delivery failures in the Free State province, specifically the 'bucket system' of sanitation, triggered riots in townships such as Phomolong, Mmamahabane, and Ntabazwe, reflecting deeper issues of municipal corruption and undelivered government promises.
• Municipalities are often unable to access available grants because they lack the capacity to design projects, and many struggle with basic administration; a government survey of 284 municipalities found nearly half required urgent assistance with billing systems, debts, and service delivery.
• The government has launched Project Consolidate to deploy consultants to 136 municipalities to address issues including accounting ineptitude, political infighting, and corruption.

APA

South African Institute of International Affairs (2008). New Money, Old Buckets: Anger South Africa's Poor. https://saiia.org.za/research/new-money-old-buckets-anger-south-africas-poor/

Chicago

South African Institute of International Affairs. New Money, Old Buckets: Anger South Africa's Poor. 2008. https://saiia.org.za/research/new-money-old-buckets-anger-south-africas-poor/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=South African Institute of International Affairs |title=New Money, Old Buckets: Anger South Africa's Poor |date=25 April 2008 |url=https://saiia.org.za/research/new-money-old-buckets-anger-south-africas-poor/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{southafricaninstituteofinternationalaffairs2008new, author = {{South African Institute of International Affairs}}, title = {{New Money, Old Buckets: Anger South Africa's Poor}}, institution = {South African Institute of International Affairs}, year = {2008}, month = apr, url = {https://saiia.org.za/research/new-money-old-buckets-anger-south-africas-poor/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }