What does it take for service delivery to take place?

Does it necessarily have to take vandalism, beatings and to claim lives for service delivery to take place? We are witnessing the rising number of protests due to poor service delivery, especially now that it’s municipal elections time.

One wonders if there is a need to have a government if its people are not heard or if we have forgotten that there would be no government without these people. Earlier on I had a conversation with my neighbor about the municipalities and the upcoming elections. Our conversation became steamier and rather worrying for me. I raised a question on what she thought about a certain district municipality, and her response was unsurprisingly what most South Africans thought.

She is dissatisfied with the service; hence she began to mention incomplete projects such as housing, water supply, and road infrastructure. Still in mind I had to ask what the solution was to these issues and she said, hopelessly as if she had already gave up, that it takes violence and lives to grab our leaders attention to come to a solution. We have become slaves of protesting. Indeed one can agree with her considering our poor service delivery in the country.

For instance in Ficksburg recently there was a service delivery protest where a man died. The incident was broadcasted on national television and it brought outrage and anger from most South African citizens. When the incident was brought to the attention of government officials that was when they promised to look into the matter. This, of course, fueled more service delivery protests across some parts of the country ahead of the municipal elections. Bob Marley once said in his song “It takes a revolution to make a solution”. For Ficksburg residents, it had to take a bloody and violent protest to alert the government about the living conditions there.

I also asked this lady if she’s going to vote in these elections and she said she won’t waste her time “voting for people who give their best when it comes to promises, but give less when it comes to service delivery”. This is understandable considering the fact that political parties usually campaign and promise people a better life during election time, but they hardly show up in most communities to observe how their government is progressing when it comes to service delivery. In other words we usually have to wait for a period of about 5 years before the needs of most communities are taken into consideration. So meaning if there were elections every year, then we would see political officials listening to the needs of communities.

Let’s hope that after these elections we will see a difference. Hopefully the politicians will not look at their own needs and forget about the poor communities. Let’s hope they will stop focusing on their oppositions and start focusing more on making South Africa a better country for everyone.