Gauteng Infrastructure Development: A new approach
“One never notices what has been done, one can only see what remains to be done” — Marie Curie
As the custodian of an immovable asset portfolio of more than R31-billion, which includes 152 health facilities and 2 249 schools, the Gauteng department of infras t r u c t u r e d e v e l o p me n t ( G D I D ) faces the unenviable task of ensuring value for money in both the use and custodianship of these assets.
The task is made more daunting by increasing service delivery protests with their concomitant violence, which results in damage not only to life and limb, but to public property as well. By February this year damage to public property in Gauteng as a result of these protests was estimated at R65-million.
Gauteng and the Eastern Cape have seen the most protests this year so far, with 26% of demonstrations taking place in the former; the Eastern Cape recorded 24%.
One cannot help but become emotional when thinking of the damage caused up north in Vuwani, Limpopo, where more than 20 schools were set alight in protest against the demarcation process earlier this year. Whatever the reasons, the fact is we are in urgent need of a paradigm shift.
It was with this in mind that the GDID launched the “I Care We Care” campaign in the volatile Bekkersdal West Rand township in July. The choice of Bekkersdal as the launch site for the “I Care We Care” campaign by Gauteng premier David Makhura was influenced by the violent protests of 2015. These resulted in the destruction of, among others, a community hall, council offices, a gymnasium and a multipurpose centre. Some of these buildings had been torched before and were restored before being destroyed for the second time. Their destruction was a serious setback to the Bekkersdal Urban Renewal Programme aimed at uplifting the social and economic circumstances of those living in the area.
The unintended outcome of the Bekkersdal protests is that the damage to these properties has resulted in a great inconvenience for certain members of the community, especially the frail and the elderly. Residents who could access government departments such as home affairs, health and the South African social security agency on their doorstep, now have to travel 10km to Randfontein. The damage is estimated at R20-million.
The gist of the “I Care We Care” campaign is a mass pledge-signing initiative, aimed at obtaining one million pledges in six months. Put simply, the official wording of this pledge is: I/We pledge to take a firm stand against burning, vandalism, littering and any form of destruction of public property; I/ We further pledge to care for, preserve and protect public property as the common heritage of all the people.
But more than anything else, the object of the I Care We Care campaign is to create awareness that government is concerned about the destruction of public infrastructure. It encourages communities to take ownership and to embrace the value that public assets bring to them.
The campaign also seeks to promote an understanding of the consequences of destroying public property, especially the fact that once assets are destroyed, replacing them will “take away” opportunities for other communities.
The key message of the campaign is a call for government and communities to stand together against unlawful acts while emphasising dialogue as an effective alternative to violence in raising grievances. Far from wanting to deny citizens their democratic right to engage in protests, the I Care We Care campaign is a call for communities to not endorse violent protest action.
Perhaps a brief background is necessary for us to understand where we come from, where we are, and where we intend to go.
It is only seven years since the GDID came into existence. This was after the reconfiguration of provincial governments; it was a split from the then department of public works, roads and transport in 2009.
It is crucial that we understand that South Africa has suffered a unique form of colonisation. It is a country where the oppressor and the oppressed lived in separate areas but within the borders of the same country. Laws were passed that legislated not only the separation, but also the under-development of townships and rural areas meant to serve as mere depositories of labour. The skewed infrastructure development resulted in massive infrastructure backlogs in the severely neglected rural and township areas.
It is against this backdrop that the GDID was created to focus on modern, integrated and holistic infrastructure development and to prioritise the delivery of infrastructure to deprived areas.
To this end the Gauteng provincial government has adopted a strategic perspective called Transformation, Modernisation and Re-Industrialisation to fasttrack and unlock service delivery, working with and among the people.
The provincial government further adopted the Nthirisano Outreach Programme, which seeks to engage the people with a view to intervening, trouble-shooting and unlocking service delivery blockages and economic development constraints.
To boost the initiative the provincial government adopted the concept of Township Economy Revitalisation to reverse or mitigate the devastating effects of spatial development and neglected townships. The provincial government also hosted an infrastructure conference in 2015, with a followup conference on the cards.
It is a given t hat with t he immense economic potential embedded in the Immovable Asset Register, the department must adopt a strategy to optimise the economic value and unlock the multiple investment opportunities provided by government owned immovable assets.
The absolute need for a new perspective takes into account the fact that our province is struggling to meet the high demand for infrastructure development. This is aggravated by various factors such as the poor quality of certain land due to high prevalence of dolomite, the destruction caused by many years of mining, land speculation that has led to skyrocketing prices as a result of the increased competition for prime land, and the pressure exerted by ongoing rural–tourban migration.
Remarkable developmental strides have been made but challenges and opportunities for improvement remain, compelling a review of the current model of infrastructure delivery.
The traditional delivery model is only focused on quantitative delivery, with no real interest in the complex task of spatial transformation. It is therefore important in its delivery approach that the GDID does not deepen the colonial spatial outlook with isolated, unrelated and costly infrastructure delivery that does not promote development and transformation.
Any brick and mortar activity should seek to reverse the negative spatial patterns of under and separate development that colonialism left as a special type of legacy.
As matters stand, we are currently sitting with massive assets such as schools, clinics, hospitals, police stations and many other public assets on land that is severely underutilised. In many instances, the economic investment potential is undervalued.
In essence therefore, the completion of the Immovable Asset Register brings to an end a period of frustration and searching in vain for high impact assets to grow the economy and empower the people.
We now have a source of econ o mi c a c t i v i t y , e mp o w e r me n t and growth. The challenge is to find innovative and creative solutions to engineer a second radical phase of our transition. So-called multiple value optimisation i n infrastructure delivery is therefore an attempt to unlock the value trapped in our existing and new infrastructure interventions.
The new approach also provides us with the rare but real opportunity to mobilise and incentivise private sector investors. This can be done through a model of private-public partnerships and other financial models to share risk and deliver quality, state-of-the-art infrastructure within budget and schedule.
In closing, this approach will p r o v i d e d i v e r s e a n d mu l t i p l e sources of infrastructure funding, a necessity given our limited public purse. Considering the fact that our country does not have an infrastructure bank, it is necessary to diversify sources of infrastructure funding by unlocking and optimising the real economic value of our Immovable Asset Register.