Difficult Tradeoffs as Economies Seek to Balance Recovery and Service Delivery

The 2019/20 Financial Year was a daunting year in the life of Roads Agency Limpopo (RAL). The organisation went through a lot in terms of service delivery challenges. RAL has, for the last several months, been under severe pressure and one could say under siege from the road infrastructure service delivery protests. Our communities have been displaying their displeasure through service delivery protests. We had a number of interruptions from communities visiting RAL offices demanding their road infrastructure plights to be addressed.

It is indeed a sad chapter in South Africa as the country is battling a lot of eventualities, including dipping into a technical recession and the novel Covid-19 pandemic, a disease caused by the Coronavirus. The fact that the country was recently downgraded by rating agencies in the middle of this health crisis has rubbed salt into the wound.

South Africa, like many other African countries, is also battling the high levels of youth unemployment, poverty and widening income disparities. At the rate at which the economy is growing, there is no doubt that the five years ahead will be the toughest in history.

The recently concluded and approved strategic plan should serve as a guiding tool for RAL to not only address its mandate efficiently but also assist in dealing with the above challenges in the country for the next five years, 2020-2025.

We are confident that based on RAL’s delivery record for the past five years, its mandate will be carried for the next five years, albeit with limited resources at its disposal.

In our blueprint, the role played by industries such as mining, agriculture, tourism and lately the establishment of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) are considered important to the economic development of the province.

The growth and development of these key industries in the province is dependent on the well-developed road network, which is the responsibility of RAL. RAL will therefore require the support of strategic partners from the private sector to ensure that it delivers on the road infrastructure demands required for economic development and growth.

Currently, the Agency is responsible for a road network of 19 000 km, 61% of which is unpaved.

We, together with all the Limpopo municipalities, have recently concluded the road reprioritisation process.

The purpose of the road prioritisation process was to identify unpaved priority roads which are currently unfunded and not in the implementation plans of RAL.

The prioritisation considered factors such as previous political commitments, incomplete (Bermuda) roads, political hotspots, the need for roads that facilitate access to key social services such as clinics, schools and hospitals etc., and areas of economic activity.

Out of a total of 13 818 km backlog of unpaved roads, a total of 3 793 was prioritised by district municipalities. These will require approximately R37bn to address.

Community protests around the issues of road infrastructure continue to pose a major challenge to the execution of RAL’s mandate.

RAL is inundated with calls for better roads daily. Almost every protest that erupts is about or has an impact on road infrastructure. RAL and the Limpopo Department of Public Works, Roads and Infrastructure will continue to engage communities to facilitate communitybased planning and implementation thus reducing politicising of road infrastructure project development.

Whilst in the past great effort was invested in stabilising RAL’s financial management environment, our next task will remain to gear RAL towards obtaining and sustaining a clean audit.

Our overarching goal, however, is to build safe, accessible, reliable and affordable roads.

I am optimistic that with the right mix of commitment, teamwork and an adequate support system from our stakeholders, this goal is realisable.