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Three months from now, South Africans head to the polls to vote for their local government representatives. This is an important election, and also quite a unique one. It is important because of the acute service delivery failures that plague municipalities across the country, and unique because, for the first time in our democratic era, a political party that is not the ANC has a comprehensive record in municipalities across the country against which its commitment to service delivery can be gauged.

It is, in other words, the first time that South Africans will be able to compare not only what political parties pledge to do in local government, but also what an alternative to the ANC has already achieved in local government administrations all across South Africa. That alternative, of course, is the DA; the many municipal administrations against which our record will be judged include Midvaal in Gauteng, Baviaans in the Eastern Cape, and our flagship City of Cape Town administration in the Western Cape.

In the run-up to municipal elections, we will no doubt hear a great deal from the ANC about their own record in local government. We will hear about how South Africans are better off now than they were in 1994 – how service delivery, particularly in rural areas, has improved under programmes like the RDP. ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu got the ball rolling yesterday. He cited “research by various government and independent agencies”, which, he says, shows “significant improvements across all types of municipalities”.

This is precisely where the new dynamic of this election – the fact that voters can not only compare promises, but also records – becomes tremendously significant. Life in South Africa is better now than it was in 1994; but that is no longer enough. What the ANC needs to demonstrate is not that it has delivered some services, but that it delivers better than the alternatives on offer. It needs to show that it delivers faster, more efficiently, more effectively than the DA can. And on that count, Mr. Mthembu’s “government research” shows up some profoundly important comparative data.

Consider the Cooperative Governance Department’s 2010 Universal Household Access to Basic Services survey. This study deals with four areas of basic service delivery – water, sanitation, electricity and refuse removal. The report is particularly instructive because the first three of these service delivery metrics were the explicit subject of Mr. Mthembu’s recent comments. It provides a clear-cut comparative assessment of party performance at municipal level:

According to the report, nine in ten residents of the DA-run Cape Town have “universal access” to basic services – a higher proportion than any other metro in the country. On each of the individual service delivery metrics, the DA’s performance stands head and shoulders over that of the ANC:

Electricity

When the DA-run coalition assumed the government of the City of Cape Town in 2006, electricity provision improved dramatically. General expenditure on infrastructure rose to R19 billion between 2006 and 2010 and expenditure on repairs and maintenance tripled to R1,6 billion a year. Today, Cape Town’s share of households with electricity connections is the highest in South Africa at over 95%.

When the ANC ran Cape Town before 2006, the City’s electricity network was in a state of disrepair. The ANC metro had delayed replacing a 30-40 year-old decaying electricity infrastructure and had only spent R5 billion on general infrastructure over 5 years and expenditure on infrastructure repair remained at R800 million a year.

Sanitation

In its 2006 manifesto, the ANC said:

“By 2010, when South Africa hosts the Soccer World Cup, all households will have access to clean running water and decent sanitation.”

Now the ANC says the target is no longer 2010, but 2014, and the Cooperative Governance report shows why. In Tshwane, for instance, one in five residents still do not even have access to the most basic level of sanitation.

In Cape Town, on the other hand, 94% of residents have access to basic sanitation.

Water

Cape Town is the only metro in the country that recorded 100% access to water in the Department of Cooperative Governance’s report.

Residents registered on the City’s indigency database receive 350 litres per day for free, which is the highest free allocation of water in the country. Any water not used on a given day can be carried over to the next day. Residents who have not registered on the database, but who nonetheless run into arrears in payments, are never cut off under the City’s “trickle system”, and the City's SMS line, and 24-hour emergency call centre line, help residents experiencing water and sanitation problems.

Quality of Life Survey

It is also relevant to note that the Gauteng Planning Commission's Quality of Life Survey, a government report focusing on standards of delivery at municipal level released in May last year by Provincial Premier Nomvula Mokonyane, ranked the DA-run Midvaal as the province's top municipality for quality of life.

The survey shows that, at almost every level, Midvaal residents experience better living conditions and governance than residents living in ANC municipalities. In Gauteng, Midvaal has the highest satisfaction rating for any municipality and is the only one in the province whose residents express more confidence in local government than in the provincial and national governments. It is also the only municipality in the province where the majority of residents are either satisfied or very satisfied with local government.

In 2008, the R8 billion Doorkuil integrated housing development was launched in Midvaal, which is in the process of constructing 18 000 new residential housing units, 60% of which are for lower income earners. The survey found that more than two-thirds of Midvaal residents say they are either very satisfied or satisfied with the dwelling in which they reside – the highest percentage in Gauteng.

Conclusion

The ANC often says that basic service delivery is better now than it was in 1994. It generally is. But that sets the bar too low. South Africans are no longer content to be told that their government does a better job than its oppressive, undemocratic predecessor, which set about intentionally disenfranchising millions of South Africans.

Instead, when South Africans go the polls later this year, they will be able to make a decision based not simply on the array of promises being made, but one based on the DA’s own proven record in government. South Africans will be able to choose. One option is a party that considers it acceptable that one-third of Tshwane residents do not have universal access to basic services, that allows for electricity blackouts to cripple our country’s economy, and that too often does not take pressing infrastructure and service problems seriously. The other option is a party that has steadily built up a track record in governments, a record measured in electricity connections, refuse removal, houses, roads and the like. Voters can now choose a party that actually delivers to all.