Primary causes of the condition of public sector fixed infrastructure in South Africa

Abstract

This fourth article in a series being published in this Journal on the condition of South Africa’s public sector fixed infrastructure describes what it identifies as the primary causes of this condition. The first two articles dealt with efforts to monitor the condition, and with studies of the condition and their findings. The third discussed some consequences of that condition. For this article, qualitative research methods were employed, primarily through the application of desktop research and data analysis of grey literature. The findings on the primary causes of infrastructure condition of ten sets of documents dating back to 2006 were reviewed to identify the commonly cited causes of failure (among them, skills shortages, budget constraints, weak systems, poor data, and poor governance) and to understand if there could be underlying factors common to multiple elements on this list of usual suspects. In its findings, the review suggests that factors of leadership and institutional capacity, socio-economic context, and culture underlie the commonly cited causes – that is, the commonly cited causes are profoundly shaped by these underlying factors.