Why invest when the state is useless?

A sure indication that South Africa is sliding towards failed state status is that service delivery has all but collapsed in many towns, especially in rural areas.

Corruption, looting and the incompetence which has flowed from the ANC’s policy of cadre deployment has led, inexorably, to the failure of municipal systems such as sewage, garbage collection and basic maintenance of public spaces.

There is a disturbing trend of middle-class residents of those towns having to dig deeper into their pockets, after paying rates for municipal services, to fill the gap the town bureaucracy has created.

Even in larger cities, residents’ associations are moving beyond paying to provide their own security (and, increasingly, electricity via solar power installations) and are taking on more responsibility, such as pothole repair, maintenance of parks and shared spaces.

In other words, those highly taxed middle-class earners are having to further subsidise the governmental institutions and systems imploding around them.

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The danger in this, of course, is that the additional financial contributions are in no way either going to lessen the burdens on these people; they are merely going to make it easier for the delinquent town administrations to avoid doing their jobs.

Sooner or later, the middle-class is going to start boycotting municipal payments on a large scale – something which is happening now in some smaller municipalities.

And yet, there we are (led by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, trying to convince investors that South Africa is a great place to put your money.

If our ports and railways – never mind our power supplier – are dysfunctional, what are the prospects of turning a decent profit?

Why invest in a country where the people have to look after themselves because their government is useless?

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