Rampant destruction of infrastructure ‘a result of government not consulting citizens’ – experts

As parliament heard of the magnitude of the ongoing pillage of the country’s public infrastructure on Tuesday, experts have warned that government not consulting citizens in decision-making fuelled rampant destruction.

Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille told the National Council of Provinces hybrid ministerial briefing of the scale and impact of the destruction of public property and community facilities.

Amid the widespread destruction, De Lille said corruption was the biggest challenge.

“Corruption steals from the poor and so does the crime of destruction of property,” she said. “While fighting crime is not the mandate of the department of public works and infrastructure, the department has put measures in place to prevent and detect the destruction of infrastructure.”

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De Lille said the vision was to ensure infrastructure can be planned, procured, built, manufactured and used without the material risk of crime and corruption.

“The cost of crime and corruption are very material, which can be measured in a significant loss of life and the destruction of property, wasted spending, higher costs, reduced utilisation and non-payment of user charges.

“The basic kinds of infrastructure crimes that we have identified include areas of infrastructure provision – especially corruption in the procurement process – the extortion of service providers and theft of copper and steel,” she said.

‘Africans are people of law and order’

Political analysts Dr Nkosikhulule Nyembezi and Sandile Swana put the blame on government’s approach, saying citizens were not consulted on issues.

“The main concern is that the government no longer treats most people as rightful citizens, who must be consulted in decision-making and involved in governance,” said Nyembezi.

“Instead, it treats most people as subjects to be controlled and managed. This dehumanising attitude in the face of government failures to fulfil its mandate, is evident in the official statistics on human development and various reports on public expenditure submitted to parliament by government departments.

“It is the primary source of the alarming number of violent protests in which the informal economy supports the livelihoods of more people than the formal economy, in which joblessness and poverty continue to intensify, along with the widening gap of income inequality.

“The injustices of the apartheid past needed concerted eradication efforts led by the government through the nurturing of new emancipatory values that can progressively root in society and the benefits of their permeation – measured over time as evidence of a functioning social contract where the government fulfils election promises.

“These values rest on the foundation of a remarkably liberal constitution,” Nyembezi added.

Swana said: “You will remember that infrastructure was always protected against any type of crime and abuse by the state – including railway police in the protection of national key points.

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“In every country where infrastructure remains in order and all public spaces clean, there is enough law enforcement, stringent law enforcement.

“Good citizens obey the law easily when there is enough law enforcement. Otherwise, everybody starts taking chances and bigger chances. Eskom employees are running their own electricity businesses inside Eskom. Others are simply stripping all types of infrastructure and gaining money via scrap metals.”

“Morally and culturally, Africans are people of law and order. So, when the state allows syndicates and politicians to run slums and rackets of stealing state infrastructure, morality is questioned.”

– brians@citizen.co.za