Service delivery should be a benchmark for transformation

By Sanjeev Mahatma Gupta

Whether the ANC’s conference at Gallagher was a convenient reaction to an apparent loss of political relevance or not is a debate best shelved for another day.
Indeed, it is stocktaking time – time to assess ourselves and see how and why we have strayed off course.
One of the main areas is that deserve to be revised in transformation, in which we have adopted a perverted approach based on the percentage of shares of a JSE-listed company transferred to a group of politically connected individuals.
But real real transformation also constitutes how basic services – good sanitation, clean water, access to hospitals and schools are easily accessible to the masses, most of whom alive in townships and rural areas.
Sadly, not much has been done in the provision of basic services as can be mirrored by service protests, which far from being isolated acts of hooliganism, are indicative of poor or failure to deliver.
Beyond doubt, it is time for all stakeholders, under the guidance of the government, to take decisive action. It is just hard to ignore that public patience is wearing thin twenty one years into the country’s democracy.
A lot has been made about the ANC’s 13-point strategy, which has left no proverbial stone unturned. But it would mean nothing if the Government does revise project implementation.
How can we say we have truly transformed when the masses do have little or no access to basic services just as they did under the apartheid system?
Sanjay Gupta is a freelancer who writes for Transform SA Online from Chatsworth, Kwazulu Natal