South Africa: South Africans Are Tired of Being Punished for Government Failure They Did Not Create

South Africa will not fix its municipalities, utilities or public finances by making honest residents pay endlessly for dishonest or incompetent leadership.

South Africans are not unreasonable people. They understand that services cost money. They understand that infrastructure must be maintained. They understand that municipalities, utilities and government departments need revenue to function.

But what people no longer accept is being asked to pay more and more while receiving less and less.

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Residents pay their municipal bills. Businesses pay their electricity and water accounts. Ratepayers fund the system month after month. Yet they are rewarded with potholes, sewage spills, water outages, collapsing substations, broken traffic lights, billing chaos and municipalities that somehow still cannot pay Eskom, water boards or service providers.

This is the heart of the crisis: ordinary people are being forced to carry the cost of government failure.

Tariff increases have become the default answer to every problem. When municipalities mismanage revenue, residents must pay more. When infrastructure is not maintained, residents must pay more. When corruption, wasteful expenditure and poor planning hollow out the state, residents must pay more. When unions and municipalities agree on above-inflation increases, regardless of a municipality's financial status, municipal customers must pay more. When officials fail to do their jobs, the public is told to tighten its belt.

But there is very little evidence...