VIJAY NAIDOO: Good Business Basics – Myth of ageing infrastructure

There is a common refrain of ‘ageing infrastructure‘ that is regurgitated by government officials and politicians, and presented as a ‘catch all’ response to the service delivery failures across all departments.

An interrogation of what I call the ‘myth of ageing infrastructure’ will reveal that obfuscation and defensiveness are often at the root of this knee-jerk response that is heard on a daily basis.

From the Departments of Water Affairs, Transport and their attendant agencies and parastatals such as Transnet, Prasa and Eskom this is a common refrain.

The reality is that, over the years, when budgets were provided to upgrade infrastructure, such as new rolling stock and locomotives at Transnet, the projects were willfully mismanaged and looted, with almost no delivery occurring.

The travails of the expansion of capacity at Eskom, particularly the building of new power stations, is well documented.

The fact is that even when new infrastructure happens to be delivered, it can in a short space of time be categorised as ‘ageing’ by virtue of the fact that design specifications have been tailored to skim as much off the top as possible (the boiler design at the Medupi and Kusile power stations are an example), or the quality of work is so poor that designed lifespans are drastically reduced.

Of course, the cherry on top is that replacement cycles are much shorter to allow the next feeding frenzy (sometimes called tenders) to begin.

The other technique employed is the wilful disregard of maintenance and upkeep protocols to accelerate the ageing, or to provoke breakdowns that provide the windfall of ’emergency procurement’ for connected contractors.

The management of Eskom are only too well aware of this one.

It would be an interesting exercise to analyse the value of infrastructure contracts awarded by the State versus the actual delivery of infrastructure on the ground.

Undoubtedly, this analyses would be littered with the carcasses of unfinished and abandoned projects across provinces, such as the multi-billion water project in Giyani, Limpopo or the R15-m sports field in Komani, Eastern Cape with one steel grandstand masquerading as a stadium.

Until the wilful and systematic manipulation of tender processes is addressed, we will forever be plagued with ageing infrastructure in this country.

Vijay Naidoo is the CEO of the Port Shepstone Business Forum. He writes in his personal capacity. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.

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