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Public Services Provision in South Africa: The Variation in Access to Electricity, Water, and Sewerage at the Municipal Ward Level between 1996 and 2001

Literature › Works

Knoesen, Sarah Gray (2008). Public Services Provision in South Africa: The Variation in Access to Electricity, Water, and Sewerage at the Municipal Ward Level between 1996 and 2001. University of California, San Diego (unpublished draft).
Type working paper
Scope Post-1994 South African economy
Method econometric
Period studied 1994–2001
Regions South Africa (national), ward-level, all nine provinces
Themes transition post apartheid, inequality poverty unemployment, politics ideology elections, demography urbanisation, bantustans removals influx
Citation key knoesen2008

Argument

The paper asks why some wards gained far more household access to electricity, water and sewerage between 1996 and 2001. It tests three hypotheses: need-based redistribution, party-line patronage (provincial ANC vote share) and racial patronage (percentage black as proxy for ANC support). Ward-level OLS regressions find that initial low access predicts larger gains, but ANC provincial vote share and black share of population also raise gains independently. The author concludes that the ANC uses new service connections as political currency, while allowing that it also sincerely tries to reduce apartheid inequalities.

Evidence and method

1996 and 2001 South African census data at ward level (about 3,697 wards used of 3,715); 1994 national election provincial vote shares; Municipal Demarcation Board Capacity Assessments for municipal urbanization; secondary literature (Van der Berg, Seekings and Nattrass, Cox and McCubbins, Dixit and Londregan).

Findings

  • Low initial access predicts larger gains, supporting the redistribution hypothesis (all three services). (p. 14)

    the lower the percentage of households with access to core public services in 1996, the larger the increase in access between 1996 and 2001.

  • Provincial ANC vote share in 1994 has a significant positive effect on ward-level gains in access, controlling for initial service level. (p. 15)

    a higher vote share for the ANC at the provincial level is correlated with an increase in public service access at the ward level between 1996 and 2001

  • Wards with a higher percentage of black residents gained more access even after controls. (p. 15)

  • Racially mixed wards (higher fractionalization, more whites) gained less access. (p. 16)

  • The result for black wards survives municipality fixed effects (results not shown). (p. 17)

    even when controlling for municipal effects and initial level of service, black wards still receive a higher increase in access to services between 1996 and 2001.

  • Apartheid inequality at the transition: racial gaps in income and state social spending. (p. 2)

    In 1995, state social spending on black South Africans was a mere one-third of social spending on white South Africans

  • Race rather than income explains the lack of infrastructure in townships and Bantustans, owing to apartheid policy. (p. 9)

    Thus race, much more so than income was the driving factor in whether or not an area received infrastructure and access to basic public services.

  • Black voters overwhelmingly backed the ANC in 1994, justifying race as a proxy for party support. (p. 8)

    of the estimated 14.2 million black voters, 11.5 million voted for the ANC. That means that more than 80% of black voters cast their vote for the ANC.

  • In Table 1, the coefficient on 1996 electricity access is -0.437, with R-squared 0.30 and N=3697. (p. 18)

    percent_Elec_96 -0.437***