By The Conversation Africa, adapted for clarity
South Africa’s constitution guarantees citizens access to essential services like housing, electricity, water, sanitation, and security. But in reality, millions are experiencing daily disruptions — water cuts, sewage spills, power outages, and unreliable policing — prompting households across income levels to increasingly take matters into their own hands.
Researchers Fiona Anciano, Charlotte Lemanski, Christina Culwick Fatti, and Margot Rubin have studied this growing shift towards self-reliance and warn it could have serious long-term consequences for governance, equity, and the country’s social contract.
A System Under Strain
While services might be available on paper, access is often limited — especially for low-income households. Government subsidies like the free basic electricity allowance are poorly communicated, difficult to access, or insufficient to meet actual needs. For example, the free allocation doesn’t even cover a fridge’s monthly power use — and 70% of qualifying households never receive it.
Even those who do have access to basic services can’t rely on them. Rolling blackouts and water interruptions have become a way of life, while infrastructure failures grow more frequent. Middle- and upper-income households are also fed up, often paying more for increasingly erratic service.
Citizens Creating Their Own Systems
Researchers examined four communities — both affluent and low-income — to understand how residents are stepping in where the state is falling short.
Security: Imizamo Yethu (Cape Town)
In this densely populated informal settlement, residents can’t count on the police to protect them. Community patrols have stepped in, offering some sense of security. These informal security networks rely on volunteers and sometimes use violent methods to “deal with” suspected criminals — filling a void left by the state.
Sanitation: Westlake Village (Cape Town)
Although Westlake’s government-subsidised homes are technically “fully serviced,” the overcrowding means one toilet and one refuse bin per household isn’t enough. With up to 20 people living on one plot, residents are forced to build backyard toilets and illegally dump waste. These aren’t full replacements but desperate supplements to failing infrastructure.
Electricity: Parkhurst (Johannesburg)
In the wealthy suburb of Parkhurst, residents are moving towards energy independence. Many have installed solar panels, drilled boreholes, and hired private security services. The community has even explored managing its own electricity collectively — signalling a move away from municipal dependency altogether.
Water: Affluent households in Cape Town & Johannesburg
Private rainwater tanks, boreholes, and greywater systems are becoming the norm among the wealthy. These solutions give households control over once-public goods, further separating them from the common grid.
How Has the Government Reacted?
Often, the state simply turns a blind eye. Whether due to a lack of resources or political will, informal systems are tolerated rather than regulated. Police don’t intervene in community patrols in informal settlements. Municipalities ignore solar installations in wealthy suburbs, despite losing revenue. Boreholes go unregistered with no consequences.
This passive acceptance creates what the researchers call “permissive spaces” — grey areas where citizens’ do-it-yourself solutions are neither officially allowed nor stopped.
Why This Matters: Eroding State Authority
What may seem like practical solutions to service failure are actually political acts. When citizens start delivering their own water, electricity, or safety, they’re assuming responsibilities once held by the state — and questioning its legitimacy.
This blurs the lines of sovereignty. Instead of the state being the sole provider of services, we see a renegotiation of power between citizens and government. This shift creates uncertainty: if the state no longer guarantees basic services, what role does it play in citizens’ lives?
What’s at Risk?
The trend of going off-grid — especially among those who can afford to — could deepen South Africa’s divisions.
Wealthier communities are able to insulate themselves from state failure, while poorer ones must make do with informal, often unsafe alternatives. This replicates — and risks entrenching — apartheid-era inequalities in access and infrastructure.
If unchecked, this could lead to a fragmented society where shared citizenship breaks down, and where public services become optional rather than universal.
A Way Forward
To prevent a two-tiered system from taking root, the researchers argue that the state must reassert itself:
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Invest in infrastructure renewal
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Strengthen local government capacity
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Partner with communities to co-create solutions
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Redefine the social contract to ensure fair and equitable service delivery
“What’s at stake,” they say, “isn’t just infrastructure — it’s the very fabric of South Africa’s democracy.”
This article was first published in The Conversation on 6 October 2025.
About the authors:
Christina Culwick Fatti – Senior researcher, University of the Western Cape
Charlotte Lemanski – Professor of Urban Geography, University of Cambridge
Fiona Anciano – Associate Professor, University of the Western Cape
Margot Rubin – Lecturer in Spatial Planning, Cardiff University
