Contradictions in municipal transformation from apartheid to democracy : the battle over local water privatization in South Africa

This paper traces the ebb and flow of municipal fiscal crises, investment strategies, pricing and related issues, political activism, and the politics of resistance. Job guarantees protected apartheid-era civil servants; white voters were given an effective triple weight in elections as well as veto power over local council decisions if they held as little as one-third of the council votes (1992,1993). Locally, for South Africa’s 843 municipalities, neoliberalism meant intensifying budget constraints, cost-recovery principles, lower levels of services (such as pit latrines in new low-income residential developments instead of flush toilets) and unprecedented cut-offs of services to those residents unable to pay municipal bills