South Africa launched Operation Vala Zonke – an app that allows individuals to report the location of potholes – in 2022, but this system is not being properly utilised due to a lack of official training and underspending on the part of the Department of Transport (DoT).
These issues were brought to light in a recent parliamentary Q&A with the Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga, who wrote about the shortcomings of the system concerning addressing the country’s deteriorating infrastructure, reports BusinessTech.
An underused system
The DoT has spent roughly R3.65 billion fixing potholes over the course of a six-month period that ended in September, but this is significantly less than the full budget that was allocated to the department for road repairs.
Operation Vala Zonke was adopted by the Minister and Members of the Executive Council (MINMEC) in August 2022, which included the launch of a new Mobile Pothole Reporting App that would allow users to report road hazards wherever they are encountered.
This app was made in partnership with the Sanral Transport Integrated Information System (ITIS) to create a centralized platform that would allow authorities to receive complaints about potholes, track the progress of a hazard’s repairs, identify and solve delays in the system, intervene and provide support to address service delivery issues, and receive feedback from the public.
Chikunga noted that since the app was launched, there have been 138,928 mobile device downloads, which has led to 44,949 potholes being reported as of November 2023.
However, she added that not much progress has been made on these reported cases because many municipal and department officials still aren’t trained to use this new system, more than a year after the service was launched.
“The biggest challenge is that most pothole complaints cannot be correctly and automatically allocated using the system,” said the minister.
“It is on this basis that Sanral is currently training officials from Provinces and Municipalities on the usage of the App under the theme ‘Train the Trainer’.”
How much has been spent to fix South Africa’s roads
Of the 44,949 potholes that have been reported across the country, Gauteng has seen by far the most cases with 20,220 obstacles reported.
The Free State had the second-highest number of reports at 7,067 potholes, while the Northern Cape had the least with only 464 cases.
The DoT has spent R3.65 billion to repair 1,291,442m² of roads over a six-month period, but this is only a third of the R12,665,440,753 that the department was given to fix roads.
You can see a breakdown of South Africa’s expenditure on road repairs for every province over the monitored period:
| Province | Potholes fixed | Budget allocation | Six-month expenditure | % of budget spent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern Cape | 112,286m² | R2,057,539,888 | R472,776,761 | 23.0% |
| Free State | 20,000m² | R1,337,642,000 | R347,299,000 | 26.0% |
| Gauteng | 213,321m² | R680,058,000 | R61,111,024 | 9.0% |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 500,000m² | R3,309,978,000 | R673,500,452 | 20.3% |
| Limpopo | 139,925m² | R1,280,899,865 | R551,826,653 | 43.1% |
| Mpumalanga | 141,186m² | R9,05,915,000 | R272,084,082 | 30.0% |
| Northern Cape | 23,676m² | R1,064,972,000 | R491,859,499 | 46.2% |
| North West | 94,996m² | R1,068,127,000 | R265,741,551 | 24.9% |
| Western Cape | 46,052m² | R960,309,000 | R514,052,000 | 53.5% |
| Total | 1,291,442m² | R12,665,440,753 | R3,650,251,022 | 29.0% |
Furthermore, these figures do not just represent pothole repairs, but general road maintenance, meaning that South Africa is significantly underspending what it has allocated to deal with its collapsing infrastructure.
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