South Africans can fix potholes and charge government for it. High Court

The Eastern Cape High Court has ordered that provinces roads department to cough up the cash local farmers used to fix infrastructure the government didn’t bother to.

The court’s judgement is pretty far-reaching as it allows ordinary folks to take care of some of the more menial tasks government’s been failing to do and make the state pay for it.

According to BusinessTech, however, the ruling makes it very clear that you can’t just go around fixing random things willy nilly and expect tax money to pay for it. All repairs must first be reported to the relevant department, which has 30 days to respond and after that two separate quotes for the job.

Following the court ruling, AfriForum has taken to making use of similar legal mechanisms to get government to reimburse it for providing some basic services to rural areas nationwide. Chatting to Rapport, AfriForum’s Marcus Pawson said the organisation had been paid out for performing tasks like removing trees and maintaining basic water infrastructure.

It’s quite telling that civil society organisations are performing the tasks appointed to civil servants and municipalities nationwide; while government is more concerned with statues of Jacob Zuma, new jets, million Rand SUVs and the succession race for the NAC’s top job in December.

One of our predictions for 2017 was that – in the run-up to the elective conference at the end of the year – internal ANC politics would take centre stage, above and beyond the needs of ordinary South Africans. So far there’s been little to point to the opposite.

On the upside though, some of the most rural areas throughout South Africa might soon be getting the basic service delivery they’ve been in need of… albeit not from the ANC.