South Africa's failed privatization, commercialization and deregulation of network infrastructure

The authors discuss the results of various forms of privatization and commercialization of network infrastructure that occurred in post-apartheid South Africa. These experiences, they argue, confirm the most serious concerns expressed about current weaknesses in state management, ideology, and service delivery. Any socially, economically, and environmentally sound infrastructure project carries significant public benefits. However, instead of positive multipliers, many more negative externalities have been generated. While social and environmental externalities were increasingly socialized, deregulation allowed for an increase in privatized monopoly profits in areas that were supposed to be provided by the state as ‘natural monopolies.’ However unsuccessful, megaprojects continued to motivate a supposedly developmental approach to state-building, even though the harsh project-based realities exposed systemic corruption as a driver of class formation.