South Africans are used to hearing that the state lacks capacity, funding, or manpower to deliver even basic services. Yet the G20 Leaders’ Summit has once again exposed an uncomfortable truth: the government can deliver, it simply chooses not to unless the world is watching.
In the days leading up to the summit, Johannesburg suddenly transformed. Roads were resurfaced, traffic lights repaired, water leaks plugged, pavements cleaned, and streetlights restored. Law-enforcement visibility increased. Power interruptions — a constant feature of daily life mysteriously disappeared along key routes.
For many residents, the swift turnaround came as a shock. These upgrades, completed in record time, are things citizens have begged their municipalities to fix for years. But in a country where potholes, non-functioning traffic signals, water outages and chronic infrastructure failures have become normalised, the sudden efficiency felt less like progress, and more like a reminder of what the government is capable of doing, but routinely fails to deliver.
Johannesburg, once the beating heart of South Africa’s economy, has struggled under decay, corruption, unstable coalitions, unreliable water infrastructure, weak policing, and recurring power failures. These issues didn’t emerge overnight. They stem from more than a decade of mismanagement, budget misallocation, and cadre deployment that hollowed out municipal institutions.
The city’s decline reflects a national pattern. South Africa spends billions fixing breakdowns caused by poor maintenance, while municipalities fail audits year after year. Yet, when an event like the G20 places global attention on the country, the state suddenly mobilises resources, cleans up streets, and deploys enforcement with remarkable speed.
After the upgrades, some infrastructure was vandalised, a destructive response, but one rooted in a sense of exclusion and frustration. For years, residents filed complaints, reported infrastructure failures, and marched for service delivery with little change. Seeing the state act only when foreign dignitaries arrive deepened those grievances.
City officials insisted that the upgrades were not “just for G20.” But South Africans have heard such assurances before. The pattern is predictable: infrastructure is repaired for major events, the World Cup, BRICS, state visits, only to deteriorate again once the spotlight fades.
The underlying problem is not capacity or resources. It is political will. The state acts with urgency only when reputational risk is high and global scrutiny is guaranteed. Ordinary citizens, meanwhile, live through water cuts, collapsing roads, non-existent by-law enforcement, and unsafe public spaces.
South Africans deserve the same level of service and dignity that the government extended to international guests. It should not take a summit or foreign leaders for the state to do its job.
Perhaps the real lesson from the G20 is this: our government can deliver. It simply refuses to prioritise the people it was elected to serve. Next time, it should.
