South Africa's infrastructure is "on the brink of failure", says the CEO of the South African Institution of Civil Engineers, Manglin Pillay. And he says politicians show a "brazen disregard" for all warnings. A report compiled by SAICE gives the country's infrastructure across all sectors, including education, healthcare, electricity, transport, water and sanitation, an overall grading of D+. "This means it is not coping with demand, and requires urgent maintenance," says Pillay. "It is bordering on failure. We're not too far from an E, which would mean that infrastructure has failed and will expose the public to health and safety hazards." If steps are not taken to address this "dire" situation there will be a general collapse of infrastructure, which would have calamitous economic and social effects, and take decades to recover from. Since SAICE's last infrastructure report in 2011 the situation has got worse, he says, so the chances of averting collapse are not looking good. Unl...
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