Reporting the condition of South Africa's water sector infrastructure

The purpose of the “national infrastructure report cards” of the condition of engineering infrastructure in South Africa has been to draw the attention of government, and of the South African public at large to the importance of maintenance, and to factors underlying the state of repair of infrastructure. The success of these report cards, published in 2006 and 2011, has been such that a new report card is currently being prepared. Whereas completion of this, the third report card, will not take place until around mid-year, the objective of this paper is to briefly describe the background to and purpose of infrastructure report cards and the process by which the South African report cards are compiled, to discuss key findings of the previous report cards, and to describe the third report card’s preliminary findings for the water sector.