The R55-billion Plan To Rescue South Africa's Cities

It will use a 1-billion loan from the World Bank , coupled with 2-billion of government money, to finance grants for cities including Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town that meet targets in providing water, sanitation, electricity and solid-waste processing under a new government programme.

The initiative "consists of a new, targeted performance-based fiscal transfer" to the municipalities, the World Bank said in a response to a query. It will 'support reforms in the trading services" cities charge residents for, it added.

The government is setting up the Metro Services Trading Programme as it faces increasing pressure from citizens to improve services amid recurrent breakdowns of urban power-transmission grids, regular water outages and lax collection of refuse. In elections last year, the ANC lost its outright majority for the first time since the advent of democracy in 1994 partly because of anger over poor service delivery.

"South Africa's metros are facing a crisis in the provision of basic services, marked by declining safety, reliability and accessibility," the World Bank said in documents about the programme. "Urgent action is needed to reverse the collapse of urban services."

The money provided would be in addition to about 6-billion sourced from revenue collected by the metropolitan areas and their borrowing making for a 9-billion government programme, the World Bank said.