When the Department of Transport (DoT) launched the Vala Zonke pothole reporting and repair programme nationwide in August 2022, it was widely seen as a positive sign of government’s taking innovative action to address the state of South Africa’s roads.

The programme is facilitated through a purpose-made Vala Zonke mobile app that can be downloaded free of charge by members of the public. Using the app, potholes can be reported and geotagged anywhere in the country. Teams can then be dispatched to effect repairs.

At the launch of the programme, the DoT called for joint efforts from the nine provinces to participate, as well as all 278 municipalities, comprising eight metropolitan, 44 district and 226 local municipalities.

The programme is coordinated from the Vala Zonke War Room, which monitors and manages all pothole repairs in the country from State-owned South African National Roads Agency Limited’s (Sanral’s) Central Operations Centre, in Centurion.

The war room processes various reports weekly and monthly, ensuring that every reported pothole is addressed by the relevant road authority, which, in turn, reports back to the war room on the repair work done using secured applications, Sanral explains.

“This is a significant milestone, since the road authorities are beginning to use implemented encrypted apps, and we anticipate that the use of digital monitoring methods will grow over the next few months. While the transition to a fully digitised system has been slow due to the training and use of the technology, authorities have made progress,” the agency says.

Is it Working?

Sanral claims that the programme is successful, with the app having been downloaded 511 720 times since its launch, it tells Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

However, a closer inspection of the numbers reveals that the official Vala Zonke mobile app has been downloaded only 63 162 times, while the remaining 448 558 downloads are from the Sanral mobile app.

Although Sanral mobile app users can report potholes to the Vala Zonke War Room, the app has other functions and is not exclusively dedicated to pothole reporting. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that those who downloaded the Sanral mobile app did so with the intention of participating in the Vala Zonke programme.

At the time of going to print, 78 317 potholes had been reported through the programme – according to the Vala Zonke website – but it is not clear how many of them have been attended to.

Even those potholes that have been fixed are often a temporary surface-level solution to a much deeper structural problem plaguing many of the nation’s roads, says Road Freight Association CEO Gavin Kelly.

“Many potholes have been filled in the fervent hope that the road is now ‘fixed’. However, decent investigation must be done to ascertain whether the pothole, like a tooth cavity, has caused further serious damage in the unseen ‘non-damaged-looking’ sections of the road.”

“Hence, quite often, a recently patched road suddenly disintegrates or ‘breeds’ new potholes. Although there is no doubt that the repair work has brought about better roads, the long-term effects of the repairs are yet to be determined” he tells Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

Nonetheless, Kelly believes that the public’s reporting potholes or any other kind of road damage is a good idea.

However, this needs to be supported by a dynamic and effective road repair structure, where technicians can get to the scene of damage quickly, do a decent estimation of the real damage and get the repair done as expediently as possible.

“The reasons for road damage must also be ascertained. The pothole is just the symptom. Is it bad design, inadequate design, water ingress, foundation or ground slip, or is it vehicle volume or mass overloading? Those need to be identified and dealt with – the causes, not the symptoms,” he adds.

Is it All Above Board?

Although the programme was generally well received at the launch and appears to have made a positive impact, questions have been raised about why Sanral was tasked with coordinating the operation and how the funding is being managed.

After all, most of the potholes that need addressing are not on Sanral’s roads, but rather on municipal roads.

Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse CEO Wayne Duvenage says this results in a lack of clarity, as “we . . . have no way of knowing if the Vala Zonke project is working or not, as there is no formal audited report on it. Given Sanral’s history of misleading public information on the e-toll saga, there is a lack of public trust in Sanral’s claims.”

He believes that the way the programme has been set up makes it difficult to follow the money trail.

“From what we are told, the funds allocated to Sanral for the Vala Zonke project do not come out of the Sanral budget and, as such, this spending is not audited by the Auditor General when assessing Sanral’s financial performance. We are not sure from whose budget or where these funds come, who is then auditing this spend or the effectiveness of the programme, or whether due process is being followed in the management of these funds or the appointment of contractors.

“When this happens and there is a serious lack of transparency, the doors of maladministration and corruption are prone to be opened wide,” he tells Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

Duvenage says the additional allocation of funds to Sanral to maintain roads that do not form part of its road portfolio should be formally allocated through a National Treasury allocation to this specific project and ringfenced to be measurable and auditable.

“We imagine that this project pertains to potholes on roads that fall outside of the roads they have control over, yet provinces have budgets to do the maintenance of their own roads. This opens the door for potential double-dipping. Having [Sanral] involved blurs the line of accountability, along with the management of funds and resources.”

Is it a Good Idea?

Generally, there seems to be a consensus that the Vala Zonke programme is a good idea, albeit as a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

“Any such comprehensive initiative to address the pothole problem needs to be commended. It would be shortsighted to expect this initiative to work perfectly. Doing nothing about the problem could never have been an option. [However], potholes are a symptom of a much larger problem . . . largely stemming from inefficiencies within local government entities,” Consulting Engineers South Africa CEO Chris Campbell says.

South African Institution of Civil Engineering president Andrew Clothier agrees: “While operation Vala Zonke has made progress in addressing South Africa’s pothole problem, the initiative faces challenges related to intergovernmental coordination, [the] effective use of reporting tools and [the] optimal allocation of resources.”

He says ongoing efforts are needed to enhance the programme’s efficiency and overall impact, but is not confident that this programme is solving the bigger problem.

Campbell states that the adage ‘what cannot be measured cannot be managed’ holds true, noting that failing to submit data on potholes undermines the reliability of information needed for planning and resource allocation, leaving many potholes unaddressed.

“This cannot be attributed to a failure in the programme, but rather a failure by local government, which evidently needs the assistance, since it is by now a well-known fact that there is a dire shortage of technical engineering resources and, often, infighting and indecision among actors in coalition government at local government levels.”

Campbell believes that Sanral lacks the resources to address this issue independently, as do most local governments and municipalities – even if they have some in-house expertise – and failing to leverage the private industry’s available capacity would be a missed opportunity.

The process should not only focus on identifying, locating and patching potholes but also gaining insights into their root causes and creating opportunities for unemployed civil engineering graduates.

“Consulting engineering companies [should be] appointed [to] provide additional insights . . . whilst . . . creating an opportunity for an unemployed engineering graduate, whom they could recruit to get some exposure and experience on why that pothole exists, and what short-term and long-term remedy may be required.”

This could translate into possible sustainable employment prospects, Campbell adds.

He explains that, through this approach, local governments can gain a deeper understanding of the root causes of potholes, consequently enabling them to address the underlying issues rather than merely treating symptoms.

If factors such as ageing, overused or cracked road surfaces, poor drainage or collapsed underground pipes are not identified and resolved, the problem will inevitably recur.

“Vala Zonke, from a professional perspective, is dealing with an emergency [and] not yielding a sustainable solution, where money spent will be required to be spent again at the end of this summer rainy season,” Clothier adds.