The Windhoek municipality spends about N$70 million annually to keep its bus service moving and collects a miserly N$10 million in return.
That is not a small shortfall; it is a business model with a hole where the engine should be.
According to the city’s chief executive, the financial shortfall is covered by revenue that is generated from other services provided to ratepayers.
The city’s chief bureaucrats’ stated solution is that the government funds the deficit. One wonders how the bureaucrat thinks such funds can be taken.
It is best to keep bureaucrats far away from developing a sustainable business funding model and even further away from running a business.
Bureaucrats play an important role in society, but not in business; their strength lies in serving as resolute public servants focused on delivering quality public services.
By focusing on their public service role, bureaucrats can contribute to economic development and provide essential services, while also reducing the need for taxpayer-funded bailouts and addressing inefficiencies.
The core function of a local authority is to organise, manage and deliver essential services that directly affect daily life, such as water, electricity, and solid and liquid waste disposal, among others.
Running a non-core service such as urban transport could impose severe and recurring financial costs.
Cities should not cling to failing operating models when capable private-sector partners can deliver the service more efficiently.
Cape Town’s use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) with transport operators shows the more practical course.
PPPs are not a retreat from public responsibility. It is a disciplined partnership in which a public sector entity sets the mandate and safeguards the public interest, while a private sector company brings the capital, expertise and operating capacity needed to deliver services.
There is no single definition for PPPs because the model covers diverse long-term contracts with different allocations of risk, funding arrangements and transparency requirements.
That flexibility is precisely its strength: The structure is designed around the service, rather than forcing the service into an unsuitable bureaucratic mould.
Infrastructure development PPPs include build-operate-transfer, under which control ultimately passes to the public entity, and build-operate-own, where the private partner retains ownership.
The distinction matters: The government must choose the model that secures accountability, allocates risk to the party best able to manage it and protects taxpayers from open-ended liabilities.
Namibia does not need to invent this approach from scratch. The country embraced PPPs years ago as a strategy to accelerate infrastructure development and service delivery.
The framework exists; what is required now is the political will to use it decisively.
The case is already visible in practice.
Government partnerships with private companies have helped develop energy infrastructure and strengthen energy security, while mining, telecommunications and desalination provide further examples of public and private capabilities working together.
Urban transport should not be treated as an untouchable exception.
There is no place for bureaucrats in business. Municipalities and the wider public sector should not be allowed to turn non-core services into permanent drains on the public purse, then send taxpayers the bill for their failure.
Where a well-structured PPP can deliver a service more efficiently, viably and sustainably, government should set the standards, enforce accountability and let experienced operators do the business.
– Danny Meyer is reachable at email danny@smecompete.com
