Policy associated with basic infrastructure investment-- water and sanitation systems, new electricity lines, roads, stormwater drainage, and other services provided at municipal level-- has been one of the most troubling aspects of the first five years of African National Congress rule. Enormous challenges were offered by the infrastructural backlog and ecological inheritance. Notwithstanding rhetoric (and Constitutional provisions) to the contrary, government quickly retreated from its original electoral mandate. Following a section that provides brief historical context, this paper offers a reminder of infrastructure policy directives in the Reconstruction and Development Programme, continuities in ideology represented in the government's main housing/infrastructure policy documents (especially those finalised during 1996-98), an
