South African bishops criticize government service, denounce graft

Published: 2006-02-07

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- South African bishops criticized the government's service record and denounced graft as the country faces local elections March 1. "Service delivery has been poor or has collapsed" in parts of South Africa, and many of the country's nine provinces have not spent the budgets allocated to them for health, education and other services, the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference said in a Feb. 1 statement after a plenary meeting in Pretoria. "While many wonderful developments have happened in our country" since apartheid, the system of strict racial segregation, ended in 1994, "we have to admit that society has not come into being as we expected it," the bishops said, noting that "selfishness and corruption have led to great frustration." In the statement, the bishops asked why the service delivery has slowed and why locally elected representatives were "neither local nor representative."

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