ABSTRACT
Commercialization of a municipal service occurs when the service is delivered according to rules and principles normally reserved for private commercial markets. As the chapters in this book attest, South Africa is increasingly involving the private sector in the delivery and management of services, and municipalities have adopted business models for water services, including the corporatization of various departments. On the one hand, such policies reflect a desire to improve administrative efficiencies and to maximize cost recovery (McDonald and Pape 2002). But private market mechanisms distribute goods and services based on willingness and ability to pay. This may conflict with the definition of access to basic services as core rights in the South African Constitution, with the implicit requirement that mechanisms for distribution recognize and uphold the underlying equality of membership in society (see Walzer 1984, p209).
