In a move that could fundamentally reshape how public infrastructure is delivered in South Africa’s richest province, the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport (GDRT) has taken a decisive step away from the traditional contractor-led model of road construction. Flanked by engineers in hard hats and local community members holding faded placards demanding better roads, MEC for Roads and Transport, Kedibone Diale-Tlabela, officially launched a new internal construction model on Road D781 in the City of Ekurhuleni.
The model, which the department is calling “in-sourced infrastructure delivery,” relies entirely on the GDRT’s own teams, equipment, and resources—bypassing private contractors, cutting out middlemen, and returning control of road building to the very officials who will be held accountable for quality and durability.
For decades, South Africa’s roads have been built almost exclusively by private construction companies, many of them politically connected, operating under contracts awarded through competitive tenders. The results have been mixed at best: cost overruns, delays, allegations of tender fraud, and roads that crumble within months of completion. The internal model, pioneered in pilot form by a handful of provincial departments but never before attempted at this scale in Gauteng, represents a radical alternative.
“We are taking back the tarmac,” Diale-Tlabela declared, her voice amplified by a portable speaker as she stood on a dusty verge beside a line of gleaming yellow GDRT graders and rollers. “For too long, we have outsourced our core mandate. We have paid private companies to do work that our own people are trained and equipped to do. We have accepted delays, excuses, and substandard work because we believed we had no choice. Today, we prove that we do have a choice. Today, we build Road D781 with our own hands, our own machines, and our own accountability.”
The Road That Changed Everything
Road D781 is not a glamorous artery. It does not feature on any tourist map. It does not carry thousands of commuters or connect major economic hubs. But for the residents of the scattered villages and informal settlements between Etwatwa and Daveyton in Ekurhuleni’s eastern reaches, this 6.2-kilometer stretch of gravel and potholed dirt is a lifeline.
It is the road that mothers walk to reach the clinic. The road that taxis bounce along, rattling passengers and rupturing shock absorbers. The road that becomes impassable after heavy rains, isolating communities for days at a time. And it is the road that has been promised, repromised, and promised again—first by the apartheid-era Transvaal Provincial Administration, then by the post-1994 Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, and most recently by the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport itself.
In 2019, a tender was awarded to a private contractor to upgrade Road D781 to a paved, surfaced standard. The contract value was R48 million. The timeline was 18 months. By 2021, only 15% of the work had been completed. The contractor had been paid R22 million. Then the contractor disappeared—offices shuttered, phones disconnected, directors untraceable. A classic “tender strip and run.”
“The community was furious,” recalled Thokozane Msimang, chairperson of the Etwatwa Residents’ Association, who stood beside the MEC during the launch. “We had watched our tax money vanish. We had watched machines sit idle. We had watched the rains wash away what little work had been done. And we had no recourse. The contractor was gone. The department was embarrassed. And we were still walking on dirt.”
That experience, according to senior GDRT officials, was the catalyst for the internal model. Rather than retender the project—a process that could take another 18 months and risk a similar outcome—the department decided to do something unprecedented: finish the road itself.
How the Internal Model Works
The internal construction model being piloted on Road D781 differs from traditional contractor-led models in several fundamental ways:
Ownership of equipment: The GDRT has invested R120 million over the past three years in refurbishing its own fleet of road-building machinery—graders, rollers, excavators, asphalt pavers, and water tankers. Many of these machines had sat rusting in departmental depots for years, victims of budget cuts and a pervasive belief that “government can’t build roads.” Under the new model, each machine is assigned to a specific team, with maintenance schedules tracked digitally and operator performance logged.
Direct employment of labor: Instead of subcontracting to private companies, the department has recruited, trained, and deployed its own road construction crews. These are not temporary workers hired for a single project but permanent provincial employees with benefits, pensions, and career progression paths. The crews include previously unemployed youth from local communities, trained through a partnership with the Ekurhuleni Artisans and Skills Training Centre.
In-house design and supervision: The project’s engineering designs, materials testing, quality control, and site supervision are all handled by the GDRT’s own technical staff—civil engineers, technologists, and inspectors who have passed the department’s internal competency assessments. No external consultants are paid inflated fees for reports that sit on shelves.
Transparent costing: Without a private contractor’s profit margin (typically 10-15% of contract value) and without the layers of subcontracting that inflate prices, the internal model claims to deliver roads at 20-30% lower cost per kilometer than the traditional tender system. The department has committed to publishing real-time cost data for Road D781 on a public dashboard, allowing anyone to track expenditure against progress.
“This is not socialism,” said Mpho Makgoba, the GDRT’s Head of Department, who has championed the internal model for years. “This is pragmatism. We have the skills. We have the equipment. We have the mandate. Why are we paying someone else to do what we can do ourselves? The private sector has failed us—not always, but too often. The internal model is our hedge against that failure.”
The First Day on Site
The launch event, held under a hazy Highveld sky, included a symbolic “first cut” ceremony. Diale-Tlabela, wearing steel-toed boots and a neon yellow vest, climbed into the cab of a massive grader. With a grin and a thumbs-up to the crowd, she engaged the blade and carved the first fresh furrow into the gravel surface of Road D781.
Cheers erupted from the assembled workers and community members. For a moment, the cynicism that usually accompanies government announcements seemed to lift.
“It’s not just a road,” said Nomsa Vilakazi, a 58-year-old grandmother who has lived on Road D781 for three decades. “It’s a promise kept. I have seen ministers come and go. I have heard speeches. But I have never seen a minister actually drive the machine. That means something. It means she is not just talking.”
Behind the grader, a convoy of departmental vehicles—trucks carrying crushed stone, a water bowser to suppress dust, and a mobile laboratory for testing compaction—waited to begin their work. The plan, according to the project’s internal timeline, is to complete the 6.2-kilometer upgrade within eight months. That is half the time the failed contractor had been given.
“We don’t have profit margins to protect,” explained site engineer Thabiso Ndlovu, a 34-year-old who left a private consulting firm to join the GDRT’s internal team. “We don’t have shareholders demanding returns. We have one objective: build a road that lasts. That simplifies everything. We use better materials because we are not trying to cut corners to save money. We take longer on compaction because we don’t have a penalty clause that pushes us to rush. It’s liberating, honestly.”
Skepticism and Challenges
Not everyone is celebrating. The South African Forum of Civil Engineering Contractors (SAFCEC), which represents the private construction industry, has warned that the internal model could distort markets, reduce competition, and ultimately lead to higher costs.
“Government should be a client, not a competitor,” said SAFCEC CEO Webster Mfebe in a statement. “The private sector has the expertise, the agility, and the efficiency to deliver infrastructure at scale. If government starts building its own roads, it will quickly discover that maintaining a fleet, employing permanent staff, and managing supply chains is not as simple as it looks. We fear this pilot will end in cost overruns and delays, just like the contractor-led projects they criticize.”
The GDRT acknowledges the skepticism. “Of course the contractors are nervous,” Makgoba said with a laugh. “We are taking business away from them. But let’s be honest: they have had decades to prove themselves, and the results are on every potholed road in Gauteng. The internal model is not an attack on the private sector. It is an alternative for projects where the private sector has repeatedly failed—rural roads, access roads, community infrastructure. The big highways, the complex interchanges? Those will still go to tender. But for the roads that matter most to ordinary people, we are taking responsibility.”
Other challenges loom. The internal model requires significant upfront capital—the R120 million fleet refurbishment is just the beginning. Maintenance of equipment, training of staff, and retention of skilled engineers are ongoing costs that must be absorbed into the provincial budget. Political interference, a perennial curse of South African infrastructure, could still distort project prioritization or lead to patronage appointments.
And then there is the question of scale. Road D781 is 6.2 kilometers. Gauteng has over 5,000 kilometers of provincial roads in various states of disrepair. Scaling the internal model from a single pilot to a province-wide system would require billions of rand, hundreds of additional staff, and a level of institutional capacity that the GDRT has not yet demonstrated.
“One road does not make a revolution,” said independent infrastructure analyst James van der Merwe. “But it is a proof of concept. If the GDRT can successfully deliver Road D781 on time, on budget, and to a high quality standard, it will have a powerful argument for expanding the model. If it fails, the contractors will say ‘we told you so,’ and the experiment will be over. The stakes are very high.”
Community Expectations
For the residents of Road D781, however, the politics and the analysis matter less than the simple promise of a paved surface. During the launch event, a group of women from the local stokvel (savings club) presented Diale-Tlabela with a gift: a handmade clay pot, traditionally given to someone who has earned the community’s trust.
“We are not politicians,” said Msimang, the residents’ association chair. “We don’t care about models or tenders or contractor disputes. We care about our children walking to school without swallowing dust. We care about ambulances reaching our homes when someone is sick. We care about not having to pay R50 for a taxi because the road is so bad that only certain drivers are willing to use it. If this new way of working gives us that, then we are for it.”
He paused, looking at the line of graders and rollers waiting to begin. “But we have been disappointed before. So we will watch. We will measure. We will hold them accountable. That is our job now.”
The Road Ahead
As the launch ceremony concluded and the MEC’s motorcade departed, the real work began. The grader operator—a woman named Lerato Mofokeng, one of only a handful of female heavy-machine operators in the provincial fleet—climbed back into her cab. She had been given a simple instruction: start at kilometer zero and grade to kilometer one by nightfall.
“We are not waiting for approvals or signatures or release of funds,” Mofokeng said through her open window. “We are just building. That is the difference. No delays. No excuses. Just tarmac.”
She engaged the blade, and the grader lurched forward, carving a smooth, level path through the gravel. Behind her, the water bowser sprayed a fine mist to settle the dust. And behind that, the community watched—some cheering, some praying, and some simply standing in silence, witnessing what might be the beginning of a new era for South African roads.
Whether the internal model succeeds or fails, Road D781 will tell the story. If the road is completed on time and to standard, it could become a template for provinces across the country. If it falters, it will join the long list of well-intentioned government experiments that could not escape the gravity of South Africa’s infrastructure crisis.
For now, on a dusty stretch of road in Ekurhuleni, the graders are rolling, the workers are laboring, and a community is watching. The asphalt has not yet been laid. But for the first time in years, it feels like it might be.
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