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The Common Sense has examined the state of the countrys’ road network, and it does not make for a smooth ride.

In late August, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the sixth Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium of South Africa in Cape Town.

He said: “Indeed, we need roads, bridges, rail lines, power lines, data cables, gas pipelines, and fuel pipelines that cross our region, our continent.”

In a series of upcoming articles The Common Sense will be examining South Africa’s progress against this list. This article focuses on roads.

But first, what does the national picture say?

Ramaphosa gave the symposium one number by which to measure itself: gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), also known as fixed investment.

Fixed investment is what a country spends on things that last: roads, rail, power stations, factories, machinery, and buildings.

According to the World Bank, when a country has a fixed investment rate of around 15% of GDP, it means that a large portion of the capital being invested is likely going merely to repair or replace existing, depreciating assets rather than building new, productive capabilities.

South Africa’s fixed investment stood at around 14% in 2025, less than half the 30% the National Development Plan envisages for 2030 (the emerging market average sits between 25 to 30%). Effectively, most money going into fixed investment in South Africa is for care and maintenance – maintaining existing roads rather than building new roads, for example.

The chart below shows the fixed investment rate for South Africa since 1994.

That is the national picture, and it is the level at which infrastructure is usually argued about. It says nothing about what has happened to any particular asset. What follows is an analysis on the state of South Africa’s national roads.

South Africa has about 750 000km of road. The South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) runs 4.4% (roughly 27 000km) of that, the main highways between the cities and out to the borders. In addition, more than 70% of South Africa’s long-distance road freight runs on SANRAL’s network. The rest of South Africa’s road network belongs to the provinces, the metros, and the municipalities, and about 132 000 kilometres of rural road belongs to nobody at all.

SANRAL publishes audited accounts and reports its own performance against its own targets every year. The Common Sense went through 18 years of them, from 2007/08 to 2024/25, checking each figure against the comparatives published in later reports. The next four charts come out of those documents.

The following chart shows what SANRAL spent maintaining its network, per kilometre. Every year has been converted into 2024/25 rands, so that the eighteen years can be compared without inflation distorting them.

The next chart shows money SANRAL had allocated to maintenance but did not spend.

The following shows what SANRAL calls smooth travel exposure. This measures how rough each stretch of the road network is, then works out what share of all the driving done on it takes place on surfaces smooth enough to count as acceptable. SANRAL has set itself the same target every year since 2007/08: not less than 95%.

The final chart shows the condition of the road surface itself. SANRAL grades every stretch of the network from very good to very poor, and the chart illustrates how much of the network sat in each grade each year. The band at the top of the last bar is road SANRAL did not assess that year.

The share of the network in poor or very poor condition fell through Jacob Zuma's second term, from 11% in 2014 to 3% by 2018. Under Cyril Ramaphosa it has increased steadily. In 2025 SANRAL did not assess 9% of the network, so that figure may be understated.

Ramaphosa closed his address by saying: “Every generation is at the end measured … by what it has built and by what it has left behind.”