Just outside the rundown rural township of Boikhutso there is a row of flashy signboards advertising the changes the post-apartheid order is starting to bring.

One signals “phase three” of a sanitation scheme that will see the replacement of the settlement’s primitive “bucket” toilets with flushing lavatories. Another heralds an end to the nightmares of flash floods with the building of storm-water drains and roads; it also proclaims that R2.1m, ($286,000) has been allocated for the work – a crucial postscript in view of the number of promised projects.