The dawn of democracy precipitated the need for urgent government action to extend the delivery of services to the large majority of South Africans who were excluded through years of separate and apartheid capitalist development. Whereas the immediate post-1994 landscapes were clouded with diverse infrastructure amenities and facilities for the delivery of basic public services, most communities continue to have insurmountable challenges accessing water, electricity, sanitation and housing. Paradoxically, the backlog in public service delivery among the impoverished communities has persisted amid demonstrable quantitative milestones, illustrating the existence of distributional dilemmas. Public service delivery has not redressed the backlogs among the poor largely due to the state-market paralysis of efficiency versus equity under post-apartheid state capitalism.