The end of apartheid and the all-race elections in 1994 marked a turning point in the socioeconomic and political situations in South Africa. The apartheid legacy left high level of poverty in both rural and urban areas, inequalities in access to resources, infrastructure and social services. The focal point of government policies and programmes of the new era was to redress the observed inequality in different spheres of the people's existence. In the service delivery sector for instance, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was established for the provision of universal access to basic services with time bound targets. This paper attempts to provide measurable insights with regards to shifts in relative state of access to basic services for demographic segments of the South African society in the light of claims of acceleration of service delivery and demographic change in the country. The segmentation is mainly on the basis of household income levels and population group with access to piped water and housing as the main services delivery variables of interest. The results show that population group appears to be a stronger factor than household income level for explaining the variance in level of access of both water and formal housing over the period 1996 to 2007. Generally the odds against the previously disadvantaged segments of the society in terms of access to basic services seem to have marginally reduced over time.

Keywords: Access and Backlog; Service Delivery; Piped Water and Housing; Demographic Change

Biography: Dr RC Nnadozie has interest in Social Statistics and Mathematical Demography. He is currently a lecturer at the Mangosuthu University of

Technology in Durban, South Africa.