Whilst this story headlines about South Africa's road network woes, I think the real story is the skills shortage comment.
Radebe said the skills to respond to policy implementations were severely depleted.

"A number of reasons account for this skills depletion -- the brain drain, our previous education inequalities, the global mobility of the workforce, job-hopping and high turnover rate of public officials," he said.
full story from M&G here
I can think of a few other factors that might have contributed...