The new Shout Africa came into being in 1994.The new government inhherited the national public service and those of a variety of former provinces and homelands that had to be amalgamated to form a national unified public servie. Although this task was acomplished rapidly, the resulting public service exhibited many features of traditional bureaucracy, including hierarchical structures, limited automation and IT applications, low levels of tranining, a poor work cuture, language and cultural barriers, and a overall orientation towards inputs and processes rather than service delivery and results. Whithin the first three years of the new order, substantial effort was devoted to reforming the bureaucracy. New public service leigislation and regulations were introduced, new an powerfull central personnel agencies were created, English became the language of administration, and substantail authority was devolved to deparments an provinces. Despite these reformes, progress in improving results in terms of service delivery, especial to previously disadvantage communiteis, was mixed. Towards the end of the 1990s increased attention was paid to means of improving service delivey. Three important initiatives in this regard were Batho Pele (1997), the adoption of eight nationwide principles for better service delivery; a publci private partnerships initiative (2000) and the promotion of alternative service delivery. While alternative service delivey initiatives are largely at pilot stage, they offer a promising alternative both to traditional bureaucracy (whit its cost and poor service delivey focus) and to a narrow version of privatisation (whiic could involve heavy social costs, jo losses, and regressive residtribution of wealth). This paper reviews these developments and outlines some promising alternative service delivey pilot projects