Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are collaborations between government agencies and the private sector to provide the public with goods and services. PPPs play a role in expanding and financing government infrastructure and services. South Africa experiences challenges in managing PPP projects due to for example political interference, corruption and a lack of transparency between the partners. This results in a shortage in infrastructure investment, which will cause economic strain in the future. The purpose of this study is to “analyze the causes of public-private partnership project failure in South Africa”. The study adopted a quantitative approach, through a literature review and questionnaire survey. Eight factors namely completion time, communication, political interference, project planning, skills/experience, change in project scope, corruption, and disputes and conflict between parties were measured using the forced four-point Likert scale. The findings were that political interference (18.9%), lack of communication (17.2%) and dispute and conflict (15.5%) ranked highest in the study. Accusation and corruption, project planning and completion time scored low. Engineering managers should use these rankings as lessons learned going into future PPP projects. Artificial intelligence (AI) is recommended to converge the PPP factor for transparency during project phases. To assess allegations of corruption gaps, the public sector should have a larger share of participants than the private sector.