JOHN DLUDLU: Bold action needed to arrest decline of Joburg

Poor man: the president has again found himself a subject of national ridicule after announcing the latest plan to arrest the decline of Johannesburg.

Last week President Cyril Ramaphosa visited Johannesburg with Gauteng’s provincial government. In unscripted remarks, he expressed shock at the level of the deterioration of the city, which is both cash-strapped and battling to provide basic services to its residents and businesses. 

Social media was set ablaze by his remarks in respect of the filth he witnessed. After all, not only does the president live in the same metro where the city centre is, but Johannesburg is also his place of business. In his capacity as ANC leader the president routinely conducts party business at Luthuli House in downtown Johannesburg. 

In terms of the plan, which should be proud to be called such, the presidency would partner with Gauteng in digging the ANC-led municipal government out of the hole into which it has dug itself. In plain English, this is the beginning of placing Johannesburg under full administration. 

The timing of the move sucks. A week ago Luthuli House disbanded the provincial ANC leadership structure and appointed unelected officials to run the party’s affairs in Gauteng. The provincial leadership was being punished for failing to stop Jacob Zuma’s MK party from stealing its support base in last May’s general election. Much of the loss was in the Johannesburg metro, including Soweto and Alexandra. 

Also, the takeover of Johannesburg couldn’t have come at a worse time for the city’s high-ups. In a year they face a difficult local government election. Since 2016 the ANC has struggled to keep its electoral dominance of this metro, having to govern with the help of smaller parties in unstable coalitions. 

The derision was also ignited by unguarded remarks made by the mayors of Johannesburg and Tshwane — Dada Morero and Nasiphi Moya — that they would be spending money to ensure that infrastructure used by Group of Twenty (G20) visitors is fixed ahead of the November summit of world leaders. This gaffe, which showed incredible tone deafness, merely angered residents of the two metros, where water supply has become a luxury reserved for a few. 

The biggest surprise with the president’s intervention is why it took so long for him to be jolted into action. But before offering possible solutions it’s worth revisiting the reasons behind Johannesburg’s decline. This has been a process, not an event. 

Johannesburg has been cursed with poor leaders for years, especially in the past decade or so. Like most local government jobs the ANC has tended to deploy its least talented leaders to this vitally important sphere of government. For example, if the ANC really cared about service delivery — to businesses and residents — it would have deployed Panyaza Lesufi, the Gauteng premier, to the mayorship of Africa’s most prestigious city. Pretoria, another place of business for the president, should have been run by another political heavy-hitter instead of a compromise candidate from a minority party. 

In the real world Johannesburg is far more important than the provincial sphere of government, which really exists more as a patronage scheme than as a delivery mechanism. Unlike the province, the city has powers to borrow and raise revenue from rates and taxes. It is the most consequential sphere of government with regard to service delivery. 

The mayors who have run the city simply didn’t seem to care about its welfare, or that of its citizens and businesses. A cruel case in point has been the ANC cynically appointing Kabelo Gwamanda and Thapelo Amad, both from Al Jama-ah party, as mayors of Johannesburg. The men had no clue how to run a modern city. 

To be fair, Morero is too new to rate with certainty, though his short stint in office so far has hardly inspired confidence that he is the man for this pivotal moment in the life of Johannesburg.

In the past decade SA’s home-grown multinationals have left the city in droves. One after the other left for Rosebank and Sandton, without the city lifting a finger.

None of these businesses — in mining or banking — were questioned about their reasons for departing. When Johannesburg was thriving the commercial banks, mining houses, stock exchange, trade unions, nongovernmental organisations and newspaper houses were all headquartered in the CBD. No longer. If there was vision, this exodus wouldn’t have been allowed to happen.

Politicians only work in the city because they have bodyguards to ensure their safety. Mostly though, they are seen in the northern suburbs where they prefer to hold meetings.

Like most metros and secondary-city level municipalities in SA, Johannesburg has been offered a helping hand by the private sector. Thanks to high levels of mistrust, this help hasn’t been welcomed.

It’s hard to believe that the president might do the unthinkable at this stage — deploy Lesufi to fix Johannesburg. Lesufi is a political pragmatist who works hard and delivers results, and demands the same of those he leads. This could turn Johannesburg’s fortunes around faster than placing the city under administration. Ramaphosa should seriously consider this. 

Placing Johannesburg under full administration is a blunt tool, as the late Tito Mboweni once observed. National government officials would spend much of their time having rings run around them by city officials. Fixing roads and potholes for the G20 and Business 20 guests would simply invite more cynicism, anger and derision. This is a time for bold action.

• Dludlu, a former editor of The Sowetan, is CEO of the Small Business Institute.