EDITORIAL: Wanted: leaders to save Joburg

It is hard to imagine when last it was that Johannesburg, SA’s commercial capital, could credibly boast that it is a world-class African city. Certainly not in the past 15 years.

The city, which plays host to most of SA’s home-grown multinationals, has been cursed with poor administrative and political leadership. Since 1994, it has been run, for the most part, by the ANC. Accordingly, it is at its door that the bulk of the blame should be laid.

There was a time, when Amos Masondo was executive mayor, that the city faced only one crisis: the bugbear then was the billing system which spewed out wrong figures for water, electricity and garbage collection.

This was as a result of an inept service provider being appointed to serve Africa’s most sophisticated city.

Now, the city, which houses all the major commercial banks in SA, is buckling under the weight of deadly cocktail of bad governance, uniquely unqualified political leadership, a docile administrative leadership and the collapse of services and infrastructure.

Most recently, the city has been visited by a new phenomenon of political instability. In the past decade, it has had a dozen executive mayors. No mayor has finished a five-year term since Masondo and Parks Tau, now the trade, industry & competition minister.

This rapid churn of political leaders, including the deaths of two ANC mayors in car crashes, has adversely affected the administrative arm. Unlike other democracies, our public service, including at the mission-critical local sphere of governance, remains politicised and linked to politicians.

The decline of the city, which contributes to much of the country’s economic activity, has also been precipitated by other factors: uncontrolled migration (from other provinces and outside the country), criminality (violent crimes and hijacking of buildings) and mismanagement.

Johannesburg is a rich city, but has failed to balance its books.

Only those with no options, such as undocumented immigrants, still live in the city centre. Once residents left, businesses followed the flight to neighbouring suburbs which are considered safe havens, like Rosebank and Sandton. Most of the banks’ leadership and client-facing units have left town; only support functions like IT and HR remain in town.

Successive leaderships of the city have failed to produce visions to resuscitate it to its true potential.

Unsurprisingly, faced with a crippling cost-of-living crisis — occasioned by power outages, water cuts, potholes and, to add salt to the wound, an irregular R200 electricity surcharge — hundreds of the city’s residents marched to the council’s offices on Saturday to demand the resignation of the mayor, Kabelo Gwamanda, and his ANC-led mayoral committee.

None of Gwamanda’s predecessors has ever handed back the mayoral chain voluntarily. They have had to be ousted through votes of no confidence. This is the fate that is likely to befall Gwamanda, who has hitherto doubled down amid the calls for his political head.

Inserting a mayor from a three-seat party, like Gwamanda’s
al-Jama’ah party, has been a bad joke the ANC has played on Johannesburg residents.

Gwamanda is unlikely to survive. Beyond him, Johannesburg residents deserve a competent and ethical mayor. The last mayors have set the bar far too low. Over and above having a shared vision, the new leadership must also accept help from the private sector.