EDITORIAL: Gauteng fiddles amid provincial collapse

Gauteng’s collapse has become a metaphor for SA as a whole.

The province with the most promise is collapsing due to neglect, poor planning and administration, corruption and a dire lack of leadership.

Residents from Springs to Soweto are reeling from the decline, with many communities taking matters into their own hands by repairing potholes and crucial infrastructure themselves. 

In many ways, Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s leadership style is similar to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s: oblivious to the realities facing citizens around him and shocked when a crisis emerges.

It requires fast, urgent action and attention, but Lesufi provides little more than platitudes. 

The Sunday Times reported this week that the Gauteng government is paying R34m a month to house 11 departments, despite the provincial government owning 41 buildings, all of which are lying vacant.

Gauteng’s premier, MECs, bureaucrats and administrators enter those 11 buildings daily, yet it took a media report to compel Lesufi to institute an investigation into the R34m rental expenditure the province incurs monthly.

It is also astounding that 41 buildings belonging to the province are vacant because they are uninhabitable. 

The saga dates back to 2017, when former premier David Makhura had to vacate his office building in the city centre because of an electrical fault.

A year later, eight other buildings housing various provincial departments were shut down for failing to meet safety standards. Costs for rentals skyrocketed from R358m in 2019/20 to R458mn in 2023/24. 

Jacob Mamabolo, MEC for infrastructure in the province, insisted that the rentals were a temporary measure — temporary, since 2017, almost a decade? 

There are so many questions. Why were the buildings owned by the province not maintained in the first place? Where did the money go that was surely allocated for their maintenance? Why were they not regularly inspected for safety? Why are they lying vacant and not being repaired or sold off? 

The same questions apply over the rest of Gauteng’s failing public infrastructure — its water infrastructure, roads and public facilities such as parks and libraries.

Rand Water continues to lose 48% of its water to leaking taps, a staggering 2.5-billion litres. Gauteng faces a looming water shortage crisis, which is likely to come to a head early next year, due, in part, to delays to phase two of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, itself delayed due to political meddling by one of Lesufi’s predecessors, Nomvula Mokonyane.

Lesufi, meanwhile, will institute an investigation only once he and his administration are publicly exposed for their excesses. In his February state of the province address he coined the catchy phrase “G13” to outline his priorities for the year ahead that included a wishlist of 13 items he will prioritise.

These range from fixing roads and traffic lights as well as collapsing buildings and infrastructure. How can he be believed when the very building he and his government walk into to do their jobs daily is a reminder of their neglect of even the offices they are meant to occupy?

The poor leadership at the top has filtered all the way down to the municipal level. 

More than a month ago, Ramaphosa described the collapse in Joburg, set to host the G20 Summit in November, as “not very pleasing”.

Ramaphosa lives in Gauteng, with residences in Pretoria and in the north of Joburg. Yet, he only just realised that the city’s long-running collapse was “not very pleasing”? 

He subsequently established a working group to begin uplifting the city, but to date there are no visible improvements. With a November deadline looming, one would have expected the team to be well on its way by now. 

If a president can get away with it, so can a premier and an MEC, a mayor and an MMC. 

This is the ultimate blight on SA politics — politicians who think their role is limited to making speeches and cutting ribbons, oblivious to the actual job of governing.