MUNICIPAL DECAY
Can Joburg regain its golden lustre?
South Africa’s most populous city is battling a R300bn infrastructure backlog — a shortfall that’s frightfully obvious in water outages, erratic power supply and ubiquitous potholes. There is no quick fix
26 January 2023 - 05:00
When inclement weather wreaked havoc in Joburg and its surrounds late last year and storm water raged through streets and homes, the parlous state of infrastructure in South Africa’s most populous city was put on stark display.
The word “crumbling” may offer the metro too much credit — rather, Joburg’s water, sanitation, electricity and road networks are broken. Take water: as the rains poured down, the council implemented level 1 water restrictions. Reservoirs had run dry as a result of stage 6 load-shedding, leaving pipes dry in higher-lying areas. One such area is Melville...
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