New Joburg mayor Thapelo Amad saddles a wild horse

There was a time not so long ago when Joburg was an echo of Gbadolite, the town on the edge of the Congolese rainforest upon which Mobutu Sese Seko lavished millions, for it was his hometown.

Gbadolite had two palaces, modern hospitals and schools, an international airport whose arrivals included Pope John Paul II, UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali and US televangelist Pat Robertson. There was a five-star hotel for those arrivistes not flash enough to crack an invite to one of the palaces.

But all the money Mobutu spent on it went just so far. Drive out of town to where the tarred roads ended abruptly as rutted muddy tracks leading into the forest and you understood that Gbadolite was a bubble of crazed wealth — a bit like Joburg in more recent years.

All that is changing fast. These days, flashy Sandhurst and its Gbadolite-style palaces look like the diplomatic quarters of cities such as Maputo or Luanda — nice pads but bomb-crater roads outside the gate rendering fleets of handmade automobiles quite useless.

Sandhurst at least has power, unlike the hard-pressed residents of most other districts who must every day bear arms against the two donkeys of the apocalypse: load-shedding and water outages.

Into the fray comes Thapelo Amad, provincial chair of Al Jama-ah, who, thanks to an ANC-EFF deal, is now mayor of the heartbeat of the South African economy.

Coalition politics is the wildest of feral mustang horses and so shiny are those levers of power that Amad’s tenure might not be long. Meanwhile, Joburgers will have a brief chance to see how well Amad’s chosen MMCs fare, such as Kenny Kunene at transport.

Those woods are lovely, dark and deep, and they have promises to keep, and miles to go before Joburg sleeps.