Joburg’s mayoral repasts on repeat

Google “Johannesburg mayor” and under “People Also Ask” you will see these pertinent questions: Who is the new mayor of Joburg? Who are the mayors of Johannesburg? Who is the new mayor of Johannesburg 2023? And, finally, is Kenny Kunene a mayor?

All valid inquiries for the citizens of this most beleaguered city, and none of which can be answered without a certain amount of vigorous debate.

Joburg is now on its 10th mayor since Amos Masondo left office in 2011, ending with Kabelo Gwamanda — who, at the time of writing this column, was away.

Transport MMC Kenny Kunene had stepped in to act as temporary mayor while Gwamanda was  away for 48 hours in Cape Town to honour — without any apparent sense of irony — the National Treasury’s invitation to an executive leadership programme.

Meanwhile, Rome is burning.

There is a fine scene in The Wire, David Simon’s cops-and-corruption series about Baltimore, in which young new mayor Tommy Carcetti asks his predecessor, who had every chance of crushing the young upstart under his heel but didn’t, why he chose to step down.

The old mayor describes to Carcetti how on the first day of the job, his aide walked into his office bearing a giant silver bowl of human waste and a spoon.

“What am I expected to do with this?” asked the disgusted mayor.

“Eat it,” said his aide. And so it went throughout the day: more bowls arrived, and more every day after that.

“That’s what it is: you’re sitting eating all day long, day after day, year after year,” says the old mayor.

In Joburg, though, it’s different. It’s the mayors who are giving the people the bowls of shit, and they’re not even bothering with the spoon. Day after day, year after year.