Johannesburg Has a New Mayor and the Same Old Intractable Issues
(Bloomberg) -- Johannesburg’s new mayor has only been in the job for a few days, but he has already had plenty of practice in explaining why South Africa’s commercial capital is broken and what it will take to fix it.
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Dada Morero, whose African National Congress is back in charge after years of chaotic coalitions, isn’t excusing what went wrong. He just says that leadership and “appetite” will get it right this time.
“Residents are not asking for too much. They are only asking that the taps must run, the robots must work, the roads must be smooth and the lights must be on,” he said. (Robots are what South Africans call traffic lights.)
“We need to focus on those key issues and deliver on them,” he said in an interview in Bloomberg’s offices in the affluent area of Sandton, north of Johannesburg, where the country’s financial services industry relocated years ago as the city decayed.
Called eGoli, or the “place of gold” in Zulu after the source of its once-fabulous wealth, Johannesburg is a poster child for municipal failure and the nation’s wider challenges.
Rubbish litters potholed streets. Crime drives businesses away. And a chronic lack of housing sees squatters living precariously in derelict buildings, one of which caught fire last year and more than 70 people who were trapped inside died.
Morero faces a litany of intractable challenges. About 40% of Johannesburg’s water supply goes to waste through leaking pipes, while 35% of its electricity is lost, often through the theft of cables, which causes power cuts, and people bypassing their meters to steal.
Yunus Chamda, a member of the Joburg Crisis Alliance steering committee, said the JCA expects the city’s new leadership to “hit the ground running” and is looking for an immediate impact.
“The effectiveness of the reconfiguration is completely dependent upon the new office bearers. The JCA is less interested in the political representation as it is in the effectiveness to address the service delivery problems,” he said.
The city needs 221 billion rand ($12.4 billion) to upgrade its power and water systems as well as roads and other infrastructure, according to documents seen by Bloomberg.
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Morero said the bill was around 44 billion rand, with 15 billion rand needed for power and water. He plants to borrow money to carry out essential maintenance.
“We want to do it quickly because our revenue is reliant on surpluses of water and electricity, so that is important income that we need to protect,” he said.
The city of 5 million residents must also deal with an estimated 18,000 people arriving every month, many of whom have nowhere to sleep or make a living, adding to pressures that drive up lawlessness.
Morero’s top priority is tackling crime, alongside the simple enforcement of bylaws that are ignored wholesale and have turned parts of downtown into a squalid mess.
The mayor, who is in his second stint in the role after serving for 25 days in 2022, said the city will insist on police being visible in every municipal ward. He also hopes to hire a new police chief by October.
The private sector wants an assurance that the city will tackle rampant criminality if new investments are to be made. Morero agreed it was key to turning Johannesburg around.
“The big corporates have left there because of crime. They can’t have their staff afraid to come to work,” he said. “Cars disappear from parking lots or, as you come in, there is a smash-and-grab.”
While the ANC did poorly in the elections, losing its national majority for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994, it’s position now in Johannesburg promises more stability.
The party lost control of the city in 2016, leading to years of fractious coalitions in which the mayor’s office changed 10 times, services deteriorate and city finances went from bad to worse.
Nor was the ANC blameless: Until recently it was strategically propping up a major who spoke for just three of the council’s 270 seats, after it fell out with the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters.
Morero will now govern in a coalition that includes two of the ANC’s main rivals in Johannesburg — the EFF and ActionSA, led by former Mayor Herman Mashaba –- plus some smaller parties.
It’s calling itself a government of local unity, a nod to the post-election coalition the ANC formed at national level with rivals including the centrist Democratic Alliance, known in South African as the government of national unity. The DA isn’t part of Johannesburg’s administration however — which Morero said was of its own choosing.
One of the first fights Morero will have will be over a 200 rand surcharge on residents for prepaid electricity. The charge won’t be scrapped because it’s needed for vital maintenance, but there is “the possibility is that we may reduce the amount,” he said.
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