Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero has painted a bleak picture of the city, whose water pipes, roads and power cables lie in tatters, vowing to push capital expenditure (capex) past R10bn next year as he courts lenders to help plug a R100bn infrastructure backlog.
@timeslive_video Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero spoke to Business Day about coalition governments and whether he would be willing to serve under an administration led by another party. #dadamorero #ANC #GNU #johannesburg #fyp ♬ original sound - TimesLIVE
“The infrastructure landscape in Johannesburg has been meticulously analysed, focusing primarily on critical areas such as water and sanitation, electricity distribution, and roads and stormwater management,” Morero said in an interview with Business Day. “The city will strive to gradually increase the capex allocation each financial year to deal with infrastructure backlog.”
The City of Joburg’s R200bn-plus repair bill — dominated by the roads and stormwater backlog of more than R150bn — is a glaring symptom of the rot in SA local government, from chronic underinvestment and maintenance backlogs to unauthorised and irregular spending flagged by the Treasury.
It is this dysfunction that Operation Vulindlela — the presidency initiative credited with turning around Eskom and pushing through reforms at Transnet — has zeroed in on, deploying its mandate to force local government to clean up the books and restore basic services.
Drop in the ocean
For Morero, raising capex from R8bn this year to R10bn would be a drop in the ocean against the scale of the infrastructure backlog faced by the metro. With an annual budget of just R89.4bn — nearly a quarter of which goes to salaries of the city’s staff — the city has little choice but to tap capital markets and development financiers to fund the turnaround.
“Even if the city were to spend R10bn a year in capital expenditure it would take 25 years to cover the backlog of R250bn ... The plan is to raise R100bn in the next five years,” Morero said.
@timeslive_video Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero spoke to Business Day, highlighting the city’s efforts to protect traffic signals from tampering. #dadamorero #robot #fyp #johannesburg #gauteng ♬ original sound - TimesLIVE
“I’ve interacted with the CEOs of Standard Bank, African Bank, Development Bank of Southern Africa and Nedbank. They have an interest in the future of this city. They have indicated their doors remain open about how they can help raise much-needed capital for the metro.”
Morero’s R100bn fundraising gambit will run headlong into capital market realities. Johannesburg’s junk credit rating — at Ba3, or three rungs into junk territory — forces yields into double digits, threatening to siphon scarce cash from basic services into interest payments.
“The city has traditionally funded its capex budget from a combination of grants from the national government, borrowings from capital markets as well as internally generated cash from operations,” he said.
“In recent years, the city has averaged about R7.5bn in its annual capex budget. Thus the city is prioritising the engineering services — electricity, water and sanitation, waste management and roads — using available resources within these three funding sources.”
Morero is also betting that the city can clean up its act well enough to unlock a portion of R54bn in additional performance-linked funds from the Treasury, which has launched a drive to nudge metros over the next six years towards stronger governance, healthier balance sheets and reliable services.
But all eight metros must mobilise their own resources, cash or debt, to claim the full pot, he said.
@timeslive_video Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero spoke to Business Day about the city’s ongoing water crisis. Read the full story in Business Day. #water #joburg #sanewstiktok🇿🇦 #fyp ♬ original sound - TimesLIVE
In August, finance minister Enoch Godongwana wrote a damning letter to Morero, demanding a plan to rein in the metro’s unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure. Godongwana had already flagged a crisis of accountability after uncovering R1.4bn in unauthorised outlays, R22bn in irregular spending, and R705m in fruitless and wasteful payments.
Bomb squad
Operational headaches compound Joburg’s fiscal woes. Accounting for 16% of SA’s GDP and employing 12% of its workforce, the city still battles electricity and water outages, hijacked buildings, crime, and illegal immigration.
In June, Morero appointed a 12-member “bomb squad” to work with senior city managers over two years “unlocking some of the service delivery failures that we have”, he said.
However, DA Johannesburg caucus leader Belinda Kayser-Echeozonjoku has dismissed the bomb squad as a PR stunt to spruce up Morero’s image.
With the 2026 local government elections on the horizon, the ANC’s Joburg regional boss dared DA federal council chair Helen Zille, who had been touted as her party’s mayoral candidate, to bring it on if he wins his party’s nomination.
Zille, who was born in Hillbrow, has said she had unfinished business in the city.
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