ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has blamed successive coalition governments for the decline in the state of Johannesburg, which is plagued by a water crisis, dilapidated infrastructure, potholes and a billing crisis spanning more than a decade.
President Cyril Ramaphosa recently expressed disappointment at the state of the city, announcing that a presidential working group would intervene to improve its running as the country prepares to host the Group of 20 (G20) summit in November.
This is too little too late for Joburg’s long-suffering residents, who have experienced a steady decline in services since as far back as 2011. While the instability in coalition governments since 2016 is certainly a factor in Joburg, it is not the root cause of the crisis. Contrary to Mbalula’s blame shifting, it is the ANC that is directly to blame for the state of Gauteng’s decrepit metros.
Johannesburg was heading for crisis even under the leadership of former mayor and current trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau. The decline in the city’s finances and its delivery of services began before 2016, and evidence of this began to show during that time.
In Gauteng the only municipality with successive clean audit findings by the auditor-general is Midvaal, which since 2011 has been run by the DA. The metro in the province with the longest run of clean audits is Ekurhuleni, whose former ANC mayor Mondli Gungubele ran a solid administration and a relatively clean ship.
That changed under his successor, Mzwandile Masina, and the metro lost its clean audit status under the ANC-EFF coalition government, with the effects of the decline in Ekurhuleni’s management of its finances starting to show in the state of the city, from Springs to Thembisa.
Johannesburg has experienced a surge in fruitless and wasteful spending, from zero in 2013/14 up to almost R1bn in the 2014/15 auditor-general’s report. In 2015 the city had the second-highest rate of nonrevenue water — water lost to leaks and poor maintenance of infrastructure — in the country at 40.9%, which has now increased to 46%.
It was under Tau that the city shifted its approach to managing water — from the model put in place by former city manager Ketso Gordhan to one in which the city collected water revenue and spent it on vanity projects instead of reinvesting it to upgrade and build onto water infrastructure to cater for the city’s fast-growing population.
The auditor’s report for 2016/17 was also littered with projects, from water to housing provision, that were stalled, incomplete or mired in alleged irregularities. The R221m Elias Motsoaledi mixed development housing project funded by an urban settlement development grant was due for completion before the 2016 election in March, but phase one of the project was only 55% complete by the end of that year. In addition, a contractor was paid R22m in excess of the original contract amount due to additional scope of work, for which no evidence or approval could be provided.
Mbalula’s comments are disingenuous at best — it is not coalitions per se that have collapsed SA cities, but bloated, inefficient and often corrupt administrations, which became entrenched in ANC-led metros in the province. What tipped Johannesburg past breaking point was the political shenanigans of ANC Gauteng chair Panyaza Lesufi and former secretary TK Ncisa, with the EFF — especially appointing one-seat parties to run the two cities with among the largest budgets on the African continent, Joburg and Ekurhuleni.
While national government intervention is necessary in Johannesburg, after a similar intervention in eThekwini yielded positive results, it is too late to reverse the deep decline in the city before the G20 delegates arrive. It may also be too late to reverse the ANC’s electoral decline in the city, unless Ramaphosa can perform miracles before next year’s local government election.
It is understandable for Mbalula to seek to discredit coalitions in Gauteng metros in a bid to reverse the ANC’s electoral trajectory across the province, but the residents of Johannesburg are neither blind nor stupid. The ANC will have to accept responsibility for its mismanagement of our cities, and for taking residents for granted for way too long.
It has been over a week since Ramaphosa announced an intervention for Johannesburg and there has been no movement since, indicating that the intervention is likely to be a superficial, narrowly defined one, intended largely to placate the global delegates to the G20 summit.
Joburg residents are hardly blind to attempts by Mbalula and Ramaphosa to mask their failures, and local government elections loom.
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