MANDY WIENER: Joburgers are tired of being frogs in a pot of boiling water
Dada Morero must find a way to bring visionary leadership so that Joburg can become the world-class African city it once was.
Joburg Finance MMC Dada Morero. Picture: Dada Morero/ Facebook.
A colleague told me a story this week that gave me pause. I often say we have a very parochial view in South Africa. We always think everything is much worse here than anywhere else. We need perspective.
The colleague told me how her friend, an ex-South African who had emigrated to the USA three decades ago, recently visited Joburg and remarked about how clean the streets are! Driving through suburbia, he commented that there is no litter like there is in Manhattan.
That same ex-Saffa also drove through Hillbrow and was reportedly alarmed at the state of the hijacked buildings and crumbling infrastructure.
By the same token, I often hear expats say to me, “Oh you are a frog in a pot of boiling water. You don’t realise how bad the situation has become.”
Perspective often depends on lived experience and how you frame the narrative.
So, when we in the media describe the state of Johannesburg and how the city has declined over the past decade, perspective can be important. Joburg, of course, stretches from Alexandra to Bryanston, to Soweto to Hyde Park.
When recently resigned Joburg mayor Kabelo Gwamanda describes his tenure as successful, it is easy for him to point to some of the impressive developments in the city: The world-class developments in Sandton, the fixing of key traffic arteries, maintenance that has been done on the water network.
In his State of the City address in May, he rated the service delivery in the metro at an eye-boggling 68%.
“We have achieved noteworthy progress in improving access to basic services in informal settlements, efficiently managing waste and advancing infrastructure development. Our initiatives targeting housing, electricity, water and sanitation, as well as overall environmental health, have produced tangible outcomes that positively impact countless households within our city,” said the mayor.
What has become abundantly clear for any resident of Joburg or expat visiting the city, is that this is a rose-tinted version of events. You can’t speak about good auditor general reports when the city is battling a massive debt hole.
Journalists and civil society organisations have documented the decline of the city which has been accelerated by weak coalition governments and political patronage.
Joburg has had nine mayors in the last six years (two of which died whilst in office).
Over the past two years, Kabelo Gwamanda and before him, Thapelo Amad, were very much proxy ‘puppet’ mayors put in place by a fractious ANC/EFF/PA coalition with Al-Jama'ah.
The ANC and EFF couldn’t agree on who to put in mayoral chains so Gwamanda, from a one-seat party, was shoved into the role.
Before that, there was a DA mayor in Dr Mpho Phalatse. ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba also held the role from 2016 to 2019.
Dada Morero is expected to succeed Gwamanda. This is part of an ANC alliance with ActionSA and several minority parties. The coalition will not include the DA and thus will not reflect the national Government of National Unity (GNU).
Morero will have to deal with resolving problems around electricity load reduction and instability, as well as ongoing water cuts. The civic centre remains far from fully functional, Lillian Ngoyi Street in the CBD is still closed, there are potholed roads, street lights that don’t work, hijacked buildings and a massive deficit that has required a R2.5 billion loan. Not to mention the extremely unpopular R200 electricity tariff that was recently introduced.
Veteran journalist Ferial Haffajee who closely follows Joburg, has outlined her seven jobs for the new mayor: Reopen the city library, appoint proper boards at City Power and Joburg Water that don’t include cadres, get the road agency on track, deal with the deficit, ask the national government to intervene, get the metro centre reopened and communicate better with residents.
On The Midday Report this week, Haffajee spoke about the state of the city and the metrics by which to measure Gwamanda’s tenure.
“How do we judge a mayor? It’s about how the infrastructure of the city works and how citizens feel. It’s pretty clear this hasn’t been a great tenure. The test is more, how many water cuts do we have, electricity, the cost of electricity, how safe do our women feel when streetlights hardly work across the city? What is the condition of our roads? How do we take care of homeless people and waste recyclers? And on those metrics, it hasn’t been a good tenure at all.”
OUTA’s Wayne Duvenage says Joburg is in a dire situation. “It’s crumbling by the day and the longer we wait to deal with the leadership, the bigger this hole gets. If we don’t get the right visionary leadership that is going to steer the city in the way that it needs to go, we can’t see where the leadership is going to come from.”
Dada Morero is going to have to find a way to bring visionary leadership. He is also going to have to find a way to dial down the temperature of the water in the pot for us boiling frogs. This means that service delivery from the suburbs to the townships is going to have to be ramped up so that Joburg can become the world-class African city it once was.