Joburg — a city losing hope, a mayor without a plan

Daily Maverick

14-05-2025

While Joburg's leaders make promises to residents, they are simply not in control of what they are doing. The mayor, the ANC's Dada Morero, has now revealed his obvious desperation and small but important errors show that no one is really in charge.
It is common in politics for leaders to try to cover their weaknesses. It is a brutal sport and any sign of weakness can be punished by both your opponents and voters. But sometimes politicians, through their own actions, reveal how weak they really are.
Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero has now shown that he can no longer properly manage the city and the coalition he governs.
Last week, during his State of the City Address, he announced that he would rotate the positions of people on his Mayoral Committee. In other words, someone would be in charge of their portfolio for only six months and then be moved.
The sheer lunacy, the political depravity of this moment takes some time to fully comprehend.
Read more: They play politics. Joburg pays the price.
In the published text of his speech, he gave no reason for doing this. But there can be no rational reason for believing he has a constructive intent; this cannot do anything to improve service delivery.
This is why the move is unique. There is a reason no one has done it anywhere before.
It is well known that people running departments take some time to come up to speed. To suddenly force people to chop and change every six months is to invite them to do nothing.
Morero also says he wants to rotate senior managers from July this year. Again, the prepared text of his speech gives no rational reason for this.
This is even more serious than rotating Members of the Mayoral Committee. The job of senior managers is often much more technical and detailed. They need to remain in charge across several complex programmes with many moving parts as they are implemented.
To move them around simply for the sake of it achieves nothing. It is an active act of service-delivery sabotage.
This suggests that Morero has another motive.
He might well believe that some members of his Mayoral Committee will benefit politically from their positions, and thus he wants to weaken them.
In other words, he is prepared to sabotage service delivery because of internal ANC politics.
He may well argue that corruption in Joburg is so bad that this rotation policy is the only way to stop it. But then he has a duty to stand up and say so, rather than simply making these announcements without any proper explanation.
A typical typo
Another, smaller incident this week reveals the depths to which the Joburg administration has fallen.
During the announcement of the city's proposed budget, it was revealed that documents showed the network fee of R200 a month charged to pre-paid electricity customers would be increased to R270 a month.
Considering the outrage when it was first imposed at R200, this is a big increase.
EWN reported on Tuesday that officials now say it was a 'typo', that in fact the document was incorrect, and there never was a plan to increase it in this way.
Which is easier to believe: that someone could make a mistake of this magnitude, or that officials did want to do this and then realised there would be huge opposition to it?
In some ways, it's like the National Treasury blaming the proposed VAT increase on a 'typo'.
While Morero may not be directly to blame for this, it is surely the case that his leadership has set a tone for the city. How he behaves as mayor and the fact that he has no grasp on the real situation are allowing incidents like this to happen.
From Joburg to Tshwane
There are also indications that the political situation in Joburg is about to become more complicated, in ways that could now involve Tshwane. Currently, ActionSA is a part of the coalition in both cities, as part of its move away from the DA.
But, the party failed to vote in favour of the city's adjustment budget. News 24 is now reporting that some of the smaller parties in the coalition believe ActionSA is not really part of their coalition. Thus, they want to remove ActionSA Speaker Nobuhle Mthembu.
As the DA has lodged no-confidence motions against both Mthembu and Morero, there is now scope for some interesting politics to develop. Smaller parties say they were not consulted on Morero's plans to rotate their MMCs.
This would be a moment for them to flex their muscles and essentially show the ANC that they will not accept this plan. This may mean that Morero is suddenly vulnerable in a completely unexpected way.
The only reason this is happening is because of his actions – what appears to be entirely his own frolic.
This could have implications for Tshwane. If the current coalition involving the ANC, the EFF and ActionSA falls in Joburg, there may be moves to remove the ActionSA mayor in Tshwane.
Certainly, the EFF has condemned the actions of Tshwane Mayor Nasiphi Moya, who may have shown that she lacks the gravitas to do the job. Last week, she took part in a photo-op that saw her switching off the power to the Westkoppies Psychiatric Hospital for non-payment.
While other councils have switched off power to hospitals, for the mayor herself to do it in this staged way suggests a complete lack of forethought.
Given the nature of the institution, it's entirely possible a patient or a worker could have been placed in danger. Imagine if someone had lost their life because of her photo-op?
While the coalitions in these metros are slightly different, decisions made in one can still affect the other, meaning there could be a ripple effect from all of this.
National implications
While this matters immensely to residents who live in Joburg, it could also have a greater impact on our national politics.
Currently, it is almost impossible to predict who will take over from President Cyril Ramaphosa as leader of the ANC in 2027. But the results of the local elections are likely to empower some candidates and regions and weaken others within the ANC.
If the ANC in Gauteng is seen to do badly, this will weaken its voice going into the 2027 ANC conference.
This might well have an impact on Deputy President Paul Mashatile, for example. If the ANC were to fall to, say 20% of the vote in Joburg in the local elections, he might find that his case in the ANC is harder to make.
One almost wonders if that is Morero's aim – to ensure the ANC does really badly in the elections. But it is more likely that he is just unable to properly manage the situation.
This means that service delivery in Joburg will worsen for the foreseeable future. DM