Johannesburg is a world city, one of the great cities of the world. It is also the heart of our economy and our cultural life. Johannesburg, it is said, is the second-best city in the world for jazz after New York.
But after decades of mismanagement by the ANC, Johannesburg is, as any visitor will immediately see, in agonisingly steep decline. In many parts of the city the water supply is erratic.
Across the city the roads are often dark as the street lights no longer work and potholes are turning into ditches. Much of the city is filthy as uncollected rubbish rots. Bylaws are not enforced and much of the city is dangerous.
The centre of economic gravity is shifting to Cape Town, and some demographers think that Cape Town is well on the way to becoming our largest city in terms of population.
Middle-class residents in Johannesburg are often drowning in debt through having to pay for private services to compensate for state failure in health care, security and education.
The planned increases in electricity prices will be a disaster for many families. Any competent government in South Africa should have the flourishing of Johannesburg as a clear strategic priority.
The city should be viewed as a major asset to the country. However, the ANC and its governing partners have no vision for Johannesburg. It does not even seem to have any concern about the rapid decline of the city. They have allowed the fiasco in terms of the city’s municipal governance to continue.
If they were serious about fixing Johannesburg and making it what it could and should be, it would move quickly to get credible people to run the city and the province in which it sits. The city’s budgets continue to be used to enrich politically connected people. The entry of the EFF into governance has only worsened matters.
Contracts are openly divided on the basis of factional political interests and not the interests of the city. The same is true of the allocation of jobs.
The ANC seem almost determined to ensure that they lose it in the next elections. If the ANC worked to turn the street lights back on, keep the water flowing, fix the roads, collect the rubbish, enforce the by-laws, keep people safe and just get some of the basics right, it might stand a chance of again controlling Johannesburg and Gauteng on its own. But the focus remains on patronage for politically connected elites rather than the needs of the people.
Ferial Haffajee, who has written an important series of articles on the decline of Johannesburg, recently showed that there is not a single professional engineer on the Johannesburg Water Board.
The chair of the board, Dineo Majavu, is a member of the Young Communist League with zero experience in urban water management, or any kind of water management at all. This is a farce and an insult to the residents of the city.
The ANC seem almost determined to ensure that they lose it in the next elections
When the right people were finally brought into Eskom, and the right partnerships formed, the lights remained on. The same should have been done with water in Johannesburg years ago.
It is a no-brainer that the Johannesburg Water Board should be made up of professionals.
The people appointed to run the city’s water infrastructure should be independent professionals of the highest calibre. There is simply no excuse for continuing to put political patronage above the need to run things properly.
There was a time, decades ago, when talk of “expertise” and “excellence” sometimes functioned as a code for keeping some jobs in white hands. That time has long passed. There are more than enough first-class black engineers, accountants, urban planners and the like to ensure that excellence means excellence and is not a code for anything else.
Seeing the decay all around us can be heartbreaking. But we must not succumb to pessimism.
We are the nation that built a mass movement to overthrow apartheid. We have won four Rugby World Cups. You don’t win Rugby World Cups by giving the coaching and playing positions to your politically connected friends. You win Rugby World Cups by giving the positions to the most talented and committed coaches and players, and then giving them the support to perform at their best.
There must be zero tolerance for corruption. We must insist on a clear vision for Johannesburg, and demand that it be planned and carried out by the best available people. Our water board should be chaired by a person with the sort of first-rate leadership skills and expertise that we see in a person like Siya Kolisi.
The engineers working to fix the water crisis in the city must be as gifted, well trained and hard working as Eben Etzebeth, Cheslin Kolbe and Ox Nche. There is no reason why we can’t do this. Our politicians must know that this is what we as South Africans demand and that we will no longer tolerate their nonsense. Enough is enough.
• Dr Buccus is a political analyst.
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