President Cyril Ramaphosa has been shocked to discover that the streets in Johannesburg have potholes, that litter lies for months uncleared and that his 2025 presidency of the G20 risks exposing visiting foreign dignitaries to the true filth of the city. Who is going to invest in a place that can’t even keep itself clean?
Having found the city, on a recent visit from Cloud 9, to be “not very pleasing”, he is going to bring one of his secret weapons to the problem. It’s called the district development model (DDM), a moniker given to a desperate attempt to source plumbers and engineers to failing ANC local governments in 2019 and presented as then minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s intellectually thrilling brainchild.
The DDM got endless plugs from CR during the Covid lockdowns as he sought to flatter her ego and now he’s forming a “presidential working group” (yes!) to usher in the model to Johannesburg before more important foreigners realise what a disaster it is.
The trouble is no-one has the slightest clue what the DDM is. A draft National Planning Commission advisory note in 2024 concluded that a “lack of co-ordination, spatial and temporal misalignment, and inadequate information flow are major concerns ... many role players do not understand the DDM’s functionality, objectives and processes”. That’s officialese for a shit-show.
Ramaphosa won’t know. He’s said it, so, in his mind, it will happen. He says the same thing is working in eThekwini but fails to acknowledge that Durban is being slowly cleaned up because there’s a possibly real leader in place finally as mayor. Not so Johannesburg.
His discovery that Johannesburg might not be perfect (he lives there so you can just imagine how oblivious he would have had to be thus far) capped a macabre week.
International relations & co-operation minister Ronald Lamola, a normally sensible man, made a truly dreadful speech in parliament about foreign policy and Donald Trump.
With it becoming more obvious by the day that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has some sort of hold on Trump, “What,” asked Lamola, “do those who accuse us of aligning with Russia have to say for themselves now?” Uhm, that you’re as mad as Trump, perhaps?
Then there’s the row about AfriForum or Solidarity campaigning in the US against the ANC and complaining about whites here being deliberately ill-treated.
The Hawks are apparently investigating treason. Seriously? Is this a free country or not? The DA also got into trouble for sending a delegation to the US to soothe American hearts set racing by AfriForum’s PR and Trump’s accusations about race policies in South Africa. Businessman Rob Hersov says the same and worse in the US but attracts curiosity rather than hostility.
Lamola insisted gravely in parliament that foreign policy was the preserve of the president at almost exactly the same time as Nomvula Mokonyane, first deputy secretary-general of the ANC, was tweeting photographs of herself leading a party meeting with the Iranian ambassador. If the ANC can talk to foreign officials, why not the DA or AfriForum?
The only way to stop the nightmare in Johannesburg is to remove the ANC from power in a fair election. Same for South Africa
It’s all rather second-rate, but typical of our politics. As Trump’s vicious new world takes shape, as he cosies up to Putin and takes an axe to Europe and other allies, I wonder where we will stand. Fascism has an old home here — the decades leading up to 1994 were barbaric and cruel.
It may not have felt like it at the dinner tables of a cosseted minority back in the day but that’s normal in all savage societies. We’re not special. South Africa entered World War 2 on the side of the Allies rather than the Nazis by a mere seven votes in the then parliament.
So let’s not assume the past can be forgotten. The British still live on old war stories, Americans too, and the Russians absolutely. History has programmed the ANC is programmed to be hopeless.
It exists only because of apartheid and in a way it is its last remaining relic. The trains may have run on time and the streets were clean back then but why would something as inhuman as pass laws and ‘homelands’ end well? This is not a musical.
I feel for Johannesburg. Cyril Ramaphosa talking about making Johannesburg investable again is a little like Boris Johnson musing on the challenges of underwater welding. It doesn’t matter what Ramaphosa thinks. He can’t save Joburg or change it and the G20, like so many other opportunities, will slip by and be forgotten.
The only way to stop the nightmare in Johannesburg is to remove the ANC from power in a fair election. Same for South Africa.
This is still a real democracy so if anyone has a plan that promises some real economic growth, some real security and some real relief from poverty, and that could take half the country, I’d love to hear it.
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