I interviewed Helen Zille in 2011, when she was leader of the DA, for the authorised biography of former president Kgalema Motlanthe. I sought the interview not only because she was leader of the DA, but because I thought she was the most formidable political leader in South Africa.
This is the background against which I today wholeheartedly support her for the crucially important position of mayor of Johannesburg, now facing arguably its worst crisis since the city was formed in October 1886.
South Africa on the whole, except for Cape Town to a large extent, is experiencing the biggest infrastructural and political crisis since apartheid, and in fact since the Union was established in 1910.
Nowhere more than in Johannesburg can we vividly and tragically see daily evidence of that multifaceted crisis. But the infrastructure crisis in the metro has been long in the making, already from the time that Amos Masondo was its first executive mayor between 2000 and 2011.
The decline worsened with the passing in 2000 of the Municipal Systems Act (MSA), which for the first time commercialised, corporatised and commodified basic municipal services such as water, sanitation, sewerage and electricity. This gave rise to arms-length corporatised utilities, such as Joburg Water and City Power. The ANC shut down all apartheid-era municipal departments and formed these utilities in their place.
Research will show that those neoliberal legal and policy shifts occurred under sustained pressure from the World Bank and other market-orientated local and global institutions.
Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than with the installation and imposition of prepaid water and electricity meters in poor townships. Prepaid meters led to huge protests in those townships.
In the township of Phiri, in Soweto, the army was called in to enable Joburg Water to complete the imposition of prepaid water meters. Disgruntled residents were uprooting these meters from the ground.
It is the combination of blatant incompetence and corruption within the municipality since about 2000 that constitute the real roots of the crisis
Since prepaid meters demanded cash payments in advance of any consumption the poor and unemployed black working-class majority in those townships, before the introduction of the stigmatising means-tested indigency system, went without water or electricity.
But while this is some of the background to the crisis in Johannesburg today, it is the combination of blatant incompetence and corruption within the municipality since about 2000 that constitutes the real roots of the crisis. That is why the ANC lost the Gauteng metros in both the 2016 and 2021 local government elections and last year for the first time lost the national elections.
Let there be no doubt about it whatsoever. The ANC is in precipitous decline and I foresee it losing the 2026 local government elections.
Johannesburg, where I was born and grew up, is facing a terminal crisis. And if we thought the crisis was worst in the inner city, in such places as the CBD, Hillbrow, Yeoville and Bertrams, it is considerably worse in the townships, where the vast majority of residents reside. Raw sewage running down streets in those townships is today a common sight.
The sheer depth of the urban decay and degeneration hits one between the eyes when driving around the city and townships. Nothing has been spared. Roads are badly scarred with gaping potholes and malfunctioning traffic lights are a recurring daily nightmare.
I have absolutely no doubt that if the mayorship remains with the ANC, the crisis will worsen even further.
What is encouraging is that Zille appears ready for what is going to very clearly be the biggest and most demanding job in her political career. In fact, should she win the mayorship it will be a far bigger challenge than when she was the executive mayor of the city of Cape Town and later premier of the Western Cape.
The big question is the fate of the corporatised utilities such as Joburg Water, City Power, Pikitup and others, which are a major source of the problems.
That is why in 2016 the new mayor Herman Mashaba, then still in the DA, wanted the municipality to take back those utilities. It was the ANC that offered the most resistance to that idea.
When municipal services are located within the municipality, as under apartheid, control over them is incomparably better than when such departments have been transformed into arms-length corporatised municipal entities.
Besides, research will show that those utilities have become a major source of corruption and incompetence since the passage of the MSA. This legacy I believe is going to pose the biggest challenge to Zille, should she become the next mayor.
• Harvey is a political writer, analyst, commentator and author of The Great Pretenders: Race and Class under ANC Rule (Jacana, 2021)
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.