Aerial view of the City of Joburg: Photo: Twitter
When I moved to Johannesburg 10 years ago, it was such a magical place. Sure you had to be street smart but anywhere you looked, the energy was there.
Shows at Ellis Park, the buzz in Braam, the rise of coworking and culture of entrepreneurship in every suburb. There were infinite parks that were pleasant (and safe) to meet in and the metro cops hadn’t yet developed the “it’s my birthday” narrative when they pulled you over and you had done nothing wrong.
Blame the twice-ousted mayor, blame a dumb coalition, blame the Democratic Alliance, ANC, Economic Freedom Fighters…whoever! Let’s just start with admitting that Johannesburg really sucks right now.
The parties in Commissioner Street have quietened down. The once beautiful sidewalks are now a threat to health and safety. You’d even be silly to take a walk down the iconic Main Road promenade in the middle of the day.
And maybe, perhaps, possibly, if this was limited to just the inner city, the northerners wouldn’t care or may turn a blind eye. After all, what South African city CBD is still well maintained? (cough cough).
The place is filthy and if you wanted to do your part and clean up your local park, you’re likely going to be clearing out a two-litre ice cream container filled with vagrant excrement. I haven’t even gotten to the crumbling roads, leaking pipes and 2x multiplier on the load-shedding schedule.
So…as the city’s elected “leadership” could you please stop bickering over who is running the show, appoint some people to run the place and then you can go on playing play-play-politician.
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It’s embarrassing that a bunch of adults are fighting over who gets to run a place that, in the meanwhile, is disintegrating. It’s also not the best inspiration of confidence that the body tasked with running the economic hub of the continent can’t even run their own coalition.
It’s upsetting because I used to be so proud of defending Johannesburg. I loved inviting people over to my Ponte apartment and dispelling their misgivings about the city. It’s not even been a decade and there’s hardly much left to defend.
Maybe, if the Johannesburg game didn’t become a who’s the king of the castle political wheelhouse, it wouldn’t be this way. Maybe, if we didn’t really care who the mayor was and just cared about getting the work done, we’d still have the alluring Johannesburg of the 2010s.
We’d still have that positivity and belief that we could revive the inner city, that businesses could
thrive and that we wouldn’t have to replace a tyre turning off of Rivonia.
READ MORE: It’s worrying that politics still takes precedence over all else
What is worrying about this going into the 2024 elections is that we may be staring down the barrel of a national coalition and if this is how we’re dealing with Johannesburg…I’m not sure I can handle several presidents in one year.
The grass is suffering and the elephants are too preoccupied with their own survival to care. Can you
blame them? I’d say it’s time to cull the herd but the political metaphor would be lost to their ignorance and I’ll be cancelled for promoting violence.
We do need less politicians and more managers who are actually invested in the running of the city.
This isn’t a city we can be proud of any longer. That’s why it confuses me why anybody would fight so hard to lead it.
If the next mayor wants to inspire any form of hope, the first act on day one should be a one-word statement; “We’re going to make Johannesburg a city to be proud of ”…but who am I kidding? It will probably just be a tweet.
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