I don’t care who runs Joburg – just stop screwing around while the city rots!

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 DA, ANC, EFF, whoever! Let’s just start with admitting that Johannesburg really sucks right now.

Also Read: ActionSA to put forward its own mayoral candidate to replace DA’s Phalatse

City in decay

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, 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? But it’s all over – the energy feels gone.

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 2L ice cream container filled with vagrant excrement. I haven’t even gotten to the crumbling roads, leaking pipes and multiplier on the load shedding schedule.

Parties fighting over filth and rot

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.

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.

Also Read: Ground rules need to be established for stable coalitions

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.

If this is how they govern metros, what hope do coalitions have at national level?

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’d be cancelled for promoting violence. We do need fewer 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 sentence statement: “We’re going to make Johannesburg a city to be proud of”.

Who am I kidding though? It will probably just be a tweet.