Is Dada Morero the ANC’s best for Joburg?

The ANC got back the mayorship of the City of Joburg last week. Dada Morero came back for another crack at being Joburg’s number one citizen. He is a better option than Kabelo Gwamanda of Al Jama-ah, who was more a placeholder than a genuine incumbent.

But the question remains: is Morero the best that the ANC can offer the people of Johannesburg, or is he in simply because he is the ANC’s regional chair?

Morero’s return to the position is courtesy of the realignment of local government politics following May’s general election.

The ANC lost 17% of votes nationally and it having to form a government with its traditional rival the DA seems to have emboldened parties like Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA to get into bed with the enemy when they had sworn they would never do such. And the ANC benefitted from that change in position to reinstall Morero as mayor.

No doubt Morero will hit the ground running as he was finance member of the mayoral committee before then and he knows the finer details of the city’s finances.

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And as though reassured by their unexpected turn of fortune in Johannesburg, there are rumours that the ANC now wants to target Tshwane’s Cilliers Brink’s mayoral position for a possible takeover too.

The ANC seems to be reaping rewarding results after losing 17% of the national vote, a result of the realignment following the formation of the government of national unity.

The problem for the ANC is that instead of seeing this as a chance at redemption and allowing its best talent to rise to the top and revive Johannesburg and Tshwane, they have simply gone with their default mode: “Whoever has risen to the top of the internal structures of the ANC becomes mayor.”

There is no introspection about the current leadership’s role in the decline of the ANC votes until they lost their outright majority in 2016.

The saddest part about the return of Morero and his comrades to the mayoral office is that in his utterances, Morero is always at pains to paint Joburg’s decline into the sorry state that it is today as having coincided with the ANC’s loss of the 2016 local government election.

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In other words, according to the ANC’s leadership, all was well with Johannesburg until the electorate punished the ANC for no reason in 2016.

This blatant refusal to take accountability for the demise of Joburg and Tshwane is the exact reason the ANC finds itself where it is, negotiating with parties with three seats in a 270-seat council.

Morero got himself mired in a mindless “employ-foreigners-to-fight-crime” spat with his party’s provincial leadership.

According to Morero, employing foreigners would allow law enforcement to better understand criminals using languages from other African countries.

These are the views of Johannesburg’s number one resident, a city ravaged by not only crime but rampant unemployment among local people.

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And the mayor reckons the few jobs that the state creates can go to foreign nationals.

Joburg and Tshwane do not need noble and lofty ideas to return to their glory. They need leaders with a vision, leaders who will set a plan and stick to it.

Leaders who know that getting the roadside grass cut and collecting refuse consistently are the first steps to a world-class African city.

The ANC is not giving such leaders the platform to lead.

They have been punished at the polls for this. If they continue like this, the 2026 local government elections will see the party continue to mourn what it once was.

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