Joburg can only be saved by fair municipal elections

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s intervention won’t rescue Johannesburg because too many useless cadres are still in place.

After months of false promises about changes in the Gauteng ANC, Panyaza Lesufi is still premier.

He’s also co-coordinator of the party’s provincial task team. It’s a mistake to leave him in positions where he calls the shots.

Lesufi is the architect of dysfunction in Gauteng metros. Below him, ineffectual Dada Morero remains Johannesburg mayor.

Despite attempts to boost his image on social media, Morero doesn’t have the heft to lead this turbulent city.

His recent publicity stunts have been mislabelled as “high-impact accelerated service delivery”.

For ratepayers, there has been no obvious impact.

Streetlights remain off, traffic signals malfunction, potholes proliferate, whole suburbs are deprived of water and/or electricity for days, sometimes weeks. Even months.

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Today, while we are in council, Morero is hosting a breakfast for business leaders under the theme, “High-impact accelerated service delivery for economic growth”.

He’s begging them for help to brighten up the city for G20 visitors.

“Investors have become pivotal in enhancing service delivery…” says the invitation.

Business has been too generous to the corrupt, inefficient ANC and will probably make further pledges today.

This will encourage continued incompetence and corruption. Ramaphosa, in a 7 March address in the Joburg council chamber, said the Presidency was committed to ensuring cooperation among the three spheres of government: national, provincial and municipal.

His musings about Johannesburg include the district development model, which columnist Peter Bruce recently described as “a desperate attempt to source plumbers and engineers to failing ANC local governments in 2019 and presented as then minister Nkosazana DlaminiZuma’s intellectually thrilling brainchild”.

It’s a perfect example of ANC “development” mumbo jumbo going nowhere.

There is scant hope that Ramaphosa’s presidential working group will be productive if they try to implement this model.

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Optimists point to improvements in eThekwini. Yet comparing the two cities is misleading.

In Johannesburg we have a mayor who is less effective than his eThekwini counterpart.

We also have different systems of governance. Johannesburg has an executive mayoral system where the mayor, elected by councillors, serves as both political head and accounting officer.

The mayor appoints a mayoral committee from among councillors. The executive mayor thus has considerable authority.

But eThekwini has a council-manager system. The mayor is the political head but he is not an executive mayor.

The city manager is the accounting officer responsible for administration.

The city manager appoints a team of senior managers – not councillors – known as the executive management team, including departmental heads responsible for municipal functions.

The point is, an eThekwini mayor has less influence on practical implementation than does a Joburg executive mayor.

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Morero has more authority but less impact because he is feeble. Any solution which retains Morero as executive mayor will fail.

Placing the city under administration – thereby dissolving council – is unpalatable if Lesufi oversees that process.

On the upside, fresh municipal elections that would have to be held within 90 days of dissolution offer the best hope of rescuing Joburg.

Fair elections are the only way to wrest Joburg from the ANC.