One mayor down, Joburg’s problems remain

A post on social media perhaps best sums up the decision by Joburg executive mayor Kabelo Gwamanda yesterday to jump before he got pushed.

There may be one clown gone, the post said, but the circus still remains.

While Gwamanda was the figure many people loved to hate – as the man “parachuted” in to the position as the result of a dodgy deal between a minority party and bigger parties – the reality was that he had little time to influence the direction of the city.

In a way, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, because the foundational crises in the richest city in the country were not of his making and too deeply rooted for one person alone to hope to tackle.

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Joburg is still deeply in debt because it hasn’t tackled problems like the massive freeloading on its electricity grid, while service delivery is abysmal.

Are ratepayers hoping against hope that, as has been the case with the top tier of administration in the government of national unity, some coherence and cooperation will characterise municipal governance in future?

The city is in a mess and the time for pointing fingers (at people like Gwamanda) is long since past.