OPINION | Joburg failures a result of corruption, poor leadership

Johannesburg now faces more governance failures than its leadership can keep the lid on.

In the past two weeks, two government ministers were forced to swoop into Johannesburg to intervene. The city is effectively collapsing.

Water, electricity, finances, debtors, basic services, housing, healthcare, refuse, roads, traffic lights – not one is being properly managed.

The Johannesburg high court had to remove the city’s manager because his appointment was unlawful after the DA challenged it.

The decline is visible for all to see. Water shortages last days while broken pipes leak all over the streets. Traffic lights and street lights that never come on. A billing and revenue crisis. The collapse is now hitting the property market of Johannesburg. House prices are down this year by 1.1% – the only city in SA to see a decline.

The state of Johannesburg’s water supply is now its most pressing concern. Continued multiple-day-long water shortages are fuelling protests across the municipality. Infrastructure is now in such a bad state that half of the city’s water is lost to leaks and burst pipes. There appears to be no political leadership on this or will to fix the problem.

The loss of half its clean water causes the city to throttle and limit supply to residents, or implement water-shedding, instead of fixing the pipes. The minister of water and sanitation described the water problem as “self-inflicted”.

In September, the Charlotte Maxeke hospital went completely dry, unable to be a functional medical facility, as the city couldn’t supply it. And in a national embarrassment, the Constitutional Court stands evacuated today as it does not have a reliable supply of water.

The causes of the breakdown of the water supply in Johannesburg are simple and easily diagnosed. Systematic mismanagement, poor budgeting and a failure to conduct regular maintenance and refurbishment. Failed leadership, stemming from a useless oversight authority in the board of Johannesburg Water is a key part of the problem – but the solution to the breakdown is easy. Engineers, technicians, scientists and planners – who you would expect to find leading Johannesburg Water at its board level – are nowhere to be found and have been replaced by political cadres.

The solution is to immediately remove the cadres and bring back the experts. Turnaround will be slow, but it will be faster than doing nothing. This needs political will and urgency.

The electricity supply is as bad as the water supply because the infrastructure is degrading, but also because the city isn’t paying its dues to Eskom. After the minister of electricity had to swoop in on the city recently, the deadline of 14 days to resolve the debt of R5bn to Eskom was missed and another extension has been given.

Apart from what the city of Joburg owes Eskom, it has racked up R16bn on an overdraft facility to pay workers in the City Power entity, paying unbudgeted salaries. Escaping from this, while huge debt to Eskom becomes due and payable, is unlikely.

The insistence of the city of Joburg to maintain unviable and expensive entities, adjacent and in duplication to staff, is now catching up with it. Meanwhile, the electrical grid is crumbling, transformers blow up and power lines go down regularly – like in April when 11 substations across Johannesburg went down at the same time.

Little needs to be said about the horrendous mayoralties of two members of the Al Jama-ah party, who were unqualified, who delivered nothing and who both left under clouds of scandal. They were both puppets and pawns on a chessboard, keeping a fragile coalition together to keep the ANC in power.

But it would be a mistake to imagine that since they departed, corruption has come to an end. Recent stories about unqualified people being employed based on falsified CVs at the Joburg Metro Trading Company, who were then investigated, exposed and still protected because of their party affiliation with the Patriotic Alliance, have shown that corruption is alive and well.

The complete bungling of the Bree Street / Lilian Ngoyi Street repair, after the dramatic explosion of that street two years ago, has shown that the capacity to deliver on specific, focused and narrow projects is also lacking. At first, the contract was awarded to a company to which the city had lost R94m, in a fraud matter, and later we learnt that the repair needed an extra year. Basic financial controls and compliance have gone out the window and there is not even an utterance of accountability.

Johannesburg ought to be the most abundant city in Africa and if run correctly, it can be. All of its current failures can be overcome with the right government, plans and expertise. For so long as it is used as a feeding trough for political people, propping up an unstable coalition, it cannot move forward.

But with the right government, the fixes are not impossible.

• Kayser-Echeozonjoku is DA Johannesburg caucus leader