SOWETAN SAYS | Ramaphosa must act on promise to fix Joburg

A month ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced he would send a presidential intervention team to Johannesburg to arrest the city's decline and address governance failures.

Since then, there has been little information about the work of the team that is meant to accelerate service delivery which has reached its lowest ebb in the metro. This has created uncertainty about the plan of action. 

While a month may seem like a short period for tangible plans to be put in place to revitalise the city the size of Joburg, the reality is that residents are running out of patience. The rebuilding of their trust and confidence in the city requires urgent, concrete action plan and effective communication, more than just verbal goodwill.

The situation in Joburg is pressing, with roads deteriorating daily, street lights not working, water supply that is intermittent and collapsing infrastructure.

Ramaphosa proposed that a presidential working group be set up to fix the city's service delivery problems well aware of all this. It is, therefore, not unreasonable for Joburg residents to expect that demonstrable action would have been taken in over four weeks to show the urgency required to address their problems.

In his address, during his government's visit to the city last month, Ramaphosa conceded the historic central part of Joburg has been allowed to deteriorate for too long. “Johannesburg faces enormous challenges, ranging from financial and governance instability to rapidly deteriorating infrastructure. Water and electricity interruptions have become the norm. This has an enormous impact on the quality of life of citizens and the operations of businesses," he said.

“Road infrastructure faces tremendous challenges. These include vandalism of traffic lights, dysfunctional street lights and rapidly deteriorating roads and bridges. These are some of the challenges constraining growth in the country’s economic heartland.”

Ramaphosa's words captured the essence of what has gone wrong in this city for almost a decade. Yet his government appears to be lethargic in getting started with fixing the city. 

Our questions to the presidency this week about the work of the Joburg intervention team, its priorities and who is in it, were met by obfuscation. We were told the team has already begun "some preliminary work". But a snapshot survey of those meant to form part of the team returned no discernable evidence of such work.

We must, therefore, ask where is the urgency shown last month during the visit to turn Joburg around.

SowetanLIVE