Johannesburg may soon get its ninth mayor since the local government election in 2021. Finance MMCLoyiso Masuku has trounced Dada Moreroas the ANC’s regional chairperson. She may want to take over the chains asap.
Dada Morero is on his second round as mayor and three ANC mayors passed away while serving their terms. More on Wednesday. Since announcing her candidacy as Joburg mayor, Zille has energised the Johannesburg “base” – political speak for core support in an area for a party.
I had a chat with Gabriel Meakin of the Social Research Foundation who poll weekly. While they do not have a Joburg sub-sample, he said that 59.6% of their total sample supported Zille’s candidacy, while 50% of ANC supporters did so too. That’s quite a story and I will be following it next year when local government elections in general and the race for Joburg, in particular, will be the news of 2026.
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Hereare thefive candidateswho want to be your mayor. We know that billing is the biggest crisis in the city. It’s mission critical and getting worse as the cash-strapped city tries by every means to get its hands on our hard-earned Randelas.
Many people turn to lawyers. “This is the question that baffles us: Why do people spend money on lawyers for billing and municipal issues when they can come to us for free?” said Advocate Colman Ramontja. “We have legally trained investigators, we check every matter meticulously, and we tell you upfront whether you have a case — and we conduct free mediation between parties, bringing them together to avoid court action — all free of charge.” The City of Johannesburg’s Office of the Ombudsman appears, at first glance, to be one of the metro’s few success stories.
It exceeds nearly every performance target: 99% processing compliance, a 70% resolution rate, a 61% drop in backlog cases and 21 proactive investigations into service-delivery failures. Our partners at Our City News have been investigating what happened after the Social Development department closed up the baby-saver boxes. News24Our colleague at News24, Alex Patrick, had a blockbuster of a story last week.
She revealed that a Bryanston mansion had been hijacked and had become an informal settlement. A day later, the city raided and this is what they found. (News24 is paywalled and well worth a subscription.)
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