Joburg briefly sprang to life under your daily G20 check-ins with Mayor Morero. Now the city has sunk back into dysfunction — proof that ANC ‘renewal’ hasn’t yet reached the streets, bridges or budgets of Johannesburg. I was so interested to hear on Monday at the opening of the ANC National General Council that you had our executive mayor, Dada Morero, on speed dial and called him every day ahead of the G20 to ensure your head of state visitors from across the world had a good Joburg welcome.
For the first time in years, we Joburg residents had mass clean-ups, the verges were cut after what seemed like a decade, the highway lights were changed after years of our complaints and posts falling on deaf ears. Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi even promised (and delivered — now that’s a start) that there would be no electricity and water cuts in the Nasrec environment where our guests were hosted for a fabulous G20 meeting. (There were power cuts and the usual dry taps elsewhere, but who wants to be churlish in the festive season?) Now we know this came about because you called Mayor Morero.
We hope you will keep his number on speed dial and continue to call daily because, surely, as you drive from your Hyde Park home to the Union Buildings or to Luthuli House, you see that the city is back on go-slow. In Johannesburg, the ANC is not in renewal mode — the term you use to plot a future — Africa’s oldest liberation movement is in trouble. As you were instructing cadres to do the work of government and not outsource everything from printing to engineering to guarding,this gemof a story from Anna Cox dropped on Daily Maverick.
Read Full Article on Daily Maverick
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As you were speaking, we learnt that the city spends R16-million a month on guards while it has 4,000 recently insourced security guards. In the same article, Cox also reported on multimillion-rand scandals that cost the ANC when its support in Gauteng tumbled to 34% last year. On the final extension of the Rea Vaya BRT (bus rapid transport system), more thanR1-billionhas been spent on conflicted contracts to family, friends, etc, according to Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke.
We’ve been trying to follow the money for months, but Mayor Morero said it was all above board, although he won’t show us how. And R1-billion could easily help shelter the city’s homeless population. The JRA says the repair job has to go out to tender (that pesky outsourcing problem again), and so it may be fixed next year.
Our colleagues at Our City News have reported that there are 700 (!) bridges in need of repair in Joburg, 68 of them urgently. (Here’sthe story to WhatsApp to Dada.) I was listening to you very carefully on Monday at the NGC when you said the ANC needed new and better leaders to win back the trust of the masses, especially in the cities. Ahead of next year’s local government elections, things are looking bleak. The ANC lost six of eight metros, and the two you still lead, Mangaung and Buffalo City, are basket cases.
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