An Insult Comparing Themselves To Other African Cities
What crisis? Joburg mayor says city can’t be bankrupt because the lights are still on-Executive Mayor of Johannesburg Sello Enoch Dada Morero.
This week the City of Johannesburg had it's finances leaked showing liquidity of R3.9 Billion with outstanding debt/commitments of R25.2 Billion. This highlights a deficit of R21.3 Billion which is madness when you see the state of the infrastructure and why most things are not working.
A letter was leaked to the Democratic Alliance candidate who is challenging for the mayoral position for the City Of Johannesburg. Unfunded budgets, payments to contractors being withheld along with wasteful expenditure that benefits no one besides possibly the officials themselves which is guaranteed and not a maybe.
The problems is rather more clear for those living in Johannesburg as everything makes more sense now. The inability to repair the infrastructure is clearly obvious and why there has been so many power and water outages as the infrastructure crumbles around all of us. I mentioned in previous posts that the power outages used to be fixed within a 24 hour period and lately noticed this was not the case in more than 95% of the power and water outages.
Back in 2024 The City of Johannesburg approved a loan of R2.5 Billion from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) which is roughly €120m. Earlier this year the AFD refused further funding as there had been no accountability with reporting on where these funds were being spent. Moody's has warned that a further downgrade is on the cards which cannot be avoided.
The National Treasury has addressed this situation and has refused to offer a bailout to the COJ and has held back the R8 Billion funding (R700 million monthly) which is what the COJ receives annually. The worry is the finances are that bad this will certainly carry over to the next mayoral candidate who will have no finances to fix the problems.
Another issue is the latest agreement with South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) where the Mayor agreed a wage increase for the COJ workers of R10 Billion over the next 3 years. This agreement has been rejected by the National Treasury stating it was illegal and the Mayor had no right to negotiate such a deal.
Publicity stunt with "GOGO" in a burst water pipe hole that had been left for over 2 years and due to this being highlighted was fixed the next day. The ANC does not like bad publicity going global as the truth needs to be kept under wraps.
What I find quite humorous is that the new mayor candidate who will be taking on the ANC cadres is Helen Zille and she has been nicknamed GOGO which translated is granny. GOGO is known for getting things done and there is panic amongst the ranks in the City of Johannesburg because everyone can see with their own eyes how bad things are. You cannot hide the potholes that are increasing in number daily and becoming larger and deeper due to the rain.
Many residents are puzzled why there is a level 1 hosepipe ban in effect in Johannesburg when the Vaal Dam is more than 100% full. The reason being it has been reported that only 60% of water transported through the water system reaches it's final destination due to the broken infrastructure losing 40% water supply on it's journey.
The COJ billing system is still offline which not only makes paying bills guesswork because that is what the COJ is doing on every bill. This also impacts purchasing property with regard to transfer fees and property sales are stuck in limbo land until this is fixed. This system has been down since February and is still down.
Here are some numbers so everyone can get an idea on how bad things are because this is not myself exaggerating the problems.
Traffic lights - 2135 intersections. Between 750 and 900 will be out of order due to theft, vandalism and power outages. Yes entire traffic lights with their poles are cut down and removed being sold for scrap metal along with their cables. You have to see it to believe it.
Pot Holes. 13 600km of roads run through and around Johannesburg with a reported 50 000-100 000 potholes active. Those that are "repaired" are active again due to quality of repair within 2-4 weeks. The number of new potholes adding to this list increases by around 1000-1500 per week and if it is rainy weather this number will triple. The COJ boasts they have repaired over 300 000 within the last 5 years except these repairs are temporary due to the quality of repair. Most roads have so many repairs the entire road needs redoing.