If we don’t fix Joburg, there’s little hope for the country
· Citizen
The City of Johannesburg’s leadership failure is etched in the thousands of potholes scarring its roads, the 45% of water pumped from which the city receives no revenue due to leaks and illegal connections, and the nearly 30% of electricity lost to theft and faulty meters.
Residents have witnessed this descent into darkness over the last decade.
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But most alarming is the acceleration of this trend in the last three years, which begs the question whether it can be reversed or are we at the precipice of something worse?
If Joburg fails, so too does South Africa, concludes the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) in a newly published report, ‘Joburg in Jeopardy’.
“Preventing the collapse of Johannesburg must be a national priority,” it says.
“The failure of the City impacts on what should be one of South Africa’s biggest assets – a national system of successful cities anchored on Johannesburg.”
For all its obvious failings, Joburg remains SA’s most important city, accounting for 70% of corporate head offices.
Nearly half of personal income taxes are collected in Gauteng, with 22% coming from Joburg. About 1.9 million people are employed in the city, compared with 1.8 million in Cape Town.
Here’s a snapshot of the problem:
- Joburg Water has an infrastructure backlog of R26.6 billion due to years of underinvestment, and is replacing just 60-70km of piping a year for a network of 12 500km. At current rates, it will take two centuries to replace all ageing pipes. None of the Johannesburg Water board members are professionally qualified engineers despite the city facing one of its worst water crises in decades.
- The electricity infrastructure backlog is about R44 billion, and showed up in the 54 132 power outages reported between July and December 2025. This included 105 high voltage failures, a 22% increase on the previous year. Cable theft and vandalism accounted for 20% of those outages.
- There were 23 572 potholes reported to the Johannesburg Roads Agency in the last half of 2025, an average of about 3 900 a month.
- In the final quarter of 2025, some 55% of the city’s traffic lights experienced faults. The Rea Vaya bus rapid transit system that was supposed to unclog the roads has had to shut down critical feeder routes due to financial pressure.
- Crime: the murder rates has gone from 25.6 to 35.6 reported murders per 100 000 people since 2012, placing the city among the most dangerous urban centres globally. Some 84% of residents feel unsafe walking at night and this prevents people running viable businesses and offering night-time activities like schooling and 24-hour factories.
Then there’s the admin chaos: 155 days and 20 steps required for a building permit, which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says is 10 steps and 40% more costly than other member countries.
All this is careering towards bankruptcy, with Joburg owing creditors R25.2 billion but holding just R3.9 billion in cash.
More than 80% of the municipal debtors’ book now consists of revenue considered irrecoverable.
And if you own a house in Joburg, it would have depreciated by an average of 2% over the last decade while Cape Town house prices have screamed up 60%.
Those with the means have installed solar power and JoJo water tanks to inoculate themselves from this chaos.
The City of Joburg’s solution is to continue hiking tariffs while services are collapsing.
Enough
Quality of life surveys show residents are fed up, while the city – once the lodestar for those in search of work – now has the highest unemployment rate, at 35.9%, of any metro.
“Johannesburg is the one municipality whose failure would make national success impossible,” says CDE executive director Ann Bernstein. “It raises the critical question: if Johannesburg cannot be fixed, can we fix South Africa?”
Since 2016, Joburg has had nine different mayors and eight different coalitions. No mayor completed a full five-year term.
“As a result, stable long-term planning has all but disappeared, while appointments, priorities and policies have shifted with the political winds,” says Bernstein.
This is a political problem
The city’s crisis is not primarily technical, it is political.
“The November local government elections are critical to Johannesburg’s future,” says Bernstein.
“A continuation of the current political and governance dysfunction would deepen and probably accelerate the city’s decline.
“A weak and unstable coalition would struggle to take difficult decisions, appoint capable people, attract partners and investors or sustain a multi-year programme of reform.”
If the current path of jostling coalitions continues, Joburg’s decline will no doubt accelerate.
What’s needed are effective partnerships and professional leadership reaching outside the political hacks now ensconced in City Hall.
Bernstein argues that Joburg has the potential for recovery given its deep financial markets, vibrant private sector, its impressive educational institutions and the many concerned residents and civic organisations willing to take a stand.
But this will only work if the upcoming elections produce a new and stable city government. Relying on politicians to get the job done won’t cut it, as we have learned over the last decade.
It’s time for the new broom.
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.