Residents from Johannesburg’s Ground Zero of failure protest at council meeting

The urban development sophists say you can’t say that parts of Johannesburg represent a “failed” city — they are perhaps “fragile”, say the sophists, or in an “urban trajectory” still being defined. I usually check my journalistic instincts, then stop using the adjective.

Then I go home. For a few weeks now, with my mom in hospital at Garden City, I’ve been driving through Mayfair, Brixton and Vrededorp at night more often than usual.

The weather’s still cool, so at night, the only lights are from the flames of fires lit by the homeless people who have moved into an open space after the Phineas McIntosh Park, their previous home, was fenced off when it became unsafe.

With the city’s community development department mostly awol for homeless people for decades, civil society organised by Jozi My Jozi, the urban social movement supported by business, has taken a census of people without homes and is designing a plan.

Read more: Over 200 volunteers unite for Joburg’s groundbreaking homelessness point-in-time count

In the meantime, at the park, a community has settled in because they regularly receive hot food from organisations in the area.

Across the area, young men, eyes reddened by nyaope and bodies ravaged by living rough, lie around, sometimes shooting up, oblivious to anything or anyone. They live here because they get food and occasional opportunities to be car guards.

The streetlights haven’t worked for yonks — something that’s commonplace across the city despite City Power’s regular claims that it is installing and fixing lights.

For Joburg’s women, it’s the single biggest reason that makes the city unsafe for mobility and freedom. Joburg no longer has a stable electricity supply, and in Ward 58, electricity is more often MIA than on.

The traffic lights mostly don’t work, so taxis ferrying loads of passengers from town to township gun it without stopping. It’s hair-raising.

My mom, her neighbours and the entire area don’t have water for several days a week. People lugging buckets or big bottles to the nearest mosque or borehole to collect water are so standard a sight you barely notice it.

The water crisis is, in fact, no longer a crisis. It is normalised across Johannesburg, especially in areas to the west and the east. The waterless city line stretches from Fordsburg, through Vrededrop and Mayfair, up through Brixton and into the suburbs of Coronationville, Westbury and Claremont. Malvern in the east and Coronationville, Westbury and Claremont regularly erupt in violent protests that being without water can drive communities to.

Up the road from the Garden City clinic, the upgrade of the Brixton Reservoir is a rare glimmer of infrastructure hope, but its completion (which would solve the issues in the worst waterless belt) has been delayed because payments to contractors were late.

Read more: Joburg’s water infrastructure – a picture of decline and underinvestment

Failure on repeat

Ward 58 is a palimpsest of city failure and has been for more than a decade through mayors spanning the ANC, the DA under Herman Mashaba and Mpho Phalatse, and the hapless administrations of the two short-lived Al Jama-ah mayors.

The community has flipped its vote among the three parties through successive local polls in a pattern that has come to show the limitations of political representation with a captured administration.

Johannesburg’s bureaucracy is a massive, quasi-privatised model where services are devolved to entities like City Power, Johannesburg Water, Pikitup and the Johannesburg Roads Agency. The entities are where delivery goes to die, and each has become a rent extraction business of tenders and contracts, resulting in a captured city.

The city may not meet the official definition of “failed”, but it is a community which has been serially failed.

Poorer parts of the city, like Ward 58, bear the wounds, while wealthier suburbs can mitigate the impacts of local state failure through each becoming its own local government, as Anna Cox has reported here.

Rates payments in Ward 58, like across the city, are top-dollar and every year grow by multiples that way overshoot the official inflation rate.

On Tuesday, September 30, residents protested at a council meeting.

‘A failed, forgotten ward’ 

Ward 58 activist Aziz Ally said Mayfair and its surrounds were “a failed, forgotten ward” where basic bylaw enforcement had collapsed, with illegal street trading and livestock slaughter on pavements, unapproved densification, chronic water cuts, infrastructure in dark streets stripped for scrap, and slum-style overcrowding that he warned about long before a fatal fire.

He praised some frontline officials who “try”, but said enforcement bottlenecks, especially at the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD), exacerbated the problem.

Here’s an itemised list of what community members presented to the Johannesburg council on Tuesday.

Street trading and bylaws

“Slaughtering livestock on pavements is a health hazard.”

“At Church Street, you can see livestock slaughtered where they sell. Remains are left on the sidewalk. Who cleans that? Volunteers are working tirelessly, but this accelerates the area’s degradation.”

Building boom without process

“Flats in the middle of a single-residential street — with no notices?”

“If you’re densifying, the law requires public notices and infrastructure assessments — you need to make sure traffic can cope, that City Power and Joburg Water know. We rarely see these. Yet buildings go up overnight. Where’s the gap?”

‘Fake notices?’

“I photographed a rezoning notice for a tuck shop on 3rd Avenue and lodged an objection. When I escalated, officials said there was no such notice on their side. So where are these letterheads coming from?”

Water & electricity

“We plan our lives around nightly water cuts.”

“On 3rd Avenue, Mayfair, the water goes off around 7pm. They open the reservoir at 5am, but upper streets only fill by late morning. Tankers don’t reach elderly residents. How must a 79-year-old carry buckets?”

‘City Power tries — but there’s no parity’

“Power faults are usually handled within turnaround times, thanks to a proactive depot team. But when substations reach end-of-life, other suburbs get temporary generators. Ward 58 doesn’t. Why are we neglected?”

Waste, dumping and the metro police bottleneck

“I did 90% of the casework — they still didn’t enforce.”

“At Robinson Road, a truck from Braamfontein dumped in a public parking. We had photos, registration, owner details — reported it through the illegal dumping hotline. Nothing happened. Pikitup cleans; JMPD must fine. That’s where it dies.”

“Pikitup really tries — but they can’t enforce.”

“The depot responds and clears hotspots, but they can’t issue fines. That’s JMPD, and JMPD doesn’t pitch.”

Citizen Relationship and Urban Management (Crum) inspectors 

“The ward is so degraded it overwhelms inspectors.”

“Crum assigns an urban inspector, and ours is active, but the ward is massive — Mayfair, Fordsburg, Crosby, Vrededorp — and the scale of decay is immense. Active citizens get demotivated when told requests ‘must come via the councillor’ even in a crisis.”

Overcrowding, slum conditions and the fatal fire

“During Covid, we fed people across the area, and I counted around 170 residents in a two-bedroom-type property [in Mayfair]. Downstream, sewers blocked with rags and sponges — direct knock-on from overcrowding.”

“I reported the deadly building in 2022 — the city denied it.” 

“I lodged complaints years before the May fire where four children died. I have acknowledgements from officials. After the fire, the public safety MMC arrived, ‘guns blazing’ for media — then nothing. No sustained enforcement.”

“Landlords are paid. Make properties habitable — people are human.”

“Even if tenants lack papers, landlords collect rent. They need to fix buildings, comply with safety. It’s a human-rights issue for both tenants and neighbours.”

Dark streets, vandalism and scrap metal economy

“Whole arterial [roads] are blacked out.”

“Bartlett Road from the substation to Smit [Street]: there are no lights. Mains are vandalised; poles pulled for scrap; cables stolen. Solar poles went in on Queens Road, but they’re too weak — streets remain dark.”

“Unregulated scrap dealers drive theft.”

“I’ve listed 20 scrapyards in a residential area. Proper second-hand goods compliance requires IDs, proof of ownership — but how many comply? Residents even find stolen gate motors there.”

Drugs, homeless outreach and arrested social workers

“We tried to get people into rehab — they arrested the helper.”

“We compiled a list of about 25 people who wanted rehab or shelter. When Social Development engaged them, a community helper and the social worker were arrested for ‘public disturbance’ [by the JMPD]. Meanwhile, open drug use at known corners goes unchecked.”

Civic education and landlord accountability

“We tried multilingual civic guides; it failed.”

(People from between 27 and 40 countries live in the cosmopolitan area.)

“We translated tips on recycling, reporting dumping, and bin applications. It didn’t stick. Landlords converting houses to hostels keep one bin for dozens of rooms — illegal dumping follows. The city must force adequate bins per occupancy.”

‘The fix starts with enforcement.”

“Immediate: enforce bylaws on trading, health, dumping, scrapyards; audit and act on overcrowded buildings; restore streetlights; parity on generators; targeted tankers for the elderly; clear and secure parks with JMPD in attendance.”

Protest demands

“Water security, bylaw enforcement (especially development planning), reclaiming public open spaces from drug-and-dumping hotspots, and regulated street trading.”

The business picture (Fordsburg and Mayfair)

“Nighttime economy has collapsed.”

(The area has many restaurants and a great shopping strip.) 

“Fordsburg Square used to buzz. Now by 7-8pm it’s a ghost town: safety fears, long power outages, vandalism. A local dentist even took to social media about losing patients during outages.” DM

Daily Maverick has been reporting on Ward 58 for just under a decade. We use it as a barometer of Joburg’s governance. Are there other areas you would like us to consider for deep reporting? Write to me: ferial@dailymaverick.co.za.

ChatGPT was used to summarise community concerns.