Strained resources threaten Joburg ombudman’s role as residents’ last hope

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.

These first-impression achievements mask an internal crisis. The ombudsman is severely under-resourced, understaffed and overwhelmed by billing and service delivery disputes arising from the city’s ongoing administrative failures.

The office ended the year with a R6-million underspend — not because it saved money, but because it didn’t have enough staff.

A small team of legally trained investigators is expected to perform the work of an entire oversight institution. One investigator handles up to 200 matters at a time, even though international best practice recommends no more than 30.

Despite this, the office is encouraging residents to make more use of its services.

‘Free of charge’

During a walk-through of the Braamfontein offices, advocate Colman Ramontja, the acting executive manager at the Complaints and Investigations Unit, noted that residents often hired lawyers to pursue complaints with the municipality.

“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 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.”

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While the office encourages residents to make greater use of its free services, the question must be asked: can it take on more cases when it is already running far beyond its capacity?

And while the Office of the Ombudsman is one of the city’s highest-performing oversight bodies, public confidence in it is fragile. Many residents complain that they never receive replies; others wait months without feedback; several say they never received a resolution, “never mind a response”.

According to the ombudsman’s service standards, complainants should receive an acknowledgement within five working days, an initial assessment within 14 working days, and, for accepted matters, a full investigation and conclusion within 90 working days.

Conciliation is held within this period, and departments are given 30 days to implement any remedial action arising from final rulings. However, with investigators handling up to 200 matters each, these timeframes are often impossible to meet.

The biggest challenge is not competence, but capacity. The ombudsman’s 2024/25 performance report notes: “The Investigations Unit lost several senior staff during the year, including the Executive Manager: Complaints & Investigations. Funded posts for investigators, investigating officers and a senior manager remained unfilled, resulting in a R6-million underspend simply because there were not enough human resources available to appoint.”

The office now relies on trainee investigators, interns and secondments to keep pace with casework.

Billing crisis

Although the ombudsman handles a wide range of municipal failures, billing disputes dominate. Residents’ main complaints include unexplained charges, missing payments, unallocated credits, inflated accounts, sudden and unjustified disconnections and monthslong silences from the revenue department.

“We are overwhelmed because of the mess in the city,” said Ramontja. “Service delivery has collapsed in many, many areas. Residents come to us only after every other avenue has failed.”

Investigators, already stretched thin, face enormous emotional pressure.

“People are at a point of desperation,” said Ramontja. “They arrive angry, exhausted. They have tried everything. When they reach us, they are desperate — and we have to handle all of it with extreme patience.”

Despite this strain, the ombudsman still had one of its strongest years. It processed nearly all new complaints within legal timeframes, resolved far more cases than expected, achieved a 92.8% closure rate in the final quarter and cut down long-outstanding matters by more than half.

It also completed 21 own-instance investigations — potholes, broken robots, burst pipes, cemetery decay, park neglect and failing community facilities — and secured improved cooperation from departments, with only 14% of recommendations not implemented. Outreach teams engaged with more than 9,000 residents, often in areas far from Braamfontein, according to the report.

The complaint process

A visit to the ombudsman’s offices reveals a surprisingly rigorous legal process behind each case. Every new complaint is examined weekly, and staff assess whether it is premature, whether supporting documents are complete, whether the matter falls within their jurisdiction, whether internal avenues have been exhausted, and whether another entity, such as the energy regulator, Nersa, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa or the Public Protector, should handle it.

If the issue can be resolved quickly, they communicate directly with the relevant department head.

“If it’s outside our mandate, the complainant is informed immediately,” said Ramontja.

By law, the Office of the Ombudsman must also initiate its own investigations, “own-instance” matters, triggered by recurring complaints, media reports, observed failures or systemic breakdowns. These cases have led to real improvements, including repairs, and escalations to senior executives who had previously ignored problems.

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All the investigators are attorneys, advocates or senior law graduates. “Our reports are written in legal terms because they must stand up in court if challenged,” said Ramontja. “Everything must be defensible in law.”

Before issuing a final ruling, the ombudsman invites both parties to a conciliation process. Only if this fails does a final report get issued. It is then escalated to the MD, CEO or accounting officer of the affected entity for corrective action.

The office is free to the public, something Ramontja emphasises repeatedly. “People should use us more,” he said. “We are cost-effective and relieve pressure on the courts. We save the city millions in litigation fees.”

Crucially, Ramontja said 99% of the office’s rulings were adhered to by the city.

“We have good relations with the CEOs, MDs and senior officials in the various departments, and only very few rulings slip through the cracks if more junior officials are tasked to remedy the problem.”

To improve accessibility, the ombudsman has expanded its reach through ambassadors stationed in the city's regions, mobile outreach campaigns and a new online submissions portal launched in September. The intention is eventually to have a permanent presence in every region.

Successes and failures

Residents’ experiences reveal both the strengths and the limits of what the ombudsman can achieve.

• One of the clearest examples of systemic failure is the case of Bezuidenhout Valley pensioner Shabbir Karim. He received a fabricated R375,000 water bill for a single month, despite severe water outages in the area. He submitted all documentation, but never received a response, case number or update, and was eventually disconnected. He managed to get reconnected by escalating the matter to a manager, but continues to receive bills exceeding R350,000. The case is being revived after Daily Maverick intervened.
• In the Riverstone Body Corporate case, City Power admitted during a conciliation meeting that it had incorrectly wired the bulk meter’s current transformers, inflating consumption for years. The entity promised to calculate the refund and revert. Months later, there was no refund, no follow-up, no final report and no compliance from the revenue department. The ombudsman did not enforce the agreement, leaving the estate with a severe, unresolved overbilling problem.

But there are many success stories.

• At Merrow Down Country Club, a 104-unit estate battled illegal disconnection attempts, incorrect deposit demands, fabricated “illegal reconnection” charges and invalid interest, a dispute approaching R1.5-million. The ombudsman stepped in, halted disconnections, froze unlawful charges, forced Johannesburg Water into conciliation and created a lawful path to resolution. Residents say the ombudsman “finally brought order to a chaotic situation”.
• At Kruda Court, a block of 15 flats was unlawfully billed as 21 multi-dwellings, including garages. For years, Johannesburg Water refused to correct the tariff. The ombudsman intervened, conducted site inspections, reviewed surveyor-general diagrams, applied relevant case law and forced a conciliation. The property was reclassified, units corrected, and historic overcharges reversed.
• In one of its most complex investigations, the ombudsman resolved a decade-long dispute involving illegal reconnections at a hijacked building. The owner, Mr Iwuangawu, was billed for water and electricity used by illegal occupants, despite logging disconnection requests as far back as 2014. The ombudsman brought the Revenue Shared Services Centre, Johannesburg Water and City Power together, leading to the reversal of charges from 2014 to 2021, the cancellation of illegal reconnection fees, the reinstatement of lawful availability charges, the installation of a new meter and the final normalisation of the account.

Dysfunction hampers operations

The Office of the Ombudsman performs well above target, but with more than 1,200 complaints a year, ongoing dysfunction in city departments and chronic billing failures, Joburg’s only independent oversight body faces an impossible task: mediating during the breakdown of South Africa’s largest metro, with just a handful of staff with legal training.

Unless the city urgently fills vacancies, stabilises its revenue systems and strengthens departmental cooperation, the ombudsman may not be able to maintain the effectiveness it showed in 2024/25. For now, the office remains one of the last functioning lines of defence for residents — a thin, overworked watchdog holding the line against a city in administrative freefall.

“But residents should always remember — we are on their side, even if we are funded by the city,” concluded Ramontja. DM