Is an internal ANC stalemate consigning Joburg to a doomsday?

On an almost daily basis, along with rubbish in the streets, the evidence is piling up that the City of Johannesburg is running out of money.

As Daily Maverick’s Anna Cox reported on Monday, 28 June, the Johannesburg Metro Police Department had to stop using their vehicles at the end of June because there was no money to buy petrol.

The week before that, on 23 June, she explained how Johannesburg Transport MMC Kenny Kunene had confirmed that the Johannesburg Roads Agency fleet had also run out of money for fuel. A grand total of zero Joburg residents noticed the difference in the number of potholes fixed.

And as Bloomberg reported on 1 July, the City has cash to cover costs for just five days, while it has a funding gap of R2.1-billion.

Meanwhile the City appears to be pressing ahead with its plans to implement the “politically facilitated agreement” with the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu). This will entail spending R10-billion that the City does not have.

As the Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana, has explained in his correspondence to the City, it simply cannot afford to do this.

More jarringly, the City also wants to employ 700 new managers. These are not people to fix potholes or water pipes, but to “manage” the people who do.

This is all playing out in the public eye, water failure after power cut, months ahead of local elections.

There may be one area where the public pressure is telling. On Newzroom Afrika on Friday, 3 July, Samwu’s deputy chair for Joburg, Lebogang Ndawo, suggested the City might have asked to postpone this increase (Samwu refers to the increase as an “adjustment”; the union claim it’s about putting workers in the correct salary grade. This means they would get more money. Or what most people would call an “an increase”).

Despite all this, there is no action on the situation in Joburg from the Gauteng, government, the national government or the national African Nationalist Congress (ANC).

This cannot be because either the province or national government has been scared to intervene in metros in the past.

Lessons from eThekwini

In eThekwini in 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a working group to help that metro.

At the time the metro was unable to stop pumping raw sewage into the sea around popular beaches and had huge funding problems.

Then two experts were appointed to help the metro. They were the former director-general in the Presidency, Dumisani Lubisi, and the former eThekwini municipal manager, Michael Sutcliffe.

Crucially, a little while later, the ANC itself intervened. The mayor who had presided over all of this, Mxolisi Kaunda, had created a mess. He was removed and replaced by Cyril Xaba.

The results, while not instantaneous, have been impressive.

Residents say they’ve noticed a very real difference in services. The beaches are safe to swim at again as sewerage pumps are working properly.

Even the CEO at Southern Sun, which runs a massive two-hotel property in the city, has told The Money Show, there has been a material difference.

This shows that this intervention, from the Presidency and the ANC worked.

Intervention in Gauteng

Gauteng too has had an appetite for intervention in the past.

During the pandemic, Gauteng took Tshwane into administration, while it was run by a Democratic Alliance-led coalition. The Democratic Alliance (DA) said at the time that the move was politically motivated.

Eventually the Constitutional Court agreed and said the decision by then Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) MEC, Lebogang Maile, decision to intervene was illegal and incorrect.

Crucially, the judgment also spelt out that provinces have a duty to “support and strengthen the capacity of a council to manage its own affairs, exercise its powers and perform its functions”.

The same must be true of the national government.

And while there is a presidential working group for Joburg, the fact that the City has passed a budget that is clearly unfunded shows that intervention is not powerful enough.

All of this suggests that on any objective examination of the facts, Joburg’s financial position alone means some kind of intervention is required.

This might suggest there is a political explanation for the reticence. And the reason for that is probably quite simple: the ANC in Gauteng and the ANC in the national government would both prefer to avoid an intervention because the ANC leads the Joburg coalition.

And while the national Cogta minister is the Inkatha Federal Party leader, Velenkosini Hlabisa, he may be loath to go against ANC ministers in this case.

Intertwined in this must be the relationship between Luthuli House and the Joburg ANC.

ANC stalls on picking Joburg mayoral candidates

It is obvious that the current Joburg mayor, Dada Morero, has no support in that structure. As News 24 has reported, he received no votes in an internal process to select the region’s preferred candidate for mayor in the upcoming elections.

For someone to receive no votes would suggest that the leader of the Joburg region would automatically have the power to become the mayor now.

Curiously there appears to be either no appetite or some other dynamic preventing Loyiso Masuku (currently the deputy mayor) from taking the top job.

The explanation there appears to be that Luthuli House, perhaps in the figure of ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, is refusing to allow Morero to be removed.

At the same time the national ANC has still not confirmed its mayoral candidate for the election. Presumably that means it doesn’t believe either Morero or Masuku is appropriate.

It also suggests it has not yet found a person it believes can actually help the party win votes in the city. And the longer this goes on, the less attractive the position of becoming the party’s mayoral candidate becomes.

Joburg in a doom loop

This means Joburg may now be in one of those situations that is almost like a doom loop. Nothing is going to change until after the election. Despite the fact it is clear that change, an intervention, is absolutely necessary.

Those who lead the offices of the Presidency and the Gauteng province should be ashamed. They are allowing this to happen for short-sighted reasons of internal ANC politics.

All the while increasing the chances that the DA’s Helen Zille adds a new necklace to her collection come early November. DM