Challenge to the Joburg City Council: Find an interim mayor with integrity and honesty

I want to issue a challenge to our city councillors.

You, the city councillors of Johannesburg, know that our city is in a disastrous condition. Most of you will have experienced water and power outages; your rubbish will not have been collected; some of you may even have tried to query the massively inflated bill you recently received for erratic public services; you may even have been approached by angry and desperate residents of Johannesburg; you may have read a newspaper in the recent, and not-so-recent, past.

Meanwhile, our mayor, Dada Morero, who is pretty much an unknown entity to the vast majority of Johannesburg residents, has lost the confidence of his own party, the ANC. I won’t bore you with yet another account of an intraparty conflict which is as common an occurrence as a pothole in our rapidly crumbling streets.

But to cut a long story short, Morero lost the battle for leadership of the ANC’s Johannesburg region to Loyiso Masuku, the mayoral committee member for finance. Masuku’s faction tried to replace Morero with their leader, but, reflecting internal battles for the coming election of the national ANC leader, the Johannesburg region was told that only the national leadership was empowered to recall a mayor. And so, Morero remains in place for the time being, while the position of deputy mayor was suddenly created and handed to Masuku.

However, this has not resolved their conflict and the struggle between them continues, to the detriment of governance in the city. And so, we have a mayor who holds onto his position by the skin of his teeth, while his deputy waits for an opportunity to plunge her knife in.

The ANC is the leading party of the dominant coalition and so you, the councillors, and we, the residents of Johannesburg, wait to see who will triumph and win this internal struggle for the mayor’s chain of office, an outcome that will probably be decided by the national leadership of the ANC.

Meanwhile, services continue to deteriorate and local government elections loom, a period that always requires clear and confident leadership.

Johannesburg residents have lost confidence in both these contenders for power. Morero was pretty much missing in action until the G20 meeting woke him up. Since then he has been running around from pothole to pothole like a headless chicken. Masuku has presided, admittedly only since August 2025, over the City’s deteriorating finances.

The latest news is that the JSE is withholding a bond issue because the annual financial statements have not been published. But the respective records in office of these two councillors are only part of the problem. It is clear that while this battle royale continues, neither of them will be able to lead and manage the city for the crucial period leading up to the local government elections, which will probably be scheduled for November this year. It is also clear that an outcome that favours one of these candidates over the other will not be respected by the loser.

So, here is my challenge:

Why do the councillors, including, of course, the ANC councillors, not seek out a member of council who enjoys cross-party respect, who has experienced at least one term as a councillor, who is technically competent and who has an unblemished record of integrity and honesty, and appoint him or her as the mayor to hold office until the elections usher in the next regime?

My only additional caution would be that the person elected should preferably come from one of the major parties, not one of the tiny parties that proliferate in the council.

I have no doubt that there will be many devils in the details. But something along these lines would at least demonstrate that the councillors are prepared to place the interests of Johannesburg above their personal interests or those of their political parties. If the person so chosen has the experience, competence and integrity to lead the city for the next nine months, this may even help to ensure a relatively calm election period and a new period of hope for the increasingly beleaguered residents of Johannesburg. DM