RW Johnson: Joburg’s descent into another Kinshasa likely to continue

Johannesburg faces a grim reality as political corruption undermines essential services. With the ANC and EFF in power, residents endure ongoing electricity shortages, now compounded by a severe water crisis. Mismanagement and theft of funds meant for repairing infrastructure have left broken water pipes unattended, leading to widespread shortages across Gauteng. This situation reflects decades of neglect, leaving the City of Gold struggling to meet its citizens' basic needs..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..By RW Johnson.City of Gold .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.The news from Johannesburg is never good these days. Stories of political corruption in the City of Gold have rather lost their appeal for readers but with the ANC and EFF still calling the shots there, you can be sure that corruption continues and that service provision doesn't. Now, after years of never having enough electricity, not only Jo'burg but most of Gauteng, is suffering shortages of water. Again, there's no mystery about this. The ANC mis-spent or stole the money that should have been used to mend broken water pipes and it will take years to put that even half-right. This is, of course, only a tiny part of the city's infrastructure which has been grossly neglected for decades..Down here in the Cape we have become used to the unending stream of white Gautengers fleeing from these disasters. Of course, people come from Durban too – it's also ANC-ruled, accordingly in a terrible mess and also suffering water shortages – but they are more likely to be put off by Cape property prices than the wealthier Gautengers. The population of Cape Town has just gone over 5 million and it will keep on rising quickly. Very few people from within South Africa are still moving to Jo'burg but lots of foreign Africans continue to do so – the migration routes are generations long – so it's possible that even Jo'burg's population may increase. If so, this is because it will have more and more people at the bottom of the social pyramid and fewer at the top. It is, after all, the wealthier who are always best able to extricate themselves from bad situations and go elsewhere. .This is already visible in the semigration data, though of course semigration is made up of several streams, the largest of which by far is still the in-migration to the Western Cape of relatively poor Africans from the Eastern Cape. This is the motor which continues to make Khayelitsha grow so that before long it may envelop Stellenbosch, though that would represent a major failure of urban planning if it occurs. Quite clearly, in order to cope with semigration the Western Cape needs to develop a new city or at least a new urban centre on the West Coast..Cape Town property prices are too high for many would-be white semigrants, who accordingly flow to Mossel Bay, George and other smaller Cape towns. Stellenbosch and Paarl are also too expensive for most. The less expensive alternative is Somerset West which continues to grow apace. However, these are all the problems of growth and affluence – for semigration pours money into the Western Cape, including much new business investment. The cherry on the top is, of course, Amazon's R46 billion investment in its new African HQ. Once this would have gone to Jo'burg. Now it goes to Cape Town. Meanwhile, Cape Town property prices continue to move upward while in Jo'burg there has been little movement in property prices in the whole of the past decade. .In general Gauteng is in trouble but he real drama is in Jo'burg. Professor Ivan Turok points out that of the Big 5 metros (Jo'burg, Tshwane, eThekwini, Cape Town and Ekhuruleni) the statistics show that while only Cape Town fared well over the previous decade, the worst performer of all was Jo'burg. Given how appalling the results of ANC rule have been in eThekwini, that is a truly dramatic finding. .Both the ANC and its business partners say they want to stabilise and improve local government and to that end the ANC had also been holding talks with the DA until the eviction of Cilliers Brink as mayor of Tshwane ended those talks. But it is difficult, in any case, to see what these bodies can do because the fundamental reason for the distressed state of the metros is the dominance in most of them of the ANC's local and provincial elites. .These elites are little interested in civic spirit or public service. Their approach is essentially extractive: how can they extract the maximum possible resources from the opportunities presented by local government. Their interest in providing services or even in collecting rates or ensuring that residents pay for their electricity or water is often close to zero. In addition, of course, they are often ill-educated and exceedingly incompetent. It is simply very difficult to see how any metro can thrive unless it can free itself from these extractive local elites. From that point of view, Tshwane is a more hopeful case than Jo'burg for it is clear that that city is within close reach of electing a non-ANC/EFF majority..Jo'burg has always been a magnet for young South Africans looking for opportunities in the big time and it is the centre for jobs in higher education, broadcasting, the arts, the media and NGOs. The resulting class of well educated younger progressives – the people who run Wits, UJ, eTV, the SABC, the Daily Maverick, the Mail and Guardian etc – plays a key national role. From the 1980s on this class has been well to the left of centre and has been a bellwhether of national public opinion. Most of this group cannot imagine living anywhere but Jo'burg, though its disenchantment with conditions there has become increasingly vocal. Uncomfortably, this group of self-conscious progressives has realised that the ANC's local elites are their enemy and that the boring old "right-wing" DA is their friend..The water crisis that now lies ahead for Jo'burg will last for some years and could well result in accelerated semigration from Jo'burg by many groups. Suffering power cuts was bad enough but the whole country suffered too. The fact that Jo'burg and eThekwini will now suffer water shortages while Cape Town will be unaffected is likely to be a key driver of movement..In fact Jo'burg's water crisis is due to a collaborative effort by both the local extractive ANC elite (which didn't bother to maintain the water pipes and used that money for its own purposes) and a national ANC figure, Nomvula Mokonyane, who was minister for Water and Sanitation from 2014 to 2018. City Press described her tenure of that ministry as characterised by "tremendous decline in investment in capital projects, the systematic destabilisation of water boards and the departure of key and senior personnel". Others simply said that she destroyed the ministry. .This was, of course, during the high state capture period and Mokonyane was a Zuma enthusiast – the National Treasury launched an investigation in 2016 into her decision to merge the Umgeni and Mhlathuze water boards under Zuma's chief enabler, Dudu Myeni. Meanwhile Mokonyane decided to delay Phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, saying she needed to ensure that the project served the needs of transformation. What this actually meant was ensuring that a number of lucrative contracts went to LTE Consulting, owned by Thulani Majola, a South African businessman with strong links to both South African and Lesotho politicians, with handsome kickbacks as per usual. Quite how cosy a situation LTE enjoyed was revealed in 2022 when LTE won a R35 million contract to refurbish Maseru airport. AmaBhungane queried this and discovered that LTE had won this contract although it had made no bid for it. It then had the sorry duty of informing the Lesotho government that LTE had actually been liquidated due to bad debts a year before…Well before then LTE had drawn the attention of South Africa's Special Investigation Unit..LTE certainly prospered thanks to Mokonyane and by February 2017 the Water ministry was bankrupt and the National Treasury was demanding it be placed under administration. Critically, however, these shenanigans meant that Phase 2 of the Highlands Water project had been delayed and that is now a major reason for Jo'burg's water problems. Mokonyane has, of course, prospered and she is today First Deputy Secretary-General of the ANC. Jo'burg could now face a Day Zero within five years with the taps running completely dry. This would devastate the city..To this miserable situation must, of course, be added the corrupt and completely irresponsible management of Premier Panyaza Lesufi. It is quite typical of Lesufi that he wants to spend R120 billion on extensions to the Gautrain which the AA has rightly termed a white elephant – most residents of Jo'burg can't afford to use it and it runs at a large loss. Jo'burg has a transport crisis and it desperately needs workable, unglamorous commuter trains. Throwing away money on white elephants is the last thing it can afford..So, whereas there is some hope that DA-led coalitions may rescue Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, it's hard to see what will rescue Jo'burg from the ANC/EFF/MK. Which is to say that Jo'burg's descent will continue. And short of doing away with elective local government altogether, it is difficult to see how the national ANC can prise Jo'burg from the grasp of the local extractive elites. This in turn will lead to ever greater flows of people and capital away from the city. In the 1990s there was much debate before Jo'burg was termed "a world class African city". But that era is already over: there is, sadly, already nothing world class about Jo'burg today. The real question is whether it can be prevented from becoming another Kinshasa..Read also:.RW Johnson: GNU must sober up; no economic growth without policy changes.RW Johnson: The data is unequivocal – Donald Trump is heading for another term.RW Johnson: What's next for DA leadership; Local government and the Middle East.

RW Johnson: Joburg’s descent into another Kinshasa likely to continue

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