Rumour has it that the ANC has set it sights on the likes of former Gauteng premiers Mbhazima Shilowa and Tokyo Sexwale to battle it out with Helen Zille for the City of Joburg mayoral seat in the upcoming local government elections in November.
If the rumours are true, then it screams of desperation, but for the ordinary residents of the once-great city of Johannesburg, it is close to being an insult.
Johannesburg does not and has never needed a celebrity mayor, all it needs is for the basics to be done right.
Eskom announced last week that it will be forced to cut off electricity to certain parts of the city in the coming months if the city does not settle its R5.2 billion bill.
The city has reached the kind of crisis level where rate-paying citizens are about to suffer because successive mayors have failed to get a handle on the city’s finances.
No former premier or celebrity mayor is going to fix that.
The equation is simple and has always been: the money that Johannesburg residents pay the city for electricity should have been ring-fenced to pay Eskom.
Simple logic.
Former Joburg mayor Thapelo Amad of Al Jama-ah party was once ridiculed when he said he wanted Joburg to regain the status it once had where “we used to bath and dress up just to go into the city”.
The placeholder mayor who was unfortunately thrust into the role by the ANC (and its friends) in 2023 might not have got his words right but the sentiment was correct.
Joburg was once a great city that commanded respect by the mere mention of its name and the aim of any mayor should be to restore that respect to the city.
Right now, the mayor of the city, the ANC’s Dada Morero, continues to deny what is obvious to everyone: Joburg is a city in crisis.
Morero continues to drink his party’s KoolAid that labels the crisis as some “challenges”. Morero continued to refer to Joburg as a “performing city” when it is known that its R83 billion budget is a mere fraction of the R220 billion infrastructure backlog that has the city’s roads, water supply and electricity supply in a complete mess.
A week after telling the residents of Johannesburg that Johannesburg is a “performing city”, Morero was in the heart of the city dismantling illegal housing structures inside the city’s high-rise buildings that were once the pride and joy of the city.
If Morero and the ANC were not so tone deaf, they would know that the township residents who used to “bath and dress up” just to go into the city would not be caught dead walking through the crime-ridden streets of the city he calls a “performing city”.
If the rumour that the ANC is looking for a celebrity mayor to match Zille’s high profile is true, then woe unto whoever accepts the invitation to rule over the ruins that will be handed over to them.
If they are a logical person, their very first condition to accepting the nomination should be that the party produces a solid and fully funded plan that will be their blueprint to restoring the city to a functional Joburg.
That plan must be one that says “here is the money to immediately pay Eskom” and avoid the embarrassing eventuality of load shedding that Eskom is planning exclusively for the once-great city of Johannesburg.
Only logical leadership that pays bills on time will save Johannesburg, not a celebrity mayor.
