Johannesburg is run by a mayor whose party received less than 1% of the vote. The Speaker of the council also comes from a 1% party. It's the worst version of a betrayal of the vote of residents who tried to rescue their city from malice and incompetence, writes Zukile Majova.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday night found himself at the heart of the R80-billion City of Johannesburg, with hardly a street light functioning.
The area -- Marshalltown -- is the heart of the decay of a neglected city whose buildings are easily hijacked by criminals, with cables stolen by copper-cable syndicates that have operated in the city for years.
Down the road at Bree Street is the site of an unresolved disaster where methane gas exploded last month from an underground service tunnel.
Ramaphosa himself was in the vicinity only as a public relations exercise after a fire gutted a five-storey building on Thursday morning, killing 76 people including 12 children.
The building, which belongs to the City, has been ignored by the city council for more than 10 years and simply handed over to criminals.
In its prime, the building was a safe haven for abused women and children and even had a clinic.
It was hijacked by criminals in 2013 and city officials knew the building had been condemned as unsafe for human habitation.
When disaster struck, over 400 people lived in the building, paying monthly rent of R1,600 per household to slumlords.
People desperate to live in the inner city and be close to potential employers go to the extent of erecting shacks in the passages and stairways of buildings.
This is the reality in hundreds of buildings across Johannesburg, where years of failure to implement city bylaws resulted in criminal syndicates being allowed to take over dilapidated buildings.
Sadly, the residents of Johannesburg have been trying for many years now to save their city from the corruption and incompetence of an ANC government.
The only way people can save themselves from an incapable administration is through the vote, and in the latest municipal elections, the residents took power away from the ANC.
The ANC now governs the city with a "puppet mayor" from Al Jama-ah, a party that received less than 1% of the vote.
The ruling party received just 33.6% of the vote from residents; the rest (64% of the vote) went to opposition parties -- a clear vote of no confidence in the ANC that has run the city for decades.
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In the first year, former DA mayor Dr Mpho Phalatse united opposition parties under a new vision for the municipalities.
The coalition collapsed when smaller parties took their votes to the ANC in exchange for lucrative positions.
So desperate was the ANC to take power from the opposition that it allowed Al Jama-ah to bully it into taking the position of executive mayor with less than 1% of the vote.
The Congress of the People, another 1% party, was given the position of Speaker of the council.
So spare a thought for the people of Joburg. The city and its finances remain hijacked by a political cabal that has little regard for accountability and consequence management.
