ANC and DA councillors in the City of Johannesburg never agree on anything.

Their disagreements over who should run the city have resulted in Al Jama-ah, a party with 0.9% support, running the R80 billion council.

The ANC plotted for months to remove DA mayor Dr Mpho Phalatse from office. And when she was finally ousted, the ANC did not have a mayoral candidate to take over the job.

Now for the first time in months, DA and ANC councillors have agreed on one thing: increasing their own salaries.

All this took place during the week that the city called on NGOs, the private sector and humanitarian aid organisations to help survivors of an inner-city building fire that killed 77 people.

The city said it had no budget to help over 400 people and no budget to fund the reconstruction of Lillian Ngoyi Street which was destroyed by a methane gas explosion in July.

Johannesburg is being looted by slumlords, cable thieves, scrap metal syndicates and illegal miners called zama zamas, who are tunnelling under the decaying "City of Gold" in search of the precious metals.

Dada Morero, the MMC responsible for finance, recently said they arranged for a multi-billion rand loan just to fund the basics.

It was a different tune on Wednesday night as councillors voted to add R20,000 a month to their salaries.

"In a city where people die in fires because of failure to enforce bylaws or respond to emergencies, these two parties have seen fit to reward themselves," said Nobuhle Mthembu, the caucus leader of ActionSA in the City of Johannesburg.

She said these increases would add R5.5 million to the city's payroll.