‘Not a pleasing environment’ — Ramaphosa says Joburg must fix its many problems, and fast

President Cyril Ramaphosa is not pleased with the state of the City of Johannesburg, hosting the important G20 summit this year, which takes place on African soil for the first time.  

“One or two of the G20 meetings that I attended here was not very pleasing. The environment that one observed was not a pleasing environment. I say this so that we can improve immensely,” Ramaphosa said. 

He made the comments on Thursday, 6 March 2025 after he and his entourage descended on the Johannesburg council chambers as part of government intervention to assess plans to arrest service delivery decline.

The chambers are just 3km from the ANC’s headquarters in Luthuli House, where Ramaphosa regularly attends party meetings.   

Driving around the city on Thursday, the roads were noticeably clean, with Pikitup workers spread across the area, cleaning up illegal dumping sites. Traffic lights were also working – a rare sight for most Joburgers. 

The city faces many challenges, including water shortages, long outages due to old infrastructure and a large housing backlog. It also struggles with crime, unemployment and service delivery problems such as potholes and frequent power cuts, making life difficult for residents. 

Read more: Plummeting services, rising discontent – Ramaphosa Cabinet confronts Gauteng's woes 

These challenges, coupled with governance failures, financial mismanagement, crumbling infrastructure, crime and lawlessness and unreliable service delivery, are recurring problems which must be faced head-on, Ramaphosa said. 

The meeting with the provincial government comes just two weeks after the first meetings of the G20 summit at Nasrec where massive clean-up operations took place, including fixing lights and potholes and painting roads. 

Ramaphosa said it was important for the state of the City to improve the state of Joburg, to create a good impression with the global leaders but also align with the vision South Africa would present during its G20 presidency. 

“As South Africans we are proud people. Let us get that self- pride that we have lift us up, so that we do present a G20 that will wow people, so that when people look at what we offer and present they must just say, ‘wow, this is how South Africans do it,” he said. 

This week, Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero came under fire for announcing plans to prioritise the routes G20 representatives would use during their stay. 

“We are doing our best. We’ve prioritised certain routes within Johannesburg which are G20 routes to ensure we make them the standard they should be: no potholes, no traffic signals that aren’t working,” Morero said. 

He said later the municipality was “focusing on the entire city”. 

‘If Gauteng fails, SA fails’