Joburg mayor who wanted to leave now wants to stay until Christmas

As service levels plummet and citizens call for his head, news reports said a deal with ActionSA to recalibrate the coalition that governs South Africa’s largest city was on the cards to see Gwamanda call it quits this week.

But News24 has reported that his three-seat council party, Al Jama-ah, wants him to stay in his role until Christmas. Party leader Ganief Hendricks said this would be better for the city’s stability. 

Johannesburg is anything but stable under Gwamanda, whom the Johannesburg Crisis Alliance, a coalition of citizen groups, wants to resign as part of a package of demands to fix the city.

Read more: Fed-up civil society groups intensify calls for Joburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda to leave

The city of five million people is buckling and its visceral service decline was discussed by the ANC lekgotla this week. President Cyril Ramaphosa said a task team will be placed in cities where service delivery polycrises saw the party trip to 34% of the vote in Gauteng.

While Johannesburg has an operating budget of R73-billion and a smaller planned capital budget of R7-billion, it is still in deficit and had to take a French development aid loan of R2.5-billion to pay its monthly bills. 

An electricity surcharge of R230 a month is crippling the poorest citizens who have to choose between electricity and food, Daily Maverick has found. The City’s budget says 130,000 poor households are registered for a basic package of services when National Treasury estimated about 900,000 people with a household income of under R6,000 a month are eligible. The City makes it very hard for poor people to pass a means test to get the basic package, so poverty is everywhere in the City of Gold. 

Gwamanda called councillors “stooges” when protests first started in July once the impact of the electricity tax on stretched pockets became clear.

“The Democratic Alliance and its stooges are opportunistically sensationalising a sensitive matter,” he said without giving details on how the city he runs had calculated the surcharge.

The mayor wanted to enter national politics and was on the Jama-ah list of candidates for election to the National Assembly, but he didn’t make it because of the party’s dismal results. 

The ANC’s weekend lekgotla decided that the odd arrangements where minority parties such as Jama-ah took the mayoral chain should end. The party has the highest number (but not the majority) of seats in the city council. Its caucus leader and finance MMC, Dada Morero, told Daily Maverick: “We are finalising tomorrow (8 August) and suggested a special council sitting is next week Tuesday (13 August) to elect a mayor.” 

Morero said the City will have a firm proposal on how to deal with the crippling electricity surcharge by the end of August. DM