State of the city: thoughts and prayers for Joburg 

This week, Joburg mayor Dada Morero delivered his state of the city address in the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin. Which is fitting, considering the divine intercession that’s required to save the city from successive ruinous administrations – not least Morero’s own.

Perhaps the good lord would be moved to munificence by the jaunty marching band that heralded Morero’s arrival. Or by his exhortation that we should never underestimate the power of prayer. Or his reading of the Lord’s Prayer to conclude his address.

It was a strange point of continuity in an absurdly disjointed presentation.

The problem with state of the city addresses is that they’re essentially an exercise in cherry-picking successes while glossing over the sludge. Which, given the state of Joburg, is no mean feat.

And so Morero did things like hype Joburg’s growth rate (a paltry 1%). And point proudly at the fact that the city’s unemployment rate has increased by just 0.9 percentage points against Cape Town’s 1.6%, as if that’s something to celebrate when unemployment in Joburg is a full 13 percentage points higher than in Cape Town to begin with.

And he really shouldn’t point fingers around food inadequacy in Cape Town when 34% of Joburg households have experienced food insecurity, according to a 2021 study in the Journal of Food Security.

Own goals much?

Money to burn

But it didn’t end there.

Morero told us proudly that the city had adopted a fully funded 2025/26 budget. Tell that to the finance minister, who earlier this month pointedly noted the opposite. As for that “political facilitation agreement” that put the city on the hook for R10.3bn in wages – and which the finance minister took such exception to – well, it remains intact. Morero is “at peace” with labour.

On the subject of multibillion-rand holes, he is strangely sanguine about Eskom threatening to cut electricity to the city due to non-payment of R5.2bn. He’s “taking it seriously”, he said, but didn’t offer much more than saying a turnaround plan has been put in place for City Power (the long-promised ringfencing of revenue). Not that Joburg has a great record in actually implementing turnaround plans. The DA just last week took the city to court for failing to implement its own 2024 water turnaround strategy.

There’s also apparently a €200m loan coming from a German bank for “energy-related projects”. Even that wouldn’t cover the Eskom debt.

Then there’s the other disaster in the city: water. Morero crowed about the “record-setting” response time during the July 2025 and January 2026 water crises, and “same-day” water restoration. That may just be the smallest of porkies, as those residents left without water for weeks will testify. Not that he had much to say about water going forwards: his grand contribution was to explain the current distribution network. Oh – and tell us about three refurbished and just one new reservoir. No word on the 43 that are leaking.

As for other municipal entities – well, shame, the Joburg Roads Agency has managed to resurface 112.58km of Joburg’s almost 13,000km road network. Never mind it was reported just last week that it could cost R115bn to fix the city’s roads.

And if you wondered about the 724 service delivery cases the city has processed (thanks, Bomb Squad!) – well, consider that for City Power alone there were close on 100,000 reports of outages in the nine months from July 2024 to end-March 2025, according to Daily Maverick. To be clear, that’s not 100,000 actual faults; it’s 100,000 calls logged – but still …

Do not fear, there’s the R7.5bn capital budget, he says, which will fix all manner of ills. It’s just swell considering the city’s infrastructure backlog is at R220bn, by his own admission.

Delayed delivery

Morero also claimed to have hit 14 of last year’s 17 targets. And sure, some he has. But it’s still getting a little elastic with the truth.

Take the energy sustainability programme; among the successes he pointed to was the installation of 1,500 smart meters in the past year. Never mind that that particular project was rolled out in 2013, and was supposed to be wrapped up by 2015. As for the 108 retrofitted streetlights – let’s hope they’re not among the streetlights Eskom is switching off, also for unpaid City Power bills.

There are the “catalytic projects” Morero claims credit for – some, perhaps rightly so. Only, the Lufhereng Integrated Housing project has taken the better part of 16 years and was supposed to be completed years ago.

Then there’s the Inner-City Eastern Gateway Urban Development Framework, still in the “investment pipeline”, but which dates back 10 years. And the Jabulani Precinct has been in various stages of upgrade since 2016. There’s the completion of 15 bus rapid transit stations – for a programme launched in 2009 and which the national government has just pulled the plug on. And the operationalisation of the Integrated Intelligence Operations Centre – established in 2019 by Herman Mashaba.

But enough of the negativity; on to the future! Strap in for a year of revenue intelligence (say what?) and protection; diversification and industrial development; inner-city and township revitalisation; job creation and reform of the trading service entities.

Put differently: more grand-sounding turnaround plans that may never be implemented.

And that’s it. No detail, no targets; just vague handwaving at blindingly obvious issues with absolutely nothing against which to measure the city’s performance next year.

But perhaps Dada doesn’t care. This is, after all, his last state of the city address before the local government elections in November – and possibly his last ever. The residents of the city can but pray.

ALSO READ:

• Why Godongwana had to rebuke Morero on Joburg’s debt crisis
• Political suicide for the ANC in Joburg
• No laughs at Dada Morero’s Joburg circus

_{Top image: Gallo Images/Fani Mahuntsi (Dada Morero); Rawpixel; Currency.}