Gauteng’s faulty towers

The internet never forgets. The Gauteng government should have thought about that before taking its residents for a bunch of fools.

Recently, the Sunday Times reported that the provincial infrastructure department is spending about R34m a month leasing 12 buildings in Joburg’s CBD. This, for the premier, and seven MECs and their departmental HQs, a DA question to infrastructure development MEC Jacob Mamabolo revealed.

Meanwhile, 41 government-owned buildings stand vacant – 12 in the Joburg CBD.

In a feat of amnestic gymnastics, Mamabolo has painted this as a temporary issue. The government has to rent buildings because its own properties don’t currently meet health and safety standards, he says.

But look to history, and Mamabolo’s assertion has all the credibility of a wolf in an ill-fitted sheep suit. In fact, this issue has been two decades in the making.

Rewind to 2003, when Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa was gripped by a grand vision for a R2.5bn “Gauteng Precinct Development Project”. His plan was to buy buildings around Beyers Naudé Square to create a hub of government departments.

“Our status will change from just being tenants in rented property into one of the biggest property owners in the CBD,” The Star reported him saying. It would also be cheaper than the R250m a year (about R21m a month) that the government was then paying for rent.

The larger aim was a public-private partnership (PPP), with the private sector running the buildings for 20 to 30 years, and the properties reverting to the government thereafter. Nevertheless, Shilowa’s administration secured 10 buildings.

After fits and starts, the project was shelved in 2013 as a result of “reprioritisation”.

By then, true to form, the government was managing its assets with all the dexterity of a T-Rex with a Rubik’s cube. Not very well, in other words. As The Star’s Anna Cox put it: “The buildings bought by the provincial government have been standing empty, partially renovated and left to decay.”

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Fast-forward to 2015, and the project – now rebranded the Kopanong Precinct Development Plan – was revived. This time, it was even fancier: skywalks, solar panels and rooftop gardens. And it ballooned to 21 buildings. Of course, the makeover came with a new price tag: R5bn. And it would all be wrapped up in three to five years.

Only, it all fell apart again in 2017 due to a lack of funding.

And then … the project was resuscitated in 2018 – at a new cost of R7.5bn. The DA’s Alan Fuchs estimated construction and operations would cost R800m-R1bn a year for 22 years. All in all, a cost of R36bn to R50bn. Not chump change.

Meanwhile, some government-owned buildings were still “either lying in ruins, abandoned, or … partially built”, Cox reported.

If you need any indication of how seized the government was with its own assets, consider that the Bank of Lisbon Building was demolished after a deadly fire in 2019. An investigation found the blaze could have been avoided if safety laws had been adhered to.

By 2022, the DA was starting to raise questions about just how much the government was spending on leases. The answer? R35.27m a month. So much for a “temporary” issue.

And while the government handed cash to landlords, the precinct – now renamed the Gauteng Government Precinct Project (again) – remained in the planning phase.

Oh, and it failed an audit process, Fuchs noted, because there were apparently irregularities around the proposed appointments of companies for construction and operations; not one bidder was compliant with all requirements.

Colour me surprised.

In short, it’s taken 22 years for the government to do little more than rename the project – twice. And oversee the decay of its own assets. And then rent private buildings – at a cost of R459m a year in 2023/24 – because it can’t manage its way out of a paper bag. 

Jazz hands

Which brings us to today – and the provincial government’s current gyrations.

First off, there’s the ahistorical air of it all: this is a temporary hiccup; the revitalisation of buildings is pending. Speaking as if the government has hit on a brilliant new strategy, hapless spokesperson Vuyo Mhaga tells Newzroom Afrika it is “throwing around options” like a PPP.

You’d swear this is all a new solution to a virgin problem – not something that’s been dragging on 22 years.

Premier Panyaza Lesufi has meanwhile weighed in, demanding an independent forensic investigation to determine if the costs are justified and if there are any irregularities in the leasing process.

There’s irony in Lesufi’s intervention, of course. Forensic investigators would do well to start with his own office: its leasing cost has more than doubled from a monthly R1.94m in 2022 to R4m today. Go figure.

There’s also the issue of the government passing incompetence and negligence off as an economic problem. The economy is in a rough state, Mhaga and Mamabolo whinge – budget cuts have hit the infrastructure department’s pocket; it simply couldn’t afford maintenance. This is not neglect on the part of the MEC, Mhaga emphasises, but a result of the “environment he finds himself in”. Jazz hands to mask the real issue.

It points to one of the perennial problems in South Africa: sheer neglect. Our road, electricity and water infrastructure, for example, are a mess because money meant for maintenance is funnelled into meaningless spending. The upshot is a fix-it job that will cost the fiscus – sorry, the taxpayer – vastly more than would have been the case if state assets had only been maintained in the first place.

Then there’s Mamabolo’s gobsmacking response. It’s a good thing that we’re paying so much in monthly rental for our offices, as it will show potential private sector partners that we’re good for the money.

That’s clearly not been a particularly successful strategy, given that the government still seems to be waiting for a full phalanx of partners – 22 years later.

Given the apparent lack of interest, Mamabolo’s solution is equally gobsmacking: he’s not interested in fixing up one building at a time, growing the precinct incrementally while gradually reducing rental costs; he’d rather wait for the entire private sector funding to fall into his lap.

He may as well wait for Godot.

Until then, we remain on the hook for R34m a month. Possibly for decades, if the government keeps kicking the can down the road.