By Simon Nare
The mayor of Johannesburg, Dada Morero, has sounded the alarm over the metro’s dire state, calling it financially unstable, plagued by crumbling infrastructure and weighed down by mounting challenges, including revenue losses, ageing infrastructure and the inability to access capital markets for necessary investments.
Delivering his maiden State of the City Address (SOCA) at the Connie Bapela council chambers in Braamfontein on Wednesday, Morero called for a reset in financial management and revenue collection to help Johannesburg reclaim its former glory.
He said the city’s revenue collection system will be overhauled to improve liquidity, ensure financial sustainability, and attract investment.
“We are all familiar with the idiom that says drastic times call for drastic measures. This means acknowledging our challenges which have led us to a crisis. Therefore, we need extreme actions to resolve our challenges,” Morero told senior managers, members of the mayoral committee and officials of the Gauteng provincial government, including Premier Panyaza Lesufi.
He added that the council must act in an unnormal manner in order to get the results to turn the city around.
Morero announced a series of measures set to begin as early as July.
One key step is the immediate addition of an economic workstream within the Presidential Package, which will support the city’s goal of achieving an average GDP growth of 3% over the next five years.
Starting in July 2025, the city will declare a State of Disaster in response to rising crime and lawlessness, with a firm commitment to by-law enforcement and the adoption of the “broken window” approach.
The mayor also declared a war on potholes, illegal connections, land invasions, illegal mining, dumping, and the presence of undocumented migrants.
To strengthen enforcement capacity, the city will launch the Bomb Squad, led by Dr Snuki Joseph Zikalala, which is set to become operational in June 2025.
In addition, the mayor will rotate Members of the Mayoral Committee (MMCs) and senior managers, starting in July 2025, as part of a broader strategy to improve governance.
Further steps include selling the city’s debtors book to stabilise municipal finances and returning to daily cash flow monitoring by all senior managers.
“In order for the city to thrive, a minimum of R200 million must be collected daily, reduce the cost of doing business by implementing the City’s revised economic strategy and allow the Presidential Support Package to assist the city to regularise the Political Facilitated Agreement,” he said.
JMPD parade escorts the executive mayor, Dada Morero. PHOTO: Supplied
Morero also announced the City’s Turnaround Plan which he said will use the Digital Public Infrastructure services that offers society a practical investment alignment tool for the city.
This would in turn unlock property value, attract capital, formalize service usage, and revenue sources.
He added that Digital Public Infrastructure is envisioned not as a tech solution but as a City-wide multiple interconnected infrastructure platforms enabling private investment, business operations, and household service use.
“This means that the city will drive the development of a Digital Public Infrastructure that is specifically focused on employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improves services, such as detecting water leakages and managing electricity demand and supply,” he said.
He added that even though the long-term vision was to make Joburg a World Class African City, the plan for now was to have a vision that symbolised what Joburg residents wanted.
He encouraged the council to adopt a new vision that is centred on creating a winning city, with a singular outcome of creating One City driven by its people.
Morero said the current challenging economic landscape remained a reality withe high unemployment was a feature of the economy; the city will be robust in collecting revenue from those who have the means to pay.
“Our large consumers of electricity and water in both private and public sectors, are urged to make their fair contribution by paying their bills on time. We have no choice but to insist on proper financial discipline, so that we can ensure proactive management of our income and expenditure, to derive the full value from each rand spent.
“We must strengthen our financial development plan to create a sustainable multi-year funding model for capital infrastructure structures to cater for both social and economic infrastructure projects in the City,” he said.
He remined councilors how everyday they wold listen and respond to voices of Joburg residents who just want electricity, water, transport, safety and housing.
Morero implored the council to continue implementing the energy sustainability strategy that tries to ensure the delivery of conventional power and integrate new distributed energy generation and energy storage facilities into the energy mix.
He said the main goal for this project was to reduce the city’s reliance on generating capacity from Eskom and how the initiative of new energy mix was designed to relieve the pressure on Eskom.
“The city is aware of the high electricity tariffs our customers are paying, especially industrial customers. These customers are major employers in our city, and we need to support them, so they are sustainable and financially viable. Through City Power, we will provide a relief tariff option to our industrial customers,” he said.
The mayor also spoke of various housing projects that have been handed to the masses as well as the electrification of informal settlements around the city.
He also mentioned building resilience and reliability water security through Joburg Water, which he said commanded the largest average capital allocation and delivering a series of large-scale interventions aimed at securing Johannesburg’s water future.
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