IMRAAN BUCCUS | Joburg collapse exposes failure of political class

businessday.co.za · Mar 2, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Joburg is in a severe and deepening crisis of governance. The basic infrastructure of urban life is failing. Traffic lights do not work. Streetlights no longer function across vast areas of the city, leaving whole neighbourhoods in darkness. Water disruptions can last for weeks, and in some instances up to a month. Roads are cratered with potholes that in places have turned into dongas and even sinkholes. Many are simply left open on the road without proper barriers, posing a genuine risk to life.Public buildings are falling apart and, in some cases, have collapsed into disuse. Clinics, libraries, community halls and municipal facilities show visible structural decay. This collapse is a cumulative result of sustained political mismanagement and corruption.For decades the ANC governed Joburg. Under its stewardship the city’s institutional capacity weakened, procurement processes were compromised and professional expertise was hollowed out. By the time Herman Mashaba became mayor in 2016, there was already serious damage. But academics and others who study the city closely and have intimate knowledge of how it functions agree that Joburg’s slow descent rapidly accelerated during Mashaba’s mayoralty.The relationship between Mashaba’s administration and the EFF, which was already stained by moral compromise, was central to the rapid collapse, as it further politicised and corrupted procurement and administration.This is not primarily a resource problem. Joburg’s economic base is no longer the largest in the country, as Cape Town has surpassed it by every measure of economic progress. Nonetheless, it still generates a significant share of national GDP and commands substantial municipal revenue. By the time Herman Mashaba became mayor in 2016, there was already serious damage. But academics and others who study the city closely and have intimate knowledge of how it functions agree that Joburg’s slow descent rapidly accelerated during Mashaba’s mayoralty.The issue is not the absence of money but how it has been managed. Successive administrations have frequently, and sometimes more or less openly, treated public resources as spoils to be distributed in exchange for political loyalty.Opinion polling ahead of the next local government election indicates that the ANC is heading for a disastrous result in Joburg and Ekurhuleni. This is a crisis of legitimacy.For many people the idea that the ballot box can secure accountability has been eroded. We are seeing mass abstentionism alongside growing cynicism about the political class. At the same time, others are determined to use the vote to punish the ANC.That impulse explains the extraordinary enthusiasm in some quarters for figures such as Helen Zille. Among many black voters support for her does not come from ideological alignment but from desperation. The crisis is so severe that competence, or the perception of competence, is enough.The opening of the political field to figures such as Zille and Mashaba is in some ways deeply depressing. Mashaba is not a centrist reformer. He is a reckless populist with toxic ideas about migrants — including that they bring disease with them.Incredibly, Mashaba is backing Xolani Khumalo as ActionSA’s mayoral candidate in Ekurhuleni. Khumalo has been the subject of serious legal controversy. He was present during a fatal shooting in which a migrant died, and he has faced a charge of murdering a migrant that was provisionally withdrawn pending further investigation. He has also faced charges of assault on a migrant and pointing a firearm. Mashaba’s politics are those of a hard-right Trumpian. That reality should not be softened or obscured.Yet the collapse of municipal governance has created conditions in which many people are willing to set aside profound political differences in favour of anyone who appears capable of fixing the city. While this pragmatism is to be welcomed in some ways, it also reflects the failure of the political class.Squandered moral authority The ANC has squandered the moral authority of a heroic national liberation movement through corruption, factionalism and sustained incompetence. The DA presents itself as technocratic and efficient, yet its governance in coalition with Mashaba was a major contribution to rapid institutional decline. It has never convincingly demonstrated a deep commitment to the wellbeing of the majority, and its political imagination remains constrained by market orthodoxies and a narrow understanding of historical justice.The EFF and MK party offer no credible alternative. Both have demonstrated authoritarian tendencies, and both are run as personality cults. Both have been implicated in corruption. MK is inseparable from the legacy of Jacob Zuma’s disastrous presidency.Joburg’s crisis is not only about infrastructure. It is about the erosion of public trust and the collapse of administrative capacity. A modern city cannot function on slogans or historical credentials. It requires engineers, planners, financial managers and administrators appointed on merit and protected from political interference. Joburg’s crisis is not only about infrastructure. It is about the erosion of public trust and the collapse of administrative capacity. A modern city cannot function on slogans or historical credentials.It requires procurement systems that are transparent and insulated from factional pressure. It requires leadership that understands that public office is a responsibility, not an opportunity for patronage.What Joburg needs is not another swing between factions of the same rotten political elite. It needs a major realignment of politics that combines professional competence with an uncompromising commitment to anticorruption and a substantive concern for the majority. That combination does not exist on the ballot paper.Ultimately, no candidate or party in the forthcoming municipal election can on its own resolve the city’s crisis. It is profoundly depressing that a heroic national liberation struggle has culminated in a moment when many citizens either stay at home or contemplate voting for a right-wing populist or for a party that has never fully reckoned with our colonial past.If we do not rebuild politics on a foundation of integrity and technical capacity, the decline will deepen, and the poorest residents will continue to bear the brunt of it.The only adequate response to the crisis is to build a new kind of politics and to get credible options onto the ballot paper. For this we need new players and new leadership — figures of integrity and seriousness, including younger leaders who are not contaminated by the rot. We need our own equivalents of New York’s Zohran Mamdani or the UK’s Jeremy Corbyn. And, as progressive successes across the world have shown, this must connect to democratic movements of the poor and the working class.• Dr Buccus, a senior research associate at the Auwal Socioeconomic Research Institute, is author of a new book, ‘Politics and Peril, the South African Crisis’.