So declared embattled Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero after he faced criticism recently because he told the media that his workers would prioritise fixing the “G20 routes” in preparation for the G20 summit to be hosted by the city of Johannesburg in November 2025. The mayor wants President Ramaphosa to put lipstick on a few streets his international VIP’s will pass through, thinking they won’t notice the degradation of the African National Congress’s (ANC) governance, all of which the VIP’s are well aware before they set foot in South Africa.

He pleaded with South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa “to help fix a broken city” after the president had expressed his dissatisfaction while visiting Johannesburg recently. The president employs this stunt repeatedly – during pre election visits he expresses his dismay at the state of this or that municipality, as if he had just arrived in South Africa from Outer Mongolia. Such chicanery seems lost on the millions of people who continually vote for this master of subterfuge who is continually “shocked” at what he sees as he travels around a South Africa sliding into a third world shambles, for which he and his party are responsible.

The sad irony is that the mayor is requesting the fox in the henhouse to “fix” the carcasses of the hens the fox has demolished. Whose fault is this fall into decay and degradation of the once-beautiful City of Gold? Who for the past seven years has been the president of South Africa, but doesn’t notice anything?

The mayor himself admits that some parts of Johannesburg “look like a war zone. Roads are not maintained, large numbers of buildings are run down and the streets are littered with rubbish”, he told the Sunday Times (2.3.25). Residents have had to endure endless power and water shortages for years. The mayor admits that these “challenges” (an ANC synonym for failures!) are the fault of his ANC and he is looking at a possible “rejuvenation project” to get things right. ANC destruction is usually followed by vociferous pronouncements about renewal, turn-around schemes, revivals, rehabilitation, re-capacitating and all the other synonyms proffered to assure the populace that things will improve. This time the president wants to “wow” the G20 visitors and has proposed a “Presidential Johannesburg Working Group”. Says the Sunday Times (9.3.25): “The biggest challenge for the authorities will be to wean themselves of the long-established culture of devising new plans, but without the political will and fortitude to carry them out”. The ANC’s inertia (laziness) is well know and is in their DNA. Lots of talk, lunches, lekgotlas, conferences and summits, but nothing gets done.

This well-known humbug is followed by the introduction of tenders for the millions needed to fix the “challenges”, which tenders are awarded to friends and families of the ruling classes. In the end, nothing really changes as tender conditions are ignored while money is paid to dodgy contractors up front, and the country is left with unfinished houses, sewage plants that still do not function, roads that are patched instead of resurfaced and all the other miscarriages of responsibility that are the hallmarks of Mr. Ramaphosa’s presidency.

This is the result of President Ramaphosa’s personal hobby horse, cadre deployment, where party acolytes and supporters are appointed to jobs they cannot fulfil. The president is quoted in the Sunday Times (3.9.23) as stating five years ago that “a lack of capacity at all levels of government is delaying the rollout of infrastructure which is the key to economic growth”. He’s been talking this talk for years now, knowing his policy has hobbled the country and contributed to the slum conditions in our cities and the malfunctioning of our institutions, yet he continues with the iniquity nonetheless.

Government job advertisements to this day state that the employer (municipalities and other state departments) is an “equal opportunity and affirmative action employer”, despite the fact that this jobs-for-pals policy has been the ruination of South Africa as a functioning country. The president is dishonest and deceitful and speaks with forked tongue.

WHAT DOES HE DO ALL DAY?

So where was the president when all this disintegration was happening? What does he do all day? He’s the man in charge. Doesn’t he check on the running of his ANC-led municipalities? Does he know that there’s no water for weeks in some towns? Is he not aware that sewage is running through houses and vegetable farms in Sterkfontein? Has he ever checked on the progress of production on farms that were handed over to his followers under his party’s “land reform” programme? Is he aware that farmers with diseased cattle cannot access life-saving vaccines because his government-owned companies are negligent and obtuse and cannot run these concerns? Is he aware the herds are dying? Cattle are drinking sewage in the Free State veld? Does he even care?

HILLBROW

The rot set in many years ago in a place called Hillbrow. A densely populated cosmopolitan residential area of mainly high-rise flats, two km north of Johannesburg’s central business district, Hillbrow was an attractive neighbourhood with excellent transport links and convenient shopping. It had a thriving night life and a bustling daily cafe society. Under apartheid’s Group Areas Act, it was designated a white residential area. This clean, happy and functioning environment did not last long. Thousands of non-white people from the townships and other African countries slowly moved into the flats. The permanent residents complained and the police made arrests, but prosecutions did not follow. (This was the result of instructions from the former government not to prosecute).

In a landmark 1982 judgement where an Indian lady, issued with an eviction notice to vacate her flat, took the matter to court. Judge Richard Goldstone declared that the authorities must find alternative accommodation for the evictee. This was impossible as thousands were occupying buildings which were already overcrowded. Because of this judgement, the Group Areas Act was hollowed out and it was the beginning of the end of separate residential areas in South Africa.

To those who cheered this development, it is now clear why this Act was introduced. The result of the abolition of separate residential areas is what we have today. South African cities’ central business areas have reverted to third world status, with some notable exceptions such as Cape Town. The cities’ surrounds are occupied by millions in shacks, with no sanitation, no clean water open sewage and illegal electrical connections. This decline has spread throughout the country, into municipalities both city and rural, and into farming areas. City dwellers, even those in up-market localities, are subject to this pollution, now generic in virtually every area of South Africa. Farmers have to suffer polluted soil and water sources in many areas.

THE KAMPHEPE ENQUIRY

In September 2023 the Gauteng premier established a Commission of Enquiry under Judge Sisi Khampepe to firstly investigate the deaths of 76 people in a Johannesburg slum building fire, and secondly, to probe the decline of human habitation standards in that city. Despair and decay were the hallmarks of her report. Most inspected buildings were uninhabitable. Overcrowded, they lacked basic services like water and electricity, while structures were deemed unsafe. “In one area she uncovered cardboard partitions between rooms, no bathrooms, no fire safety equipment and one single outside tap for hundreds of people”. The second leg of the judge’s report is still not finished, but we can foresee her conclusions.

Johannesburg, Pretoria and many other South African cities have become dens of crime and desolation. Nigerians and others from west Africa arrived in their hundreds and in Hillbrow and Johannesburg, to name just one area, they created hubs for their drugs and people smuggling. Criminal syndicates took over buildings and rented out single rooms. Chamber pots used in rooms without a bath were emptied into the streets every morning. Butcheries were set up in rooms where raw unrefrigerated meat was chopped up and sold on the pavements. No health inspector went near these activities, which still continue today. Live chickens were sold in the streets and their legs were broken to prevent them from escaping. Banks ring-fenced these areas and those who had legally lived under the protection of the Group Areas Act lost everything. They could not sell their properties and they fled the third world to which they had been sacrificed.

There is a sea change however. The ANC does not hold absolute authority any more. It has lost its majority in Parliament. South Africans are resilient people and their country is still the most beautiful country in the world. They are not going to allow the dereliction any more. The suffocating fog of ANC rule cannot last forever.