I don’t mind that Johannesburg has a new deputy mayor, I just want to know how she’s going to make the city prosper
Ahhhh Johannesburg. A city designed to keep you on your toes and your anxiety medication within reach. Having recently moved back and selected water-allergic Melville as my home base, I’ve noticed the ubiquitous decay firsthand.
Obviously, the solution is to appoint the city’s first ever deputy mayor.
What’s most exciting is that her job description seems to be concise and direct: turn the city around. My goodness, how will we cope with Alberton in the north now?
Tips to fix Joburg
In seriousness, who put the city in the position that it needs a turn around in the first place? A better question would be what does turning the city around look like? Increase service delivery and improve revenue? Okay, so they’ll send a team of 40 to close a leaking tap in Florida and hike rates. That will do the trick even though it won’t feel like much to most of us.
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So, I figured I’d give the deputy mayor some tips on what can easily be done to fix Jozi.
Scrap bus lanes
Start with scrapping Rea Vaya bus lanes. Nobody respects them, least of all the metro cops who are supposed to enforce them. With things like that, you either need to enforce them vigorously or give up on them.
You can’t be shocked at a general state of lawlessness when you incentivise bad behaviour at the expense of those who are obeying the law. I’m sure the aunty in the plebian lane is in just as much a rush as the taxi taking a shortcut, but why should she be okay with sitting tight while nothing happens to law breakers?
Audit ward councillors
Given how fed-up residents are, the first vents of anger are usually aimed at ward councillors. Frankly, I’m not certain many of them even know what they’re meant to do, let alone care enough to do it.
Poor councillors. Only they’re not really that poor. Many are earning over half a million rand and for what? If the deputy mayor could institute some kind of visible audit of the work that individual councillors are doing, residents will have some sort of understanding of what councillors should be doing. We’d also have some way of showing non-performing councillors how much better they could be.
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Revenue collection
Push the difficult revenue collection and incentivise it. Johannesburg has some of the most complicated by-laws of any city. Mixed in there is a whole treasure chest of potential revenue streams.
When last have you ever heard of somebody getting a fine for littering? If metro cops could be as enthusiastic with pedestrians on Smit Street as they are motorists on Rivonia Road, the city would have Scrooge McDuck levels of money… and probably be slightly cleaner.
Rubbish collection
Finally, there’s not much that’s more frustrating than going on a date, getting ready, arriving at the place and 30 minutes after the date was supposed to start, getting a message from a friend of a friend’s cousin that your date isn’t happening any longer.
The city service equivalent of that is putting your trash out for collection, only for it to remain there and get torn apart.
Successful cities offer residents services in a reliable manner that residents can plan their lives around those services. You know why that makes cities successful? If residents can plan better, they can be more efficient and if they can be more efficient, they can be more effective and by being more effective, more gets done in the city.
It stands to reason that when the people prosper, so too will the city.
I don’t mind that Johannesburg has a new deputy mayor. I just want to know how she’s going to make the people prosper. If we ignore the notion that her position was created to resolve internal bickering in the ANC and pretend like she’s actually going to deliver on, well, anything that her thousands of city employee colleagues failed at, then cool.
Let’s see it Madam Deputy Mayor.
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