by MTHULISI SIBANDA
Africa Editor
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – FROM its nickname as The City of Gold and its tag as a world-class African city, Johannesburg is deteriorating alarmingly becoming an issue of international concern.
It is in a race against time to address grime, crime and infrastructure collapse ahead of the meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20) Leaders Summit, the first to be hosted by an African country.
Nothing seems to work in this famous metropolitan city also affectionately known as Joburg or Jozi.
The central business district (CBD) is synonymous with piling, uncollected rubbish, with municipal workers intermittently on strike worsening the situation.
It is dirty! It is comprehensible how people survive in this toxic space.
Water is a luxury in some parts and residents in some areas including the CBD endure days without the precious liquid.
Traffic lights, known here as robots, hardly work, largely because of incessant power cuts and vandalism. Traffic police usually desert their posts at the dysfunctional “robots”, leaving homeless folk to control the traffic, so as to beg for coins from motorists.
This chaotic traffic jam is on roads littered with potholes. Minibus taxi drivers, some armed, are a law unto themselves in these roads, where petty criminals also smash car windows and rob unsuspecting drivers.
Numerous residential and commercial buildings are dilapidated, some even taken over by criminal syndicates, right under the noses of authority. These buildings are described as “hijacked” and house majorly foreign nationals or locals struggling to make ends meet in the former City of Gold.
Crime, petty or violent, is prevalent, even in daylight. Some areas in Johannesburg are known no-go zones, among them the vicinities of the Noord and Wanderers taxi ranks.
The environs of Park Station, the largest such multi-transport facility in South Africa are notorious, just a couple of kilometres from the feared Bree taxi rank, one of the biggest in the country.
The areas are a den for thugs targeting travellers and corrupt police pouncing on undocumented nationals.
Things are so terrible there is even a challenge by Cape Town to have the main G20 meeting in November moved from Johannesburg.
It has been a source of mini conflict there between the main parties in the unity government, the African National Congress (ANC) that controls the decaying city, and the Democratic Alliance (DA( that runs Western Cape, which it claims is the best-run and cleanest province in South Africa.
While the main meeting, the G20 Leaders’ Summit is set for that month, between now and then, numerous meetings featuring member states are to be held.
Among these is the Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held late February in Nasrec in western Johannesburg, where President Cyril Ramaphosa attended.
Nasrec is towards the volatile area of Soweto, the largest township in this country.
Ramaphosa was born here but has been the subject of booing when he visits. He is arguably the wealthiest man in South Africa and miles ahead of this region that is among the poorest in the country.
Leading to the latest G20 event, authorities made last-gasp, cosmetic measures to cut overgrown grass, fix potholes and restore electricity, just to paint a rosy picture to the foreign delegates, and, Ramaphosa.
Just that Ramaphosa was not impressed with the dilapidation of this city that began as a 19th-century gold-mining settlement.
“The environment one observed was not pleasing,” the president said after touring the Gauteng province recently.
Gauteng, where Johannesburg is located, is South Africa’s economic hub and seat of the executive.
Recently, the coalition government announced a state of disaster for Gauteng, following its decay and recent floods.
This is an effort to restore the dilapidating Johannesburg and the province.
However, the Democratic Alliance is wary of funds meant to regenerate the region being looted, as were the COVID-19 funds, when African National Congress were implicated.
When a state of disaster is declared, it allows the national executive to intervene more closely, with special funding.
“The DA will be unwavering in our oversight regarding this state of disaster, to keep ANC corruption out,” said Solly Mismanga, DA leader in Gauteng province.
Cape Town, a DA stronghold, has urged Ramaphosa to relocate the G20 Leaders Summit to the Western Cape city after he expressed disappointment at the state of Johannesburg.
“This is a city with a thriving Central Business District offering working traffic lights, neat roads and sidewalks, unmatched natural beauty and excellent conferencing infrastructure,” Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said.
– CAJ News