Emily Wellman Bain
emilyw@caxton.co.za

“National government has an obligation to intervene on behalf of communities where municipalities, through inefficiency or a lack of commitment to deliver and develop goals, fail to provide affordable services.’ – White paper on Local Government (1998).

Over the past three months, Caxton Local Media has been looking past the often glossy façade of Johannesburg’s city entities to evaluate their performance.

The consistent delivery of even the most basic of services is seemingly a challenge for the City of Johannesburg, the so-called, self-proclaimed ‘World Class African City’.

Each week has profiled a different provider that was asked, apart from regular editorial questions, to rate themselves out of 5, with 1 being the weakest performance. According to the entities themselves, everything is A-okay in the City of Gold, a reality not lived by many who stay here.

Caxton too rated them, based on information received in response to our media inquiries, taking into account the voices of the many experts and civil society organisations who contributed to the articles.

A quote from the opening article seems relevant to every department or entity: “Infrastructure is perhaps the most important, and in Johannesburg, it has declined to such an extent that very real problems are becoming not only more common but more complex to handle,” said William Gumede, associate professor at the School of Governance at Wits University.