Joburg faces collapsed services, debt, and crime, but bold leadership and accountability can restore safety, jobs, and opportunity.
Is Joburg the worst-run metro in Gauteng?
Every week, I sit with residents whose lives are made harder by the collapse of our city.
A grandmother in Lenasia tells me she has gone days without water.
A small business owner in Bramley shows me stock lost because of constant power cuts.
A young man in Berea asks how he is meant to find work when hijacked buildings and crime make his community unsafe.
For too many, Johannesburg no longer feels like the city of opportunity. With eight mayors in five years, it has become the most unstable metro in Gauteng – and possibly the worst-run.
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Services have collapsed, leadership is absent and maladministration has left residents paying the price. Last year alone, the ANC-led coalition accumulated R12.7 billion in debt in a single financial cycle.
I have refused to stay silent in the face of this decline. Together with my colleagues in the DA Johannesburg caucus, I have taken the fight for accountability beyond council chambers.
When council processes were abused, I personally wrote to Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Velenkosini Hlabisa, warning of unlawful decisions and the collapse of oversight.
When reckless borrowing and irregular expenditure threatened to bankrupt Johannesburg, I raised these concerns directly with the National Treasury, demanding intervention to protect residents.
And when residents’ constitutional rights were trampled, I escalated matters to the Presidency – because the failure of Joburg is not just a local issue. It is a national risk.
These actions were not about politics. They were about protecting ordinary people whose daily lives are being destroyed by maladministration.
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I know the frustration of residents who feel unheard. That is why I have made it my mission to ensure their voices reach every level of government and that those responsible for corruption and negligence are held to account, sometimes at great cost to my safety and that of my family.
But accountability is only the first step. Johannesburg needs more than oversight – it needs a government ready to fix what is broken.
Stabilising finances, investment in infrastructure, cutting red tape, partnering with the private sector, restoring safety, and bringing back a culture of transparent governance by working with all of society.
So, yes, Joburg is the worst run metro in Gauteng. But it does not have to remain that way.
In 2026, all of us will have the chance to choose between continued decay, or a government that will fight for dignity, clean up the streets, keep business in Joburg, thereby creating more growth and jobs, accountability, transparency and delivery.
It is not going to be easy, but, Joburg can be rescued.
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