Does Johannesburg really need a ‘Bomb Squad’?

Thank goodness Joburg mayor Dada Morero hasn’t been one of the vocal anti-Springbok activists; otherwise, his “bomb squad” idea may be more awkward than it already is.

It’s great that he’s giving love to a functional element in our beloved sporting team, but there’s a reason the bomb squad works for the Boks. They are part of a bigger game plan that comes with a well-thought-out strategy, experience and a solid rugby system that develops players from school level.

It’s not like the bomb squad alone wins matches.

Suggesting that a bomb squad is the missing key to Johannesburg’s functioning is akin to suggesting that a craft brewery needs a peach-flavoured lite beer to overtake SAB in sales.

The idea is as good as training up a special police force with the FBI and putting them in traffic management.

The stuff that this “bomb squad” is expected to tackle is the stuff that the government is supposed to be doing anyway.

It’s the stuff that the local government has been funded to do since the dawn of local governance.

It’s the stuff that leads you to ask, If they can’t do it and need a special task force to do it, then what’s the point of the existing local government in the first place?

What is the game plan?

It’s great that the problems have been admitted. It’s less great that these problems were identified years ago, and the best solution that we’ve gotten since came really late and amounts to, oh, we’ll just get people specialised in fixing these problems to come fix them.

He’s the mayor, with a whole team of teams, and we’re expected to accept that all of that isn’t enough, and what we need now is more teams.

Call it the bomb squad. Call it the A-Team. Call it the Avengers, for all I care. But before you give the team a name, maybe admit to us why, with all the resources of the City of Johannesburg, we’ve not been able to deal with infrastructure in the first place.

I can promise you, it’s not because of a lack of a “bomb squad”.

Gauteng pothole-related claims have reportedly risen by more than 25% over the last year, and forgive me for thinking that it’s ridiculous to think that the solution is putting yet another team on the project.

What happened to the teams who were supposed to keep the roads alive? Isn’t there a whole department dedicated to transport, if not just roads?

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And let’s get real: Johannesburg’s deepest crises are not limited to potholes. Other admissions include illegal electricity connections, illegal mining, land invasion, and undocumented migrants.

To that, we can only respond by asking where are City Power, the Metro Police, and Home Affairs?

The entities to deal with these issues exist. Not only do they exist, but they’re funded and often do the same job—so much so that they sometimes team up and conduct “operations.” Yet now we have to fund a whole new team to specialise in non-specialities beyond “fix Joburg, bru.”

Maybe it makes sense, or at least it is a suitable political, yet late, response to Cyril’s qualms about the city. What it doesn’t sound like is something that will actually fix the problems.

Invest in what you have

You can’t be serious about fixing the problems until you take a serious reflection and ask why what you’re doing isn’t working.

If the bomb squad is meant to “target and eliminate systemic barriers hampering service delivery and development,” maybe ask why those barriers exist in the first place and address them.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll be surprised and realise that the police can actually deal with the problems you’re facing if you just focus on making the police better.

Whatever the case, I’m pretty certain that emulating the Springboks’ secret weapon is not the solution to Johannesburg’s problems.

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