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Instead of fixing billing failures and recovering billions in unpaid utilities, Joburg officials are targeting public recreation spaces for financial gain.
Wanderers Stadium is one of the properties earmarked for review, as the municipality begins the process of redefining cherished community spaces. Picture: Sydney Seshibedi / Gallo Images
Joburg Property Company (JPC) spokesperson Lucky Sindane reckons the city needs to “move with the times” and that it wants to redefine what is meant by parks and recreation facilities, including some of the city’s most well-known sports clubs and leisure locations.
JPC’s general manager for commercial and city-focused interventions, Sizeka Tshabalala, says the process will review how the city is compensated for the land use as current agreements are “not talking to our current business model as the city”.
The current agreements covering sports club facilities and even golf courses “don’t make business sense”.
And so, there you have it. In a desperate attempt to gouge money out of ratepayers, our municipal mandarins plan to turn land into cash.
All the while, they continue to turn a blind eye to the billions of rands in spiralling debt owed by consumers in places like Soweto.
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We would suggest that taking time and applying your collective municipal management brainpower to recovering that which is being stolen from the city – which is what nonpayment for electricity is – you would come up with something which would talk to your current business model.
That, of course, isn’t going to happen. JPC says the reassessment process will entail reclassifying portions of land, but only after an “extensive public participation process”.
Something like what was done with the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project, then?
It is deeply offensive that the city continues to hike property rates on the basis that homeowners must pay for the facilities allegedly provided to them.
Given that we don’t get much in the way of good roads, our refuse removal service is patchy and our street and traffic lights are often out of order, we deserve at least some value for our money.
That we get in our recreation facilities, such as they are. Take your greedy hands off them.
