Last Thursday, the City of Johannesburg council adopted a report that clears the way for the metro to appoint an executive deputy mayor.
This will be the first time in history that Joburg will have a deputy mayor. The then MEC for cooperative governance and traditional affairs, Mzi Khumalo, first proposed it in 2023.
He had argued that the appointment of a deputy mayor would be in line with the Municipal Structures Act. Indeed, section 57 of the act provides for the election of an executive deputy mayor, alongside an executive mayor, for a term lasting until the next council is elected.
They are limited to two consecutive terms. The main role of the deputy executive mayor is to support the mayor in overseeing city administration. The position effectively forms part of the city’s executive leadership, supporting the mayor in carrying out responsibilities and managing the municipality.
The argument that Khumalo posed in the 2023 recommendation, that the executive mayor’s workload had grown because of rising service delivery pressures, intergovernmental work and oversight duties, was not incorrect.
Indeed, Joburg is SA’s largest city by population and is home to millions of South Africans and expats. It is also the country’s fastest-growing city, which makes sense given that it is a major global metropolis and the nerve centre of the country’s economy.
Gauteng accounts for about 33% of our GDP, with Joburg contributing the bulk of that revenue. The demographic profile of Joburg does indeed mean that the metro is faced with unique challenges that other municipalities do not face or at least not at the scale that Joburg does.
But the resolution to this challenge is not the appointment of a deputy mayor, especially in a context where it is evidently being done for political reasons.
It is not an accident of history that this issue has arisen at a time when the multi-party coalition government in Joburg is fractured.
It is also not an accident of history that the ANC tabled the proposal at a time when it is confronted with divisions between its recently elected regional chairperson, Loyiso Masuku, and the incumbent mayor, Dada Morero, who lost the chairperson position to Masuku.
The failure to remove Morero to make way for Masuku, per the ANC’s practice that is rooted in the opportunistic and false debate about “two centres of power”, is a greater motivation for the creation of the deputy mayor position than the need to strengthen service delivery.
We all witnessed the service delivery crisis in Joburg. The quality of basic services is appalling, while public infrastructure is in a state of deterioration.
This is not happening due to the mayor’s workload; it is happening due to governance failures across the board. A deputy mayor will do nothing to resolve the problems because they are structural and institutional and require a rethinking of how the municipality as a whole, inclusive of its entities, is governed.
The hollowing out of institutions due to poor governance, catastrophic financial management, corruption and a lack of effective city planning will not be resolved by the appointment of a deputy mayor.
They will be resolved by the strengthening of governance through the prioritisation of consequence management (which is almost non-existent); investing in the capacity-building of human capital; the ring-fencing of resources for water infrastructure through the establishment of a special purpose vehicle; investment in infrastructure development with private sector and multilateral institutions as partners; social and spatial transformation that prioritises the development of affordable and integrated human settlements that can reconstruct the inefficient post-apartheid city spatial design; and addressing crime through a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary approach that centres community initiatives and involvement.
All this requires visionary leadership with political will, not a deputy mayor who will be elected from the same leadership that has been failing to govern.
