I have no doubt our former #Johannesburg mayor will have a stellar career as a comedian:

「#KabeloGwamanda resigns as Johannesburg mayor

[...]

“As the youngest Mayor of Johannesburg I am humbled by the opportunity to have led this City and to have stabilised it financially and administratively following the collapse of the Multi-party coalition government,” #Gwamanda said.

He added he was pleased that he managed to “place good governance on course” and stated that the City achieved the best audit outcomes in years, under his leadership.

“I shall continue to serve the people of Johannesburg as a Councillor and will forever cherish the experience afforded to me in my tenure as the Executive Mayor,” he said.

He hopes his story inspires African children in Johannesburg that “against deprivation, isolation, social and political exclusion and with the absence of friends and peers in the corporate and media hierarchy, one can live and rise on the noble cause of changing the conditions of the poor”.」

https://www.polity.org.za/article/kabelo-gwamanda-resigns-as-johannesburg-mayor-2024-08-13

#Joburg #Jozi #SouthAfrica

「But now #Johannesburg is on the cusp of firing hapless #KabeloGwamanda as mayor as the #ANC at national level clicks how it lost the election primarily in the cities. #Gwamanda is like a character from Can Themba’s story The Suit – an empty caricature of a mayor. He is the fifth mayor since the election in 2021, when no single party won.

Elected as part of a tortured compromise to create a coalition between the ANC and the #EFF, Gwamanda is from #AlJamaAh, which has only three seats in the council.

He owes loyalty and fealty to his political bosses, but he needs to show no accountability to the people because they did not appoint him. In a callous display of this, he called citizens “stooges” in July when protests grew against the impact of sky-high electricity tariffs and charges.

According to my source, he will be out in a week, and the city will have its sixth mayor since the local government election in 2021.

As the place where gold was discovered and a metropolis shot up without a supporting river or body of water, Johannesburg is an exciting and storied city.
Rebuilding #Joburg

The mayoral musical chairs is a political joke, but it’s not funny. Johannesburg is systemic for South Africa; it’s too big to fail. Too many people live here. Too much of the economy is concentrated here. Too much of our history is contained here.

It is going to take much more than a change of mayor to fix it. What does that fix look like? Fortunately, we know about it because of the work of #Jozi My Jozi, the civil society and corporate programme to bring it back from the brink, and the #JohannesburgCrisisAlliance.

Jozi My Jozi’s team has relit the Nelson Mandela Bridge and revamped the arterial on- and off-ramps into the city. In a major programme, its volunteers cleaned #Hillbrow on Mandela Day. Ahead of the All Blacks game at Ellis Park at the end of August, a plan is under way to revamp and uplift the eastern inner-city area from Ponte to Ellis Park and further down.

The Crisis Alliance has tabulated and project-managed exactly what a fix of Joburg will require and how it should happen. The city needs to be put under national administration, like Durban’s eThekwini council. It is the only way to bring back the two cities from the urbacide (killing of a city) visited upon them by local #StateCapture.

In Joburg, this will entail a legal shake-out of the administration and entities such as #CityPower, #JohannesburgWater, the #JohannesburgRoadsAgency and #Pikitup, through which the city is ostensibly managed. Each one of them is a basket case, rendered so by decades of cadre deployment and extractive politics.」

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-08-11-joburg-is-too-big-to-fail-its-time-to-give-it-back-to-its-people/

“At a meeting on Friday, 22 September, to manage severe water cuts across three #Gauteng cities, #Mchunu questioned why #Joburg’s mayor was absent. There were water cuts in two-thirds of the city and by 25 Sep[…] it was still struggling. 

[…] #Gwamanda had missed several meetings […] He has left the management of the crisis to the city entity #Johannesburg Water and individual councillors. [He] only issued statements on renaming William Nicol Drive[...]”

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-09-25-minister-mchunu-slams-absentee-joburg-mayor-after-two-thirds-of-the-city-hit-by-water-cuts/

#SouthAfrica