Despite businesses moving from the city centre, the outgoing city manager says Johannesburg is not a city in decline, writes Glenda Daniels
He is public enemy number one to the union movement, but one of the legacies Ketso Gordhan, city manager of the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, will leave behind is a long-awaited metropolitan policing force to stop crime in the city next year.
Gordhan, who will leave for the private sector at the end of this year before changes to Johannesburg are implemented, is adamant that even though businesses have left the city in droves for the north, Johannesburg is not a city in decline and crime will decrease in the near future.
To this end, 1 300 metropolitan police will be unleashed on the streets of Johannesburg. “The metropolitan policing service will be launched in January, and training is taking place at present. We have been working with the police on this urban safety strategy for more than two years,” Gordhan says.
“Our biggest problem was the lack of decentralising of the police force. Hiring for instance, still takes place in Pretoria, when Johannesburg should have its own control.”
Two other initiatives to prevent crime and encourage businesses to remain in the city are the establishment of “city improvement districts”, which is the creation of safe areas, and the CCTV initiative, which has 13 cameras operating in the city but next year should see 240 cameras, Gordhan says.
Nevertheless the city is dirty, still crime-ridden and full of noise pollution from hawkers, and companies have left in large numbers.
While he is regretful that people have left, Gordhan’s approach to the issue is not direct. “People started leaving Johannesburg about 20 years ago, when restricted parking was introduced. If people want to move, they move. It’s happened in Rosebank and Randburg too, and in cities all around the world.”
Many refer to the city as an “open market”, but for Gordhan “even if the reality changes, perceptions and attitudes will take a longer time to change”. The Democratic Party’s Mike Moriarty agrees that perceptions of Johannesburg will take a while to change but he adds that people should never have been allowed to leave. “Johannesburg has a perfectly good infrastructure that is under-utilised (with Sandton being over-utilised), rentals are low, we need more positive incentives to bring people back into the CBD and we need to improve transport and have more visible policing in the city.”
In the meantime, the disintegration of the Johannesburg Bar has taken place, in which over the past year more than 50% of advocates moved their chambers to Sandton, because of noise pollution and hawker invasion in Pritchard Street. Gordhan says that while the council was keen to keep the advocates in the city, an alternative had not been timeously organised for hawkers so it hasn’t been easy to move them out of the city.
One strategy to get businesses to remain in the city is surely to try and create tax incentives.
In a period of financial crisis, the council has been unable to consider this, he says, but now this option is under investigation. However, Gordhan points out that many cities in the world used this strategy, but found it unsustainable because businesses keep moving to places where they get even better tax breaks.
The obvious question is that: surely Gordhan would like more time to complete all these initiatives? In fact, he expresses no tinge of regret that he is leaving now. “All the systems are in place for major change.”
But he concedes that his job has been frustrating and this goes beyond the adversarial relations with the municipal unions.
“I’m sure I will come back to the public sector, but right now I need my creative abilities to be fulfilled. I need the liberty to do what I want to do and I have found that this job has had too many constraints financial, institutional and political. We have completed what we set out to do, that is, the establishment of a model for a large city. It’s a great model and it’s going to work. We are writing a book and going to do a video on it.” While his biggest successes have been that the administration is in place for the Unicity to begin functioning on January 1, Gordhan is credited with turning the council’s R400-million deficit into an R820-million capital budget for new projects by curtailing expenditure and selling off state assets.
Gordhan’s biggest failure has been the inability to strike a deal with the unions. He says the issue that the council will not and cannot concede to is to make a lifetime guarantee for jobs. The stumbling block with the unions and the council is that “the ideological gap between us and the unions is too big, their interests were political”.
Since the introduction of iGoli 2002 under Gordhan’s administration 15?000 jobs have been moved from the council due to corporatising and privatising, while 14?000 jobs remain with the municipality. Five of 10 state assets have been privatised: the zoo, Civic Theatre, fresh produce market, bus company and the property company.
In January the privatisation of water and sanitation, electricity, waste management, roads and storm water, parks and cemeteries will take place.
The council has to date sold off Metro Gas, which fetched R110-million, and the Rand airport, which fetched R18-million.