When Amos Masondo took over the then Johannesburg Metropolitan Council in 2000, the city was burning. Municipal workers blockaded roads with trucks, spilled rubbish and took council officials hostage as uncertainty brewed about the direction the city was taking.
It was no different in the streets as hawkers engaged in running battles with law-enforcement agencies trying to ”clean up”.
Now, halfway through his term, Johannesburg executive mayor Masondo still has to balance stopping the decay of several suburbs and upgrading services in previously disadvantaged areas.
The financial crisis that resulted in financial institutions refusing to lend Jo’burg any more money has been overcome. The battles over privatisation have petered out, and the hawkers have quietly accepted the stalls built for them by the municipality in facilities such as the Metro Mall in the inner city and the Yeoville market.
Masondo is in charge of South Africa’s biggest metropolitan area (2,8-million people), which contributes 16% of the country’s gross domestic product.
This week Masondo was hard-pressed to justify a whopping 13% increase in tariffs when last year they rose by only 6%. It gets even harder as the city chooses to charge businesses only 12% ”to attract business to invest in the city”.
Residential electricity tariffs are to increase by 13%, water by 10%, assessment rates by 13% and waste removal by 10%.
Announcing his R13-billion budget, Masondo said: ”The city has been very conservative in its annual review of tariffs since its inception. The city has in fact absorbed cost increases in excess of tariff increases for three years in a row.”
The Democratic Alliance has slammed the increases. DA Jo’burg leader Mike Moriarty says the city is punishing those who are prepared to pay their rates while ignoring those who are not willing to pay.
”If the city were to marginally increase its revenue collection rate, it would net an extra R400-million, which would make a big difference to the city,” Moriarty says.
He said the R1-billion that Johannesburg was spending on infrastructure was inadequate because of the huge infrastructure backlog.
Johannesburg city acknowledges the problem, saying it is owed R4-billion in unpaid rates. Unlike Eskom, the city says it is unable to write it off with the stroke of a pen.
Each case would have to be judged on its merit, says revenue management unit head Keith Sendwe. The DA has described the unit as ”notoriously inefficient”.
Sendwe has been put in charge of establishing a new service called the Revenue Shared Services Centre, whose role will be to improve revenue collection and optimise customer service.
Sendwe admits that billing is one of Jo’burg’s biggest headaches. Complaints about overcharging are so frequent that this week one resident laid a charge of fraud against the mayor after he was overcharged.
”Sometimes the meter readers estimate when they cannot gain access to properties, sometimes it is faulty meters and sometimes the reading is just taken wrongly. But on other occasions people just do not want to pay.
”It is incorrectly assumed that it is only poor people who do not want to pay. But big business, residents of affluent areas such as Houghton, and parastatals are also culprits in not paying their dues. In the past few months we have collected about R100-million from government institutions that did not want to pay,” Sendwe said.
The council’s executive director for finance, Roland Hunter, said the city was developing a system through which it would reward those who paid their accounts consistently and on time.
Masondo said the city has a ”social package” of R450-million to look after less-wealthy citizens. The package includes a 100% rates rebate on properties where land is valued at less than R20 000, limited free basic water and electricity and additional subsidies for refuse and sewerage for households with a total income of less than R1 100 a month.
The city has set aside about R14-million to train an extra 100 metro police but officials admitted that it might fall short of its target to employ 4 500 new police by 2004/05. City manager Pascal Moloi said financial constraints were making achieving the target difficult.
But officials pride themselves on a substantial reduction of crime in the inner city where the installation of closed-circuit cameras has cut crime by 80%.
Officials said crime prevention was a priority after a survey of Johannesburg firms found that 70% mentioned crime as a major obstacle to growth and 62% said crime is a constraint to investment.
Moloi said a recent auction of properties in the Johannesburg CBD saw them being bought within minutes of the auction, showing growing confidence in the inner city.
The council said other than forcing landlords to comply with health standards, there was little they could do about improving Jo’burg’s filthy, cramped buildings, particularly in areas like Hillbrow and Joubert Park.
”We cannot spend our money to improve privately owned flats. Landlords have to comply with by-laws and stop their buildings from being slums,” Hunter said.
However, South African Municipal Workers’ Union president Petrus Mashishi gave the council a red card for its human-resource management.
”As we predicted in 2000, quite a number of jobs have been lost. From the then 24 000 workforce, only about 19 000 are now employed by council. There has been significant casualisation of labour. Bus drivers, cleaners and other workers do not enjoy council benefits because they are employed as casuals.
”Recently the City Parks department was priding itself on good governance because they reduced the number of workers from over 1 000 to 700.”