Joburg residents hit the streets in call for mayor Gwamanda to go

‘We are tired of poor leadership. If you can’t do the job, we will ask you to step down. It doesn’t matter whether you are from Soweto or Sandton!”

These were the words of Neeshan Balton, executive director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, at a Johannesburg Crisis Alliance (JCA) protest on Saturday, 27 July 2024.

Calls for political consequences were the order of the day when frustrated Johannesburg residents and members of several civil society organisations descended on the grounds outside the City of Johannesburg council chamber to call for Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda and his mayoral committee to step down.

The protest comes after the announcement of an increase in the electricity tariff and weeks of water outages across the metro, which have left residents and civil society organisations at their wits’ end.

The JCA’s member organisations – the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), Action for Accountability, Defend Our Democracy and the Johannesburg Inner-City Partnership – organised the protest to address the leadership crisis facing the metro.

“Finetown was created in the 1900s. The number of people living there has increased, but service delivery is nonexistent. There is sewage in the streets. It is 2024, and we still collect water like we did in the olden days. The road project has been abandoned with no explanation, and there is hardly any reliable electricity these days,” Lindiwe Mkhize, a Finetown resident and community activist, told Daily Maverick.

Mkhize also addressed the protesters gathered at the Joburg Metro Centre, saying that communities had repeatedly complained about failing service delivery in the city but had received no solutions from the municipality.

“The time for memorandums is over. We have been handing out memorandums. We are fed up with the state of the city. We are fed up with excuses and empty promises from our leaders. We are here because we want action from those so-called leaders … The city cannot be in a good state in the apartheid era, and we have democracy now, and the city is in disarray,” Mkhize said.

Mkhize said the city needed leaders who would put residents first, adding that Gwamanda had failed residents.

“Let us stand together and demand better. Let us use our voices, our votes, and our collective power to create a brighter future for our city. We will not be licensed or ignored. We will not be held back by corrupt leaders,” the 31-year-old activist said.

Speaker under fire

WaterCan executive manager Dr Ferrial Adam read out a three-page memorandum, which made the following demands:

• The immediate resignation of the mayor and the mayoral committee;
• A review of the R200 prepaid electricity fixed surcharge;
• An end to unplanned water cuts and emergency water provision to underserved communities;
• An end to unplanned electricity load reduction;
• Decisive and consistent measures to combat corruption and protect whistle-blowers and investigators; and
• Adequate and proper consultation with civil society, business and labour groups in the governance of the city.

Read more: Fed up civil society groups intensify calls for Joburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda to leave

While the protest was relatively calm, with singing and dancing, things became heated when Johannesburg council speaker Margaret Arnolds came to the microphone to accept the memorandum from Adam.

Addressing the gathered crowd, Arnolds said: “As the person that is in charge of all the councillors, I am here in that capacity … I am not an executive. If you understand government – you understand there’s an executive that is led by the mayor, and there’s oversight, that is led by the speaker. And I do oversight. So I’m here today to do oversight.”

Arnolds said she would respond to the JCA’s memorandum within 14 to 30 days of receiving it.

Not only was the crowd upset that Gwamanda had not accepted the memorandum himself, they were offended by Arnolds’ demeanour, which they described as arrogant and divorced from the realities that residents faced.

Arnolds was heckled, with the crowd shouting, “Shame on you” and “Where is the mayor?”.

Gwamanda’s spokesperson did not respond to a request from Daily Maverick for comment on Sunday.

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Nkosinathi Mbolekwa, from Bellevue East, a community that has undergone service delivery issues such as unplanned power cuts and intermittent water supply, said Arnolds’ address did not instil confidence that the issue would be dealt with.

“Arnolds’ address was very arrogant. It seems arrogance is the local currency of our government. We are the people who put them into power. We have the power to hire as well as fire them, and I think they tend to forget that. Every so now and again, they need a warning shot, and this protest is literally just a warning shot,” Mbolekwa said.

Daily Maverick previously quoted Tessa Dooms, director of programmes at Rivonia Circle, as saying that Saturday’s protest was just the beginning of the JCA’s quest to impose political consequences.

“This is not just a one-day campaign. It’s starting on Saturday, but we are going to continue to put our feet on their necks until we have a responsive leadership,” Dooms said.

Writing on the wall

Calls for Gwamanda to step down are coming not only from civil society, but also from political parties. ActionSA has made it clear that it does not believe that Gwamanda is capable of leading Johannesburg. Speaking on eNCA, ActionSA president Herman Mashaba said the metro could not afford to keep Gwamanda as mayor.

While the calls for Gwamanda’s job are just noise at this stage, a recent deal between the ANC and ActionSA may turn them into reality. ActionSA has pledged to vote with the ANC in the city council, but the pledge comes with the condition that Gwamanda is removed from the position of mayor.

Daily Maverick previously reported that Mashaba said: “ActionSA has contemplated the fact that it holds a significant number of seats in Johannesburg, and we have come to the conclusion that the party cannot sit on its hands any more as the city continues its downward spiral to the detriment of Joburg residents.”

Gwamanda has previously said that he would resign only if the ANC-led coalition made the decision to recall him. DM