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By now, it is well known that Joburg is crumbling. Tyres vanish into potholes, sewage gushes through the streets, stormwater drains are blocked, illegal dumping piles up in the streets and traffic lights blink dead while streetlamps blaze endlessly or fail altogether, leaving neighbourhoods in darkness.
On paper, Johannesburg Water, City Power, the Johannesburg Roads Agency, City Parks and Pikitup are responsible. In practice, it is residents who are stepping in: poorer communities with spades, black bags and borrowed bakkies; wealthier suburbs with cash, hiring private staff to deliver what the City no longer can.
What has emerged are parallel municipalities, not headquartered in council chambers but united through WhatsApp groups, wheelbarrows and ratepayers’ wallets. The rich are building self-sustained suburbs of functionality. The poor, abandoned by Joburg, sink deeper into dysfunction.
In the vacuum, residents’ associations and street committees have become de facto service providers. Far beyond complaints, they are salvaging the city street by street, plugging gaps in a system sliding towards collapse.
Water pipes are purchased and installed privately. Cleaners are paid to sweep. Residents cart their own rubbish, adopt parks and swimming pools, guard and maintain substations at a cost of R250,000 (in Greenside), and fill hundreds of potholes. Many suburbs now mimic miniature municipalities.
But the imbalance is glaring. These survival strategies thrive only where money can be collected from residents. In the poorer suburbs, where the collapse bites hardest, residents simply cannot afford to pay.
At a Johannesburg Crisis Alliance (JCA) summit held in the inner city suburb of Lorentzville on 30 August 2025, associations voted to remain in the Presidential Johannesburg Working Group (PJWG). Activist Neeshan Bolton told delegates: “Without pressure, the City will not change. All the City’s woes are linked to the financial crisis, including water and electricity problems. We have to keep the pressure up, it is the only way.”
The alliance agreed to stay on the presidential group for the time being to see if its presence would contribute positively to the outcomes.
Khule Duma from the presidential working group, addressing delegates, said Joburg’s finances were the problem. Revenue collection was only about 82%, while the National Treasury norm was 95%.
He highlighted the scale of neglect, describing the decay and state of the streets he personally witnessed on his way to the summit in Lorentzville, calling it “a public health crisis”.
He noted that the Johannesburg Roads Agency’s (JRA) budget has shrunk drastically: “Roads, waste and safety are severely underfunded. The JRA budget has dwindled from R1.5-billion in 2015/16 to R700-million this year. That’s a reduction of one-third. Waste and illegal dumping are a public health crisis, I saw it for myself.”
He stressed that civil society partnerships were essential to tackle backlogs.
In the meantime, communities do what they can.
Read the full article on what communities are doing on the Daily Maverick website here.