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NOW HIRING: Mayor of Johannesburg.
DUTIES: Managing fickle governing partners. Avoid insults from opposition parties. And clean up the trash pile.
LENGTH OF TERM: Probably very short.
This was once a city of dreamers, a city of gold that lured seekers from all over hoping to strike it rich. Lately, however, Johannesburg has become a political line, a metropolis where many of the residents’ souls are as dark as the streetlights.
This month, after days of brinkmanship and arm twisting, the city inaugurated a different mayor six in 22 months: Kabelo Gwamanda, first-term city councilor from a political party that got only 1 percent of the vote in the last municipal elections.
He ascended after he won a majority of votes from the city’s 270 elected council members. And it closes the latest chapter in the political soap opera where the mayor’s term is measured in weeks and months, and where the inability of councilors to keep up with the leader has caused a municipal mess, with Johannesburg’s largest citizens.
As political leaders and cliques vie for power, angry residents often struggle for days without electricity and water, dodging potholed roads and worrying about crumbling buildings.
From a safe skin section to a $300-a-month two-bedroom unit in the Elangeni Gardens housing complex, Pretty Mhlophe counts her blessings but also cringes at what city leaders are doing.
Elangeni Gardens, developed in a public-private partnership in 2002 to address the city’s lack of affordable housing, has blue-green artificial turf, a jungle gym and a basketball court where children can play freely. But the rickety, boxy building across the street, once the apartheid government’s checkpoint for Black workers, dripped with trash. It was so crowded with squatters that someone built a tin shack in the back.
“Inside the compound is home, outside the compound is scary,” said 42-year-old Mhlophe.
Many South Africans fear that what is happening in Johannesburg, an official population of 5.6 million, could be a bad sign of what will happen after next year’s national elections.
While no party gets more than half of the votes in South Africa’s elections, parties seek to exceed the 50 percent threshold by forming coalitions, which allow them to control councils and elect mayors. In Johannesburg over the past two years, the parties in the ruling coalition have collapsed several times, leading to the creation of a new alliance that installed a new mayor.
“This is a child,” said Junior Manyama, a member of the city’s — and the country’s — largest political party, the African National Congress, as he smoked a cigarette in his car outside City Hall earlier this month, waiting for council members. elect a new mayor.
Mr Manyama, 31, was furious that his party, with 91 seats in the council, agreed to power-sharing rules that allow people from a party with just three seats to lead South Africa’s biggest city.
“We can no longer trust these people,” he said, referring to political leaders.
Some two decades after the first democratic elections in 1994, South Africans have no need to worry about ongoing political romances, as the ANC dominates at the ballot box, both nationally and locally. But the party has recently lost many key municipalities.
Some analysts think it could fall below 50 percent in national elections for the first time next year, meaning the country’s president and other top leaders will have to be elected through one of the shaky coalition arrangements.
“It’s a worst-case scenario that we’re doing right now,” Michael Beaumont, national chairman of ActionSA, Johannesburg’s third-largest party, said outside council chambers ahead of the latest mayoral election. “I think the ANC will actively campaign on a ticket saying, ‘Satan is better than this coalition mess.'”
From its birth as a muddy mining camp to a booming gold city, Johannesburg has struggled to serve all citizens. Home to one in 10 South Africans, the city is still struggling to overcome the impact of apartheid, which led to urban flight and created a world of diversity contained within 635 square miles.
The highway that connects the northern suburbs to the southern cities passes upscale malls and leafy communities where Spanish-tiled roofs rise above high security walls. It passes abandoned mines yellow with gold dust, then past factories with darkened windows, before reaching Soweto, where close-knit houses range from neglected workers’ hostels to sturdy bungalows with ornate pillars guarding the entrance.
Nearly half of the city’s population lives below the poverty line. And last time Johannesburg saw a major infrastructure boom ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, with new bus routes and asphalt pavements. Now, even the broken ones.
“A world-class African city,” reads the tagline on the municipality’s logo, and Joburg – as it is commonly called – can inspire with energy.
Live music and festivals abound. Fine-dining restaurants and street vendors serve cuisine from around the world. Theater and art exhibitions can be part of your daily itinerary.
Not far from Elangeni Gardens, a trendy gentrified market speaks to the vibrant city that many young people find attractive.
But the facility can be of little consolation to Ms Mhlophe and her neighbours, who have repeatedly called the police to report thieves targeting visitors and cars, and drug dealers lurking around the corner. Once, a woman was thrown from a fourth floor window.
He asked the city housing officials to clean the neighboring buildings, where garbage sags on the eaves of the second floor, and in the evening there is a street vendor who balances a crate of oranges on his head should skirt about three feet. pile of garbage to get to the building.
“We as a government must provide services that at least pay for,” said Mr. Gwamanda, 38, during his inauguration speech, bowing slowly at the podium.
He exchanged smiles and hugs and took pictures with other council members, including Dada Morero, who served 26 days as mayor last year.
“Let us collaborate to restore the heartbeat of the city of Johannesburg,” said Mr Gwamanda.
He did not say how long it would last or whether he would be mayor when that happened.
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