Johannesburg’s financial and corruption crisis worse than expected with criminal syndicates draining the system

Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille said that the city’s financial crisis is much worse than residents think.

Zille shared her thoughts about the situation in Johannesburg during a Suits & Sneakers interview titled ‘The Fight for Joburg’.

“It’s much worse than you think. It’s quite extraordinary to see the financial crisis that Johannesburg is in,” she said.

She cited the situation where the city officials promised that they would ring-fence the money for Joburg Water and City Power.

“Ring-fencing the money for City Power, which means using revenue from electricity for electricity infrastructure, has no meaning at all,” she said.

“They owe Eskom so much money that all the revenue from electricity consumption across Joburg isn’t even enough for their monthly repayments.”

She explained that electricity used to be the cash cow of any local authority. However, for Johannesburg, it is now a liability.

She said that the same happened at Joburg Water. They committed to ring-fencing that money. However, on 30 June 206, they swept R3.4 billion out of Joburg Water’s account.”

“Joburg is now battling to pay its bills, and a whole lot of water projects have to be stalled and stopped. Really, it’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

She explained that water projects across the city have been halted because there is no money to fund them.

The second problem, which is devastating the City of Johannesburg, is corruption. It has reached a critical point.

“Corruption is syndicated across Joburg. There are interlocking, competing networks of criminal syndicates,” she said.

“These criminal networks account for a lot of the drain on Joburg’s fiscus and have accounted for the steady decline in service delivery.”

She said these corruption networks also cause projects to be unfinished and the looting of state resources.