The City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality is a
metropolitan municipality that manages the local governance of
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
, South Africa. It is divided into several branches and departments in order to expedite services for the city.
Zulu is the most spoken home language at 23.4% followed by
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
at 20.1%.
Johannesburg is a divided city: the poor mostly live in the southern suburbs or on the peripheries of the far north, and the middle- and upper class live largely in the suburbs of the central and north. As of 2012, unemployment is near 25% and most young people are out of work.
[ Around 20% of the city lives in abject poverty in informal settlements that lack proper roads, electricity, or any other kind of direct municipal service. Another 40% live in inadequate housing with insufficient municipal housing.
]
History
Following the end of the apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
era, in April 1991 the Central Witwatersrand Metropolitan Chamber was formed as a "people-based" negotiating forum prior to holding a democratic election and the formation of a new administration for the Johannesburg area. Following the 1993 "Local Government Transition Act", the Greater Johannesburg Negotiating Forum was created, and this forum in September 1994 reached an agreement which entailed regrouping the suburbs into new municipal structures, the metropolitan local councils (MLCs), and the overarching Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, also known as the "Transitional Metropolitan Council" for the city.
The government of Johannesburg's metropolitan area evolved over a seven-year period from 1993, when no metropolitan government existed under apartheid, to the establishment in December 2000 of today's Metropolitan Municipality. An "interim phase" commenced with the 1993 Constitution. This saw the establishment at the metropolitan level of the Transitional Metropolitan Council (TMC) and several urban-level councils under and neighbouring the TMC. In February 1997 the final constitution replaced the interim constitution and its transitional councils with the final system of local government which defined the current category A, B and C municipalities. Today's City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality was created accordingly as a category A municipality, giving it exclusive executive and legislative power over its area.
1995 and the
The new post-apartheid administration was the "Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council" (GJMC), also known as the "Transitional Metropolitan Council", created in 1995. The council adopted the slogan " One City, One Taxpayer" to highlight its primary goal of addressing unequal tax revenue distribution. To this end, revenue from wealthy, traditionally white areas would pay for services needed in poorer, black areas. The City Council was divided initially into seven municipal substructures (MSSs), rationalized within a year to four MSSs, each with a substantially autonomous authority or "Metropolitan Local Council" (MLC) that was to be overseen by the central metropolitan council. Furthermore, the municipal boundaries were expanded to include wealthy satellite towns like Sandton
Sandton is an upscale commercial and residential district north of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. It forms part of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. The name of the city came from the combination of two of its suburbs, ...
and Randburg
Randburg is an area located in the Gauteng, Gauteng province of South Africa. Formerly a separate municipality, its administration devolved to the newly created City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, along with neighbouring Sandton and Roo ...
, poorer neighbouring townships such as Soweto
Soweto () is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western Townships''. Formerly a s ...
and Alexandra
Alexandra () is the feminine form of the given name Alexander (, ). Etymologically, the name is a compound of the Greek verb (; meaning 'to defend') and (; GEN , ; meaning 'man'). Thus it may be roughly translated as "defender of man" or "prot ...
, and informal settlements like Orange Farm
Orange Farm ("Farma") is a township located approximately from Johannesburg in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. It is the southernmost township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. Its name, a misnomer given that oranges ...
. The four MLCs were: the Southern MLC covering Ennerdale, most of Soweto, parts of Diepmeadow and the old Johannesburg City and Lenasia; the Northern MLC covering Randburg and Randburg CBD, and parts of Soweto, Diepmeadow and the old Johannesburg City; the Eastern MLC covering Sandton, Alexandra, and part of the old Johannesburg City; the Western MLC covering Roodepoort, Dobsonville and parts of Soweto, Diepmeadow.
However, the new post-apartheid City Council ran into problems in part due to inexperienced management and political pressure, which contributed to over-ambitious revenue projections, over-spending, wasted expenditures and out-right fraud. In the newly combined metropole services were unnecessarily duplicated. But, by far, the biggest financial drain was the failure to collect revenues for services, which ranged from rent (rates) to utilities. Part of this failure was a result of the anti-apartheid boycott of paying the government.
In 1999, Johannesburg appointed a city manager to reshape the city's ailing financial situation. The manager, together with the Municipal Council, drew up a blueprint called "iGoli 2002". This was a restructuring plan to be completed in 2002, that called upon the government to sell non-core assets, restructure certain utilities, and required that all others become self-sufficient. The plan was strongly opposed by unions who feared a loss of jobs.
2000 and the new Metropolitan Municipality
In 1999 the Municipal Demarcation Board
The Municipal Demarcation Board is an independent authority responsible for delimiting the boundaries of South African districts and municipalities and the boundaries of the electoral wards within those municipalities.
General
The Board was env ...
conducted a study of metropolitan areas and other large councils, and found that Johannesburg should be declared as a "category A" municipality. The following Local Government Municipal Systems Act no. 32 of 2000 replaced the GJMC, its four MLCs and also the neighbouring Midrand Local Authority, with the new "City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality" from 6 December 2000. The iGoli 2002 plan went into effect and returned some sectors into "cash cows" that helped support the city in general. Although some jobs were lost, there were no mass firings, as agencies used attrition to remove excess staff. The plan took the city from near insolvency
In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company ( debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet i ...
to an operating surplus of R 153 million (US$23.6 million).
Following the relative success of iGoli 2002, the city undertook a number of initiatives both to help equalise municipal services benefits, such as the water utility's Free Basic Water policy, and to curb fraud and increase payment percentages, such as the water utility's Operation Gcin'amanzi to repipe areas to eliminate siphonage and to install water meters for excess use.
For the first six years the city was administered in eleven numbered regions, which were: "Region 1": Diepsloot, Kya Sand; "Region 2": Midrand, Ivory Park; "Region 3": Sandton, Rosebank, Fourways, Sunninghill, Woodmead, Strijdom Park; "Region 4": Northcliff, Rosebank, Parktown; "Region 5": Roodepoort, Northgate, Constantia Kloof; "Region 6": Doornkop, Soweto, Dobsonville, Protea Glen; "Region 7": Alexandra, Wynberg, Bruma; "Region 8": Inner City (Johannesburg CBD); "Region 9": Johannesburg South, South Gate, Aeroton, City Deep; "Region 10": Diepkloof, Meadowlands; "Region 11": Ennerdale, Orange Farm, Lenasia.
2006 reorganization
The present day City of Johannesburg was created from eleven existing local authorities, seven of which were white and four black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
or coloured
Coloureds ( af, Kleurlinge or , ) refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in Southern Africa who may have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including African, European, and Asian. South ...
. The white authorities were 90% self-sufficient from property tax
A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inheri ...
and other local taxes, and produced and spent R 600 (US$93) per person in municipal services, while the black authorities were only 10% self-sufficient, spending R 100 (US$15) per person in municipal services. Although Johannesburg was divided into eleven administrative regions, these new divisions did not correspond to the areas governed by the former local authorities. Later, in 2006, the number of administrative regions was consolidated, from eleven to seven (see ). The reason given was ''to separate powers between the legislative and executive bodies of the City.''
Nonetheless, according to the opposition party, fraud, theft and non-payment still remained problems . In fiscal year 2011, the city's audit had R 45,796 million chalked up to fraudulent activities. In 2013, the city admitted that it would be unable to collect two-thirds of the R 18 billion in outstanding billings.
The first undertaking of the newly created City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, as mapped out by the "Igoli 2002" plan, was to restructure Metro Gas, Rand Airport
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, image = Rand Airport Control Tower landside.JPG
, image-width = 220
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, IATA = QRA
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, and some sports stadiums as stand-alone corporate entitites. The city bus service, the Johannesburg Zoo
The Johannesburg Zoo is a zoo in Johannesburg, South Africa. The zoo is dedicated to the accommodation, enrichment, husbandry, and medical care of wild animals, and houses about 2000 individuals of 320 species. Established in 1904, it has trad ...
, the Civic Theatre, the Fresh Produce Market, and the city's property holdings were turned into corporations with the city as the single shareholder
A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal own ...
. Each was run as a business, with management hired on performance contracts.
In 2010/11 the municipality faced a qualified audit from the Auditor-General
A comptroller (pronounced either the same as ''controller'' or as ) is a management-level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization. A financial comptroller is a senior-level executi ...
following a large number of billing issues, as the result of the flawed implementation of a SAP
Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant.
Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separa ...
system. The city's call centre also experienced a crisis at the same time, with staff refusing to work.
Geography
The municipality covers an area of , stretching from Orange Farm
Orange Farm ("Farma") is a township located approximately from Johannesburg in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. It is the southernmost township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. Its name, a misnomer given that oranges ...
in the south to Midrand
Midrand is a former municipality in central Gauteng, South Africa. It is situated in-between Centurion and Sandton and now forms part of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality.
History
Midrand was established as a municipality in 198 ...
in the north, and contains two big urban centres, Johannesburg and Midrand, and eleven more smaller urban centres, namely Roodepoort
Roodepoort is a town in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Formerly an independent municipality, Roodepoort became part of the Johannesburg municipality in the late 1990s, along with Randburg and Sandton. Johannesburg's most famous botanical g ...
, Diepsloot
Diepsloot, Afrikaans for "deep ditch", is a densely populated township in Gauteng, South Africa. It is located in the newly formed Region A (formerly regions 1 and 2) of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. There are high levels of ...
, Killarney
Killarney ( ; ga, Cill Airne , meaning 'church of sloes') is a town in County Kerry, southwestern Ireland. The town is on the northeastern shore of Lough Leane, part of Killarney National Park, and is home to St Mary's Cathedral, Ross Castl ...
, Melrose Arch
Melrose includes several suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is located in Region E of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. Melrose is a developing up-market suburb.
History
The suburb has it origins when Henry Brown Mars ...
, Randburg
Randburg is an area located in the Gauteng, Gauteng province of South Africa. Formerly a separate municipality, its administration devolved to the newly created City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, along with neighbouring Sandton and Roo ...
, Rosebank, Sandton
Sandton is an upscale commercial and residential district north of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. It forms part of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. The name of the city came from the combination of two of its suburbs, ...
, Soweto
Soweto () is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western Townships''. Formerly a s ...
, and Sunninghill.
Main places
The 2011 census divided the municipality into the following main places (unchanged from the 2001 census):
Government
Each province
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...
determines the structure of local government in its region. Gauteng province
Gauteng ( ) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The name in Sotho-Tswana languages means 'place of gold'.
Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province by land area in South Africa. Although Gauteng accounts for only 1. ...
, run by the African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a Social democracy, social-democratic political party in Republic of South Africa, South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when ...
, has opted for a Mayor–council government
The mayor–council government system is a system of local government that has a mayor who is directly elected by the voters serve as chief executive, and a separately elected legislative city council. It is one of the two most common forms of loc ...
. The first Mayor of Johannesburg
The Mayor of Johannesburg is the chief executive of the City Council and the highest elected position in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.
List of mayors
* Johan Zulch de Villiers (1897–1900) Appointed by South African Republic Executi ...
was Amos Mosondo since the establishment of the current structure.
Regions
The administration of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality was decentralised initially into eleven regions, named simply Region 1 to Region 11, which were largely unrelated to the 11 former apartheid administrations. The new numbered regions were subsequently consolidated, in the summer of 2006, to seven regions named Region A to Region G. The current regions are:
* Region A - Diepsloot, Midrand and Ivory Park (previously Regions 1 and 2)
* Region B - Northcliff and parts of Sandton and Rosebank (previously Region 4 and parts of Region 3)
* Region C - Roodepoort (previously, Region 5)
* Region D - Soweto, Doornkop, Diepkloof and Meadowlands (previously Regions 6 and 10)
* Region E - Alexandra and parts of Sandton and Rosebank (previously Region 7 and parts of Region 3)
* Region F - inner city and Johannesburg South (previously Regions 8 and 9)
* Region G - Ennerdale, Orange Farm, Lenasia, Eldorado Park and Protea. (previously Region 11)
Each region is operationally responsible for the delivery of health care, housing
Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether it ...
, sports and recreation, libraries
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...
, social development, and other local community-based services, and each region has a People's Centre where any city-related transaction can be dealt with. Residents can lodge complaints, report service problems, and perform council-related business more quickly.
Changes to the previous city structure
After the end of apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
allowed the consideration of the entire city of Johannesburg as one without consideration of race
Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to:
* Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species
* Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
, it was determined that the previous structure of the city was wasteful and that there was much duplication of functions. Furthermore, some suburbs
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
were affluent with well-established amenities while neighbouring areas lacked even the most basic of services. The new regions are presently smaller than previous mega-suburbs with each being home to about 300,000 people. The idea is that smaller regions are able to stay in closer contact with local communities.
Administration
The regions are no longer seen as part of the core administration, but instead take on a role as contractors
A general contractor, main contractor or prime contractor is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and the communication of information to all involved parties throughout the course of ...
to the central government. The relationship is similar to that of the larger utilities
A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and r ...
and agencies, such as City Power, and is designed to maximise efficiency.
The closeness of the new regional administrations with their communities enables them to be more responsive to differing local needs. For instance, the needs of a high-income commercial centre such as Sandton
Sandton is an upscale commercial and residential district north of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. It forms part of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. The name of the city came from the combination of two of its suburbs, ...
will be very different from the needs of a low-income area such as Orange Farm
Orange Farm ("Farma") is a township located approximately from Johannesburg in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. It is the southernmost township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. Its name, a misnomer given that oranges ...
.
Local Integrated Development Plans
Local Integrated Development Plans (LIDPs) are plans for the development of a specific area. A LIDP guides a region's future development. For this reason, the LIDP zones closely follow the boundaries of the regions. However, in certain cases where suburbs are cut in half by the new region boundaries, the entire suburb may be covered in only one of the regions.
LIDPs deal with city development, management and growth over a five to 10-year period. While they deal with local issues, they take an integrated approach to issues such as transportation, housing and environmental management. An overall Metropolitan IDP looks at the bigger picture and ensures that LIDPs don't conflict or lead to wasted resources. LIDPs will be revised annually so as to respond to changing conditions both locally and at a city level.
City council
As of the August 2016 municipal elections, the municipal council consists of 27
City Councillors
in Johannesburg elected by mixed-member proportional representation
Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP or MMPR) is a mixed electoral system in which votes cast are considered in local elections and also to determine overall party vote tallies, which are used to allocate additional members to produce ...
. The Councillors are divided into two kinds: (a) 135 Ward councillors who have been elected by first-past-the-post voting
In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...
in 135 wards
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward
* Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a priso ...
; and (b) 135 councillors elected from party list
An electoral list is a grouping of candidates for election, usually found in proportional or mixed electoral systems, but also in some plurality electoral systems. An electoral list can be registered by a political party (a party list) or can ...
s (so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received).
Ward Councillors have more local responsibilities, including setting up Ward Committees in their wards to raise local issues, commenting on town planning and other local matters in their ward, and liaising with local ratepayers' and residents' associations. PR Councillors are usually allocated to more political tasks within their party structures and within the City.
Elections
In the election of 1 November 2021 the African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a Social democracy, social-democratic political party in Republic of South Africa, South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when ...
(ANC) won the largest share of the seats on the council with 91 but once again did not achieve a majority.
The following table shows the results of the 2021 election.
Service provision
The city management team head office is the Metro Centre Complex in Braamfontein
Braamfontein (English: ''blackberry spring'', or more prosaicly ''blackberry springs''; also known as Braam) is a central suburb of Johannesburg, in South Africa, seat of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and some of South Africa's major c ...
, which is responsible for overall administration, financial control, supply of services, and collection of revenues. The fire department
A fire department (American English) or fire brigade (Commonwealth English), also known as a fire authority, fire district, fire and rescue, or fire service in some areas, is an organization that provides fire prevention and fire suppression se ...
and ambulance
An ambulance is a medically equipped vehicle which transports patients to treatment facilities, such as hospitals. Typically, out-of-hospital medical care is provided to the patient during the transport.
Ambulances are used to respond to medi ...
s, the metropolitan police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
and traffic control, museums, art galleries
An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...
, and heritage sites are all controlled by separate departments.
Some of the key city service functions are supplied by separate, self-contained entities, each run on business lines with its own CEO.
There are 10 utilities, including electricity which is run by City Power Johannesburg, water and sanitation which is run by Johannesburg Water, and solid waste management, also known as Pikitup. Utilities are registered companies, run on business lines. They must be self-funding, receiving no annual grants from the city. They provide billable services direct to individual households.
Agencies include Johannesburg Roads, City Parks and Johannesburg Development Agency. Each of these performs a service to the public at large – there are no direct charges to individual consumers. These are also structured as separate companies, but they are reliant on the council for funding.
The zoo, Civic Theatre, bus service, fresh produce market and property company each compete in the open market to "sell" their wares to individual consumers who choose to pay for their services. These departments have been "corporatised" into separate businesses, run by new managements on performance contracts, and tasked to cut their subsidy levels by R100-million in the next five years.
See also
* Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
* Johannesburg City Parks
Johannesburg City Parks is a Not-for-Gain company established under Section 21 of the South African Companies Act and wholly owned by the City of Johannesburg.
It is tasked with the maintenance of burial grounds, parks, green areas and trees aro ...
References
Johannesburg Government Structure
External links
Official website of the City of Johannesburg
Johannesburg Water
Johannesburg City Parks
Pikitup
Johannesburg Metro Bus
City Power Johannesburg
Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market
City of Johannesburg
{{Authority control
Government of Johannesburg
Metropolitan municipalities of Gauteng