THE GATHERING CITIES EDITION: When ‘it must be Sunday’ becomes a punchline, the joke is on City leadership
When suburbs are forced to build ‘shadow municipalities’ to sustain security, water and power service delivery, City leadership has failed – The Gathering: Cities Edition probes whether metros can be saved.
When a community is forced to create "shadow municipalities" to maintain crucial services like security, water and power, City leadership has failed – that's the assertion of The Gathering: Cities Edition. The piece raises the question of whether metropolitan areas can be saved. The humor in the Ward 88 WhatsApp group revolves around the power outages, which occur regularly, often on Sundays.
The residents of Risidale, Ward 88 in Johannesburg, have lived with these issues for 12 years and have resigned to the fact that services are not being delivered as they should be. The degradation of formal service delivery over the past two decades has left those who had services with a diminished level of service, while those without, are left with even worse conditions.
The residents have built a shadow municipality out of debit orders for security, water, and power, as they have had to pay privately for these necessary services. While there are instances where the municipality has stepped in to resolve problems, the pattern of service delivery failure is consistent across multiple cities. The article explores what can be fixed, what cannot, and what it will take to address the issue.
It highlights the gap between what a resident-funded group can achieve and what an entire metro needs. The Gathering: Cities Edition seeks to gather insights from various stakeholders, including Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke, to discuss the fixability of the municipalities or the possibility of a future with failing municipalities.
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