Piles of rubbish, power cuts and potholes: anger grows over Johannesburg’s run-down infrastructure

Recyclers collect rubbish in Gandhi Square in Johannesburg. Photograph: Bloomberg/ The problems run deep in South Africa’s largest city. Will voters punish the ANC in next week’s local elections? , the pavements and roads of the Johannesburg township Alexandra were filled with piles of rubbish, rotting in the heat. At the Jukskei River, its banks choked with rubble and litter, foul-smelling brown water flowed out of a culvert. “We’ve got way too many challenges,” said Semadi Manganye, the chief executive of Alexandra Water Warriors, an environmental NGO that organises clean-ups of the river and plants trees on its banks. “If it’s not electricity, it’s water. If it’s not water, it’s waste.” View image in fullscreen Alexandra Water Warriors volunteers cleaning up plastic pollution from the Jukskei River. Photograph: Jérôme Delay/APManganye acknowledged the challenges of providing public services in a city whose population grew by 10% to 4.8 million between the 2011 and 2022 censuses. “I have an understanding of why they’re failing,” he said. “But we’ve got to mitigate against this – we knew that it was going to happen.” On 4 November, up to 29 million South African voters will go to the polls for local elections amid deep discontent with the water cuts, power outages and potholes that plague the country’s 257 municipalities. Their problems are so deep that even the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has admitted: “Too many of our municipalities are failing to meet the needs and expectations of the people they are meant to serve.” View image in fullscreen Discontent over waste and public services will play a main role in the local elections in South Africa. Photograph: Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty ImagesIn the last financial year (2024-25), only 39 local governments, 15% of the total, received a “clean” audit from the country’s auditor general. Two-thirds are “financially distressed”, according to a parliamentary budget office report. Nowhere are the problems more pressing than in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city and commercial capital. The city has been ruled by a series of unstable coalitions, with 10 changes of mayor in the past decade. Authorities have admitted to a 220bn rand (£9.9bn) infrastructure spending backlog. It is estimated that a quarter of the water bought . View image in fullscreen A person washing in flood water in a busy market area in central Johannesburg. Photograph: Per-Anders PetterssonAt a public meeting in Rabie Ridge, a township in the city’s north-east, about 400 people berated the incumbent mayor, Dada Morero, and executives from Johannesburg’s electricity utility, City Power.