It is terrifying the lengths to which human behaviour can go.
When corruption reaches the levels it has reached over the years in Johannesburg, all the normal decencies of public life become corrupted. It becomes a story of corruption leading to crime, and crime leading to profiteering.
A new report has described how the deliberate sabotage of infrastructure can create opportunities for tenders and business for those operating within criminal syndicates. If that is what is happening, it represents something considerably worse than simple incompetence. The destruction of public infrastructure becomes a business model.
It has reached pathetic levels when people start extolling the virtues of new street names. That is what citizens are left with: the crumbs from the city, while corruption allegedly continues to line the pockets of those involved in criminal activity.
A good few years ago, there were huge outdoor posters proclaiming Johannesburg to be a “world-class African city”.
Well, someone with a jaundiced view might say that was very true. Not world-class, perhaps, but certainly an African city.
Yet there are still people who want Johannesburg to become something different from what it has become and what it was. Whether they want it flattened or turned into giant slums is another matter. Does anybody really want to live in conditions like that?
And yet, as W. B. Yeats wrote in The Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
In Johannesburg, however, the centre has held.
There is still a centre to Johannesburg. It continues despite everything falling apart around it. Businesses operate. People go to work. Shops open. Life continues. That may be one of the city’s most remarkable characteristics: its ability to survive the politicians and criminals who have done so much damage to it.
The terrifying question is what happens after the November 2026 municipal election.
South Africa’s municipal electoral system is not the same as Britain’s first-past-the-post system. In very simple terms, South African voters elect ward councillors while also voting for political parties, with proportional representation helping to determine the overall composition of the council.
That system is designed to ensure that different political groupings receive representation broadly in proportion to their support.
In theory, this is a strength. In Johannesburg, however, the political arithmetic has become extraordinarily complicated. Coalition governments have brought negotiations, defections, shifting alliances and struggles for control.
And where there is great political power, there can be great incentives for corruption.
Bribes have allegedly been passed. Councillors have been attacked. Political battles have become matters of considerable personal consequence. This is not simply a game of political chess played by people moving pieces across a board according to some grand strategy.
The stakes are much higher than that.
This brings to mind Niccolò Machiavelli, the 16th-century political thinker whose name has become synonymous with ruthless political calculation. His central insight was that political power does not necessarily operate according to conventional morality. Those who want to change an established order face resistance from those who benefit from it.
That observation has a particular resonance in Johannesburg.
There are many people who will be hoping that the November election produces a better city. But disappointment has followed disappointment, and it is difficult to see how deeply entrenched corruption can simply be removed by changing the names of the people sitting around the council table.
Even if those responsible for much of what has gone wrong are defeated at the polls, the networks and interests that have developed around the city’s decline will not necessarily disappear with them.
That is the real danger.
Johannesburg does not merely have a political problem. It has a system of interests that has grown around failure.
And systems like that are very difficult to dismantle.
Source: Centre for Development and Enterprise, Time for Action – Corruption in Joburg, the fifth report in its Johannesburg Matters series, released on 6 October 2026.
Editorial Disclosure & Disclaimer
Financial News Daily is an independent business news syndicate. We publish financial, environmental and corporate commentary for digital platforms, media outlets and organisations. Nothing published here constitutes investment, legal or financial advice. All opinions are editorial commentary on matters of public and economic interest.
