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Stuff from Johannesburg

Fix Joburg Water’s Broken Finances

Statement by Stephen Moore MP – DA Spokesperson on Water and Sanitation:

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s National Water Crisis Committee must prove it is not another talk shop by urgently intervening in Johannesburg Water’s collapsing finances.

Eskom and Rand Water will conduct planned maintenance over winter, yet due to the City of Johannesburg’s effective bankruptcy, Joburg Water has no funds for emergency tankers.

Without urgent, ring-fenced intervention, our country’s economic hub, with its millions of residents, will suffer.

Johannesburg is at the highest risk – but this crisis will reverberate across Gauteng, into parts of the Free State and Mpumalanga.

While Johannesburg Water has no money beyond its current fleet of 20 water tankers, Tshwane’s water tanker expenditure has risen by R637m, creating another looting opportunity for its tanker mafia. Meanwhile, Ekurhuleni’s broken sewage systems are already under criminal probe.

The DA rejects that residents must live in perpetual human rights crises.

President Ramaphosa announced the National Water Crisis Committee in his State of the Nation Address on 12 February 2026, stating it would release a Crisis Plan, deploy technical experts and resources to municipalities, and ensure that action is taken swiftly and effectively.

Yet more than three months later, the public is without a Crisis Plan. The DA has a PAIA application for Crisis Plan.

The Water Action Plan was supposed to move from announcement to implementation. Instead, South Africans have seen meetings, speeches, coordination structures and repeated promises, while residents continue to experience dry taps, weak contingency planning and collapsing municipal water systems.

The upcoming Rand Water maintenance is the first major test of whether the President’s Crisis Committee is a serious intervention or merely another talk shop.

The Committee must immediately:

  1. Publish the National Water Action Plan, including timelines, responsible institutions and measurable targets for Gauteng.
  2. Require Johannesburg Water and the City of Johannesburg to present a funded emergency response plan for the Rand Water maintenance period.
  3. Ensure that water tanker deployment is transparent, affordable and not captured by politically connected service providers.
  4. Intervene to stabilise Johannesburg Water’s finances, including the ring-fencing of water revenue for water infrastructure, maintenance and operations.
  5. Provide daily public updates during the maintenance period on reservoir levels, affected systems, tanker deployment and recovery timelines.

The President himself has correctly said that the financial integrity of water services must be protected, and that water revenue must be ring-fenced for operations, maintenance, upgrades and long-term sustainability. He has also warned that if water revenue is diverted while infrastructure deteriorates, the crisis will deepen.

Residents do not need another committee that meets after the damage is done. They need a government that acts before the taps run dry.

The DA will continue to push for transparency, accountability and urgent intervention to ensure that Gauteng residents are not abandoned during Rand Water’s winter maintenance programme.

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The Oriental Plaza: A Phoenix in Fordsburg

If Johannesburg is a city of forced displacements, the Oriental Plaza is its most resilient response. While the Rand Club was built for the elite and Ponte for the “jet-set,” the Oriental Plaza was born from the trauma of the Group Areas Act—a piece of Apartheid legislation designed to geographically separate the races. Yet, in true Johannesburg fashion, what was intended as a tool of containment and financial ruin for the Indian community transformed into one of the most vibrant, independent commercial powerhouses in the country.

The story of the Plaza begins with the destruction of Pageview, affectionately known as Fietas. In the mid-20th century, Fietas was a legendary multicultural hub, centered around the bustling 14th Street. It was the city’s premier destination for textiles, clothing, and spices, where shoppers of all races would rub shoulders in a “jazzy, soulful” atmosphere. However, because Fietas was located so close to the white-only city center, the Apartheid government declared it a “white area” in 1962. The community fought back for decades, but by the 1970s, the bulldozers arrived. Homes were leveled, and the thriving traders of 14th Street were forcibly relocated to a purpose-built, modernist complex a kilometer away in Fordsburg: the Oriental Plaza.

The government’s intent was cynical: by moving the traders into a controlled environment with high state-mandated rents and strict rules on what could be sold, they hoped to break the back of Indian commercial dominance. The early years were devastating; many businesses folded, and the “Grand Bazaar” felt like a sterile warehouse compared to the street-level energy of Fietas. However, the traders refused to vanish. They eventually won the right to purchase their own shops, making the Oriental Plaza unique among South African malls because it is owned by the shopkeepers themselves rather than a corporate landlord. This ownership model changed everything. Without the burden of massive monthly mall rentals, the 360+ independent stores can offer prices that national retailers cannot touch, turning the Plaza into a “bargain-hunter’s paradise” that draws millions of visitors a year.