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Joburg Water’s Accounts Are Left Empty

Dear Editor

When the Johannesburg Mayor appeared before the Portfolio Committee on Water & Sanitation on 19 September 2025, after a DA push, he defended the City’s ‘sweeping financial arrangement’ as necessary considering the City’s very poor finances.

Sweeping arrangements, where funds obtained by municipal sub-entities are managed through a central municipal account are not illegal, but this is no excuse to leave Joburg Water in the lurch.

While we have yet to receive all of our requested information, including a copy of the City’s sweeping arrangement policy and the Council resolution supporting it, the information we have obtained shows that Joburg Water does not have enough money in the bank to pay and conduct projects.

This has resulted in Joburg Water having to accumulate debt which has now surged to a R1 billion.

The DA has been on the ground, to projects like the Brixton Tower and reservoir, where we have seen contractors down tools, as they have not been paid. Joburg Water signs projects, under the guarantee from the City that projects will be funded, to only have them “swept” away by the City.

As we are awaiting further information from the City, we do not know where exactly funds are swept to nor has the Mayor been forthright. We suspect funds are swept to City Power, which was recently raided by the Hawks.

The sweeping arrangement policy may be legal, but that does not make it right. The Mayor and Council are well equipped to ring fence funds for Joburg Water via a resolution; but there is no political will to do so.

Mayors swear oaths of office to do all in the powers to protect residents and promote their interests. Mayor Morero would rather sit badly explaining what the problems are, than doing something about it.

When the DA governs Joburg, we will act, as we believe in Joburg.

Regards

Stephen Moore MP
DA Spokesperson on Water & Sanitation

Source – MyZA

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The Geological Miracle of the Witwatersrand

The very existence of Johannesburg is a geological fluke. Unlike most major global cities, Johannesburg was not built near a river, a coast, or a natural harbor. It sits 1,753 meters above sea level on a rocky ridge called the Witwatersrand (Ridge of White Waters). This ridge is the edge of the world’s largest known gold deposit, formed over 2 billion years ago when an ancient inland sea began to evaporate, leaving behind layers of gold-bearing conglomerate.

When George Harrison, an Australian prospector, stumbled upon an outcrop of gold on the farm Langlaagte in 1886, he triggered a “gold rush” that changed the course of African history. Within a decade, a dusty collection of tents and wagons transformed into a permanent city of brick and mortar. The “Main Reef” proved so vast that it eventually produced nearly 40% of all the gold ever mined in human history. This geological wealth dictated the city’s layout: the mining belt runs east-to-west across the city’s center, creating a physical divide between the wealthy northern suburbs and the industrial, working-class south. Today, while most mines within the city limits have closed due to the extreme depth and cost of extraction (some mines reached over 3.9 kilometers underground), the physical legacy remains in the form of “mine dumps”—massive yellow-white hills of crushed rock and sand that define the Joburg skyline.