On its own numbers, Joburg is struggling.
According to a report by the metro’s finance department, the city had a year-to-date surplus of R752m in April. Just one month later, it was running a deficit of R18.3m — against a budgeted surplus of R1.18bn.
DA finance spokesperson Chris Santana puts it in stark terms: “To highlight the shortfall based on the budgeted surplus, [it] equates to R1.2bn on May 31.”
It’s not that the city isn’t collecting money, says Santana — it brought in more than R78bn, R2bn above budget — it’s that expenditure is running out of control. As he tells it, cash and investments collapsed from R3.87bn in March to R1.62bn in April. At the same time, creditors increased by R3.47bn in a single month, reaching R12.41bn.
The finance report itself notes that inflows for April were just R6.3bn against outflows of R8.5bn, including for bulk water and electricity purchases, as well as salaries. “The resulting net movement was a decrease of R2.3bn.”
According to the report, the only cash generators for the municipality are City Power, Johannesburg Water, Pikitup and rates and taxes. These fund overall city operations, including core departments.
As at the end of April, six of the city’s entities were in the red. City Power had a balance of negative R20bn, the Johannesburg Development Agency and Johannesburg Social Housing Company were each R2bn in the red, Metrobus was R483m overdrawn, the Propcom portfolio was overdrawn by R132m and the Metropolitan Trading Company was at negative R877m.
“This is not the balance sheet of a municipality that has its finances under control,” says Santana. “And who pays the price? The residents and businesses. Contractors who are not paid stop working. Maintenance is delayed. Infrastructure deteriorates. And, eventually, the city pays more because suppliers lose confidence in doing business with Joburg.”
Given the backlogs in the city (R44bn for City Power and R27bn for Johannesburg Water, for example), the lack of spending on infrastructure is of deep concern. According to the report, the city’s infrastructure spend at one month before the end of the financial year amounted to only 52% of the budgeted R8.42bn. City Power had spent 52% of its R1bn capital budget, Pikitup only 16% of R300m and Johannesburg Water only 39% of R1.7bn.
There’s another worrying issue: conditional grants were only 50% spent, Santana told a recent council meeting. According to him, the National Treasury has withheld R456m in equitable share funding, as well as R158m from the urban settlements development grant. Joburg must also return R200m of the public transport network grant and R22.4m of the urban development financing grant.
“While Joburg’s residents are crying out for better roads, water infrastructure, electricity and basic services, this administration is putting available funding at risk,” he said. “That is not a funding crisis; that is an implementation crisis. How can we expect sound financial management when the very offices responsible for it have become a revolving door? During this political term alone, Joburg has had four different members of the mayoral committee for finance and now seven different chairs of the finance committee.”
Julia Fish, executive director of the civil society initiative JoburgCAN, raises specific concerns about the capex budget.
“By the end of May, [the city] had spent only 52% of the R8.4bn 2025/2026 capital expenditure budget, leaving 48% to spend in June, the last month of the year,” she says.
“Much of the capex budget comes from conditional grants from the Treasury, which will somehow have to be paid back if unused, but we have no indication of where this money is or what exactly it was diverted to instead. This should sound loud warning sirens on the imminent financial ruin of the largest metro in the country.”
This story is produced by Our City News, a nonprofit newsroom serving the people of Joburg
