Morero tells Joburg to vote ANC on election day, and blames the complaints for drowning out his record

Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero voted at Laerskool Roodekraans in Roodepoort on Tuesday and used the walk to the journalists waiting outside to ask residents of the city to vote ANC, in a week when large parts of Johannesburg have been living with persistent water cuts.

As Sunday World reported on 3 November, Morero conceded that the city still faces challenges but argued that the public is too quick to dwell on what has gone wrong. “There will always be challenges in every municipality. There will be times when there are fewer challenges,” he said.

He maintained that interventions by his administration had begun to show results, particularly in stabilising water supply over the preceding two weeks, while acknowledging that Johannesburg had not escaped its water problems.

Morero also argued that the city’s social support programmes get too little attention. He pointed to the 15 kilolitres of free water provided to indigent households and to municipal clinics and healthcare facilities as services that deserved more recognition. “We never talk about the indigents, that we do so much work to ensure that they receive services, regardless of them being unemployed and poor,” he said.

On rates relief, the mayor said residents over 60 whose properties are valued below R1.5-million are exempt from rates and taxes, and that those over 60 with properties valued below R2-million also qualify for relief.

Those figures sit against the daily experience of residents who expect basic municipal services to work, and who have spent recent weeks dealing with an unreliable water supply and deteriorating infrastructure.

The mayor also addressed his own future. He said he expected to remain in the council as an ordinary councillor if the ANC failed to retain control of the city or he lost the mayoral chain, arguing that he had carried out the mandate the party gave him. “I have been deployed by the ANC. I have carried out the mandate as expected by my party. So I will be in council, in the position of councillor. I’ll be sitting there whenever you guys come to council,” he said.

He described his two years at the helm as difficult but productive, and said his administration had not run away from communities when service-delivery problems emerged, but had engaged affected residents, set up community committees and worked alongside communities on solutions.

On the prospect of another coalition government in Johannesburg, Morero argued that the size of parties should not decide whether they can work together. What mattered, he said, was the willingness of coalition partners to commit to transformation and to serving communities. “As long as you are all committed to a particular agenda, an agenda of transformation, an agenda of service to communities,” he said.

Special voting was scheduled to close at 5pm on Tuesday, with the main vote on Wednesday.