News24 | Johannesburg mayor introduces ‘Bomb Squad’ to assist in turnaround strategy

City of Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero delivered the State of the City address (SOCA) in Braamfontein on Wednesday.

• Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero has introduced the “Bomb Squad” to accelerate a turnaround strategy.
• The plan includes a State of Disaster for crime, aggressive revenue collection, and economic measures to achieve 3% GDP growth over five years.
• He also announced a plan to rotate his mayoral committee.

Johannesburg’s turnaround strategy will be boosted by the “Bomb Squad”, a team assembled to ensure “aggressive implementation takes place”.

This squad, according to Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero, will run parallel to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Johannesburg crisis team, a presidential intervention to help the metro which is suffering from service delivery issues, crumbling infrastructure and poor governance.

In his first State of the City Address, Morero said Dr Snuki Zikalala would lead the Bomb Squad, which would become operational next month.

“In military language, a bomb squad has the responsibility of examining and removing bombs that are found and to prevent them from exploding,” Morero said.

“This City of Johannesburg Bomb Squad must remove constraints impacting on the City’s ability to create the Joburg we want to see.”

Morero said the Bomb Squad’s work would not contradict that of the presidential working group.

READ | DA to file motion of no confidence in Joburg Mayor Dada Morero

Morero has also proposed rotating the members of the mayoral committee. Senior managers would also be rotated, starting in July.

Speaking to the media after his address, a hoarse Morero said this would enable the MMCs to use their different skill sets. He said rotating the MMCs would not harm institutional knowledge.

Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi also reacted to the Democratic Alliance’s motion of no confidence in Morero on Wednesday.

“Anyone who wants to put a motion of no confidence in the mayors of any of our municipalities: I say bring it on,” he said.

“Don’t panic [about the motion].”

He added:

On the Bomb Squad, Lesufi said the team would “accelerate the plan to get Johannesburg right. If you get Johannesburg right, you get 50% of Gauteng right”.

Morero said it was important “to acknowledge our challenges which have led us to a crisis”, and which would need extreme actions to resolve.

“We are all familiar with the idiom that says ‘drastic times call for drastic measures’… We must behave in an unusual manner so that we can see and yield different results. Unlike the Covid-19 pandemic, our situation cannot be classified as a new normal,” he said.

Morero further suggested:

Morero’s address was marred by poor sound, bad visuals and a rather empty chamber.

The decorum of the house was also called into question before the mayor’s speech when the DA’s Alex Christians asked Speaker Nobuhle Mthembu to remove the mayor’s chief of staff from the bench in front of the council reserved for City heads.

He also acknowledged members of the EFF who arrived late and walked directly through the centre of the house.

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In his usual style, Morero relied on creative ways to give his speech. This included live filming his email, which was sent off to President Cyril Ramaphosa, during his speech.

This came after the president asked the City to come up with a turnaround plan to fix its broken infrastructure.

Speaking to News24, Morero said he thought his speech went well, although he was tired after working on it until 04:00 on Wednesday morning.

Lesufi told reporters he was “excited” by the speech and the manner in which it was delivered, saying the “content was information-rich”.