MK Party mayoral hopeful Bongani Baloyi has told Johannesburg voters that fixing the metro will require more than another change of mayor – it will require a plan that survives the mayor.
Delivering his alternative State of the City Address on Wednesday ahead of the 4 November local government elections, Baloyi said Johannesburg’s crisis is not about one person, but about a broken template of governance.
“Before I begin, I want to extend our deepest condolences to all the women who lost their lives to gender based violence,” Baloyi said, opening with a moment of silence.
“Today I am not going to give you another speech about hope. Johannesburg has heard enough promises.”
Baloyi, positioning the MK Party to chase an outright majority in South Africa’s economic capital, said instability over the last five years has turned political chaos into service delivery failure.
“This Council term began on 22 November 2021. Since then Johannesburg has experienced six mayoral terms across four people,” he said, listing Mpho Phalatse, Dada Morero, Thapelo Amad and Kabelo Gwamanda.
“Political instability becomes a service-delivery problem when it interrupts administration, delays decisions and weakens accountability.”
At the heart of his pitch is Vuka Jozi – a 10-point plan to stabilize and then grow the city.
“Stabilising Johannesburg is not a vision. It is the minimum entry fee. Water that flows. Electricity that can be relied upon. Books that balance. Roads and sewers that are maintained,” he said.
Baloyi said Joburg remains the country’s largest metro economy with a R97.1 billion budget, but it is operating on financial fumes.
“We should acknowledge improvement when it happens,” he said. “But paying an overdue account is not the same thing as fixing the system that allowed the account to become overdue. A City of Johannesburg’s scale cannot operate permanently with its financial safety margin measured in days.”
He linked the financial crisis directly to infrastructure collapse, pointing to more than 50,000 leak and burst reports between June 2025 and June 2026 and electricity distribution losses of approximately 27%.
“Think about the basic economics. Johannesburg buys water and electricity. A significant portion is lost before the City collects revenue from it. Then the municipality struggles to pay suppliers. Then tariffs rise. Then residents are asked to carry more of the cost. That cycle cannot be our normal.”
On water and sewer, Baloyi said families now plan their lives around outages and tankers, while overflowing sewers and polluted waterways have become health and dignity failures.
“There is no ribbon-cutting ceremony for a sewer that quietly works underneath the street. But that quiet reliability is exactly what a functioning municipality is supposed to deliver,” he said.
He also took aim at the inner city, saying Johannesburg cannot abandon its own heart. Referencing the 31 August 2023 Usindiso building fire in Marshalltown where 77 people died, Baloyi said problem buildings are about life and law, not just property.
“Seventy-seven. Mothers. Fathers. Children. Workers. That tragedy should have ended any illusion that problem buildings are simply about property administration.”
But he warned against using raids as a metric.
“The measure should not be how many raids the City announces. The measure should be how many buildings it actually resolves.”
Baloyi’s 10 priorities include fixing finances through better billing and collections, restoring basic services, building a stable professional government with a single Delivery Unit, rebuilding the economy by restoring the CBD and unlocking municipal property, restoring law and order, enforcing bylaws equally regardless of nationality while working with Home Affairs and SAPS on immigration, household economic recovery including a controlled debt reset, women and youth economic participation, fixing transport including Metrobus and Rea Vaya, and building a food security economy.
For women and youth, he proposed Sebenza Mbokodo 2.0 to provide finance, equipment and safe trading infrastructure with an ambition to mobilise up to R500 million over ten years, and a Johannesburg Agri-Recovery Service Corps linking work, skills and food production.
On townships, he said: “Johannesburg cannot rebuild only Sandton. It cannot rebuild only the CBD. And it cannot treat townships only as places where people sleep while productive economic activity happens somewhere else.”
Baloyi promised that within 100 days his administration would publish a single financial baseline, infrastructure risk register, debtor segmentation, high-risk contract register and problem-building register, tracked through a public Vuka Jozi Delivery Scorecard.
“Johannesburg does not need another mayor. It needs a plan that survives the mayor,” he said.
“Johannesburg is angry. And government should listen… A wealthy household can often buy resilience. A poor household cannot. When the tap runs dry, one family turns on a borehole. Another waits for a tanker.”
With the DA, ANC and ActionSA fighting for control, Baloyi is betting Joburg voters are tired of coalitions and want outright competence.
“If I am entrusted with responsibility for this City, I do not want Johannesburg to judge me by the speech I gave. Judge the administration by what changes.”