Rise Mzansi’s City of Johannesburg mayoral hopeful, Lukhona Mnguni, has vowed to tackle corruption at City Power and keep lights on across the metro if elected mayor.
He also accused some officials and contractors of benefiting from failing infrastructure.
Mnguni said the city’s energy challenges were not simply a matter of ageing infrastructure and insufficient funding, but also of corruption, poor procurement and a lack of accountability.
“City Power houses some of the greatest thieves in the City of Joburg who manipulate contracts, who procure cheap material to fix things,” he said.
He was speaking during the second debate of Independent Online’s (IOL) four-day Town Hall Debates, running from October 19 to 22, which bring together mayoral candidates from major metropolitan municipalities.
The Johannesburg debate focused on the city’s financial challenges, including irregular expenditure, weak accountability, deteriorating infrastructure and poor revenue collection.
Residents continue to grapple with persistent electricity and water outages, crime, corruption, hijacked buildings, expanding informal settlements, malfunctioning traffic lights and streetlights, water losses and inadequate sanitation.
Prolonged power outages have left some communities without electricity for more than a week, while small businesses have been forced to dig deeper into already strained finances to keep operating.
Morero defends City Power’s response
Incumbent mayor and ANC mayoral candidate Dada Morero defended his administration’s record, attributing electricity interruptions to cable theft, ageing technology and overloaded substations.
The ANC is currently leading the coalition at the troubled metro.
Morero said cable theft often required damaged cables to be replaced, while outdated infrastructure and increased demand placed further pressure on the electricity network.
“Secondly, it's as a result of the technology that is no longer responding, as a result of the substation being overloaded, and therefore you have to deal, one, with the economic connection that continues to burden the system, and secondly, you have to work towards improving and updating your technology,” Morero said.
He pointed to the Central substation, which he said served much of the inner city and had infrastructure dating back to 1967.
“You need to update the technology, which is what we are currently doing, not only at Central Station, with quite a number of substations that are old and outdated, so that you can ensure that there's seamless and continuous supply,” he said.
Morero maintained that City Power teams responded to electricity interruptions, taking into account the costs and technical requirements involved in restoring supply.
He added that the city engaged with Eskom and provided support where possible in areas supplied by the national power utility.
These included Sandton, Soweto, Ivory Park and Orange Farm, where the city monitored outages and assisted Eskom when required, he said.
ActionSA calls for better planning and law enforcement
ActionSA representative Botsang Moiloa, who represented party leader and mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba, criticised the city’s planning and questioned whether the administration’s interventions were delivering results.
“I'm saying you can plan all that you want, but if your planning is not delivering the results. People don't want speeches and planning. People want electricity in their homes,” Moiloa said.
He identified cable theft, illegal connections, population growth and inadequate infrastructure planning as major contributors to the crisis.
Moiloa argued that the city had failed to plan adequately for its growing population, placing additional pressure on electricity infrastructure and services.
He also raised concerns about contractors allegedly being involved in the theft of municipal infrastructure, arguing that outsourcing could create opportunities for criminal activity.
Moiloa said the city needed to strengthen law enforcement, address illegal land occupation and improve housing provision to prevent informal settlements and unauthorised electricity connections from expanding.
He also criticised what he described as the failure to protect municipal infrastructure, including in the inner city, where hijacked buildings and illegal connections remained concerns.
Moiloa argued that electricity and water were basic human needs and that residents required reliable services rather than repeated assurances about future planning.
EFF links electricity supply to public safety
EFF mayoral candidate Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng said electricity provision had to form part of Johannesburg’s broader developmental agenda.
She called for improvements in infrastructure, bulk electricity procurement, energy storage and support for residents and businesses investing in renewable energy.
Mofokeng argued that the city’s tariff structure offered insufficient incentives for households to conserve electricity or invest in greener alternatives.
She also called for greater collaboration between the municipality and major businesses headquartered in Johannesburg, saying the private sector had a responsibility to contribute to the city’s development.
Mofokeng said the municipality needed to work with industries to ensure that the costs of environmental damage, including the rehabilitation of land affected by mining, were not left to the city and its residents.
She highlighted the plight of residents in 312 informal settlements that she said remained unrecognised, arguing that this contributed to the denial of access to electricity, water and sanitation.
Mofokeng also linked unreliable electricity and malfunctioning streetlights to crime and gender-based violence.
“It can't be that every time it rains in Johannesburg, we've normalised the excuse that because it's raining, the electricity doesn't work. It also means that we have to think about prevention and what those transport hubs that also remain without electricity mean,” she said.
She argued that poor co-ordination between infrastructure development and other municipal services contributed to wasteful expenditure.
“It's that there is also just a lack of foresight and agility and planning for a city that needs to emerge,” she said.
Gaza Democratic Front proposes technical training and mixed energy
Gaza Democratic Front mayoral candidate Wisani Mathebula argued that Johannesburg, as one of Africa’s leading metropolitan economies, needed to strengthen its technical capacity and invest in long-term electricity solutions.
He proposed partnerships with institutions such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) to obtain technical assistance, while building the municipality’s internal skills to reduce dependence on expensive external consultants.
Mathebula also called for partnerships with technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges to train unemployed young people for jobs in electricity maintenance and infrastructure expansion.
He argued that many substations had not been expanded to accommodate the city’s growing population.
“We have a high number of unemployed people. Unemployed people, particularly the young ones at home, are sitting,” he said.
“Why can't we take those people, train them, and make sure that we employ them in our substations, expand those substations?”
Mathebula also proposed generating electricity from waste, expanding the use of alternative energy sources and introducing better technology to monitor electricity consumption.
He said the city should distinguish between industrial and residential electricity demand to improve monitoring and management of the grid.
He argued that combining technical assistance, skills development and a diversified energy mix would help address the crisis while creating employment.
BOSA demands delivery, not promises
Build One South Africa (BOSA) mayoral candidate Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster was interrupted by noise from members of the audience, including ANC supporters, as she prepared to address the debate.
After order was restored, she criticised the incumbent administration for failing to resolve Johannesburg’s electricity challenges.
“It's a pity that the people making the most noise are the incumbents who are here and engaged in all these issues very clearly that they haven't delivered on what the city needs,” she said.
Hlazo-Webster argued that unreliable electricity affected more than household convenience, with consequences for public safety, healthcare, businesses and employment.
She pointed to a 2023 survey of township businesses in which, she said, 66% of respondents reported shedding jobs because of load-shedding.
Although the country had moved beyond scheduled national load-shedding, she said Johannesburg residents continued to experience unreliable electricity supply and what she described as persistent power failures.
Hlazo-Webster attributed some of the problems to ageing substations and cables that had not been properly maintained or replaced.
She also raised concerns about communities where funding had reportedly been allocated for electrification, but residents remained without electricity.
Pointing to Meriting, she said exposed cables and the death of a child a few weeks earlier illustrated the dangers residents faced.
She called for a government that could translate plans and budgets into tangible improvements, including consistent maintenance and the use of technology to identify faults before infrastructure failed.
Hlazo-Webster also said better technology could improve metering and billing.
“Most importantly, we can't be basing how we build and what we build on plans from the 1950s. We need to be building for the future,” she said.
IFP advocates gas, solar and microgrids
IFP mayoral candidate Mlungisi Mabaso, who serves as the metro’s MMC for Human Settlements, said extending electricity access to communities that remained unconnected should be a priority.
He acknowledged that electrifying informal settlements required technical processes but argued that the city needed to accelerate access to basic services.
Mabaso proposed expanding Johannesburg’s gas network to ease pressure on the electricity grid, alongside measures to combat cable theft, vandalism and illegal connections.
He said the municipality needed to build its own maintenance capacity rather than relying heavily on external contractors.
Mabaso also advocated installing solar panels and developing microgrids to reduce dependence on the main electricity network.
He alleged that some contractors could be involved in criminal activity that damaged municipal infrastructure, creating further demand for repair work.
The IFP’s approach, he said, would focus on strengthening internal capacity, protecting infrastructure and diversifying energy sources.
Mnguni targets corruption and funding shortfalls
Lukhona Mnguni of Rise Mzansi said Johannesburg’s electricity crisis could not be resolved without addressing the financial constraints facing the municipality and tackling corruption within City Power.
He said the backlog in energy and grid stabilisation stood at just under R50 billion, highlighting the scale of investment required to restore and expand the city’s electricity infrastructure.
Mnguni said Rise Mzansi wanted to establish an infrastructure investment fund and pursue capital-raising initiatives to finance essential projects.
“Because part of what we keep calling an infrastructure problem is also not having enough fiscal space to actually deal with that infrastructure problem,” he said.
He argued that even well-designed technical solutions would fail without sufficient funding for implementation.
However, Mnguni said corruption and poor procurement practices were equally serious obstacles, alleging that some suppliers provided substandard materials that were prone to failure.
He called for the removal of what he described as a criminal enterprise mentality within the municipality.
“People are benefiting from the failures in the city of Joburg,” he said.
Mnguni alleged that corruption affected procurement and contractor appointments.
These governance failures undermined the reliability of electricity infrastructure and created opportunities for continued theft and financial abuse.
He also claimed that some municipal infrastructure installed in informal settlements had been taken over by private individuals who allegedly forced residents to pay them rather than the city for services.
Recurring outages in communities, including instances where residents reported the same fault repeatedly within a week, indicated that some repairs were not providing sustainable solutions.
Mnguni argued that the city needed to improve planning, protect infrastructure and ensure that contractors delivered durable work.
“The problem with the city of Joburg, and why we keep saying it, rise and shine, is that the city of Joburg is at the brink of becoming a gangster city. It's because failure is actually budgeted for,” he said.
Mnguni maintained that corruption had to be rooted out if Johannesburg was to restore reliable services and rebuild public trust.
MK Party calls for a broader energy mix
MK Party mayoral candidate Bongani Baloyi said Johannesburg needed to examine the entire electricity value chain, from generation to transmission, distribution and revenue collection.
He said about 90% of the city’s electricity came from Eskom, arguing that Johannesburg needed to diversify its energy sources and reduce its dependence on the national utility.
Baloyi proposed turning townships into electricity-generation zones as part of broader plans to develop them as priority economic areas.
He said the city had made progress in green technology and energy administration but had not done enough to develop a diversified energy mix.
Baloyi also identified ageing infrastructure, illegal connections and electricity losses as significant challenges affecting distribution and revenue collection.
He called for the gradual replacement and upgrading of transmission and distribution infrastructure, acknowledging that the city faced financial constraints.
He also supported expanding alternative energy sources, and said that revenue losses caused by theft and criminal activity were weakening the city’s ability to maintain and improve services.
Baloyi alleged that the deterioration of Johannesburg’s infrastructure was not merely the result of poor management but a deliberate process.
“What we see today is not a mistake. It's not a consequence of just general bad management,” he said.
“It's an intention. It's a managed collapse,” he claimed.
Baloyi accused the governing coalition of overseeing the city’s decline, arguing that weakened infrastructure created opportunities for criminals to exploit municipal systems for financial gain.
simon.majadibodu@iol.co.za
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