Joburg moving
Johannesburg ' s transport networks, infrastructure, and finances are under severe pressure. Yet the city ' s economic weight and considerable institutional assets mean that restoring its performance could deliver benefits far beyond its boundaries.
By Ebrahim Moolla
A working traffic light does not make headlines. Neither does a repaired water pipe, a reliable bus route, or a municipal account paid on time.
Yet these ordinary systems create the predictability on which a successful city depends. When they work, employees reach their jobs, deliveries arrive on schedule, businesses can plan and investors can make decisions with greater confidence. When they become unreliable, costs accumulate across the economy.
That is the concern raised in Joburg in Jeopardy, the first report in the Centre for Development and Enterprise ' s new Johannesburg Matters series. " Johannesburg is the one municipality whose failure would make national success impossible," says CDE executive director Ann Bernstein, who argues that the city ' s performance has become a matter of national economic importance.
The report is deliberately urgent, but not an argument that Johannesburg is beyond repair. Its extraordinary concentration of businesses, financial expertise, educational institutions, entrepreneurs and workingage residents gives it a substantial platform from which to recover.
The question is whether its government can again provide the basic conditions that allow those strengths to translate into growth and opportunity.
An economy with national reach According to CDE, Johannesburg hosts 70 % of South African company head offices. Approximately 1.91 million people are employed in the city, representing about 11 % of the country ' s jobs.
Johannesburg is also an exceptionally important
22 sabusinessintegrator. co. za