For many hundreds of thousands of people, returning to Joburg to start the year after time at home or on holiday would have been a wretched reminder of how much has declined so quickly.
When leaving the Sanral-managed national highways and entering the city it is impossible to ignore the broken traffic lights, the potholes, the evidence of broken water mains, the fact that so much infrastructure does not work.
And there appears to be no sense of urgency from any of the politicians running the city.
As the important reporting by Ferial Haffajee in these pages has pointed out so many times, the mayor, Dada Morero, appears almost absent.
During the water cut-off in many middle-class suburbs in December, as the holidays started, he was nowhere to be seen.
Over the holiday period it has emerged that he wants to appoint Joburg Property Company CEO Helen Botes as city manager, despite the fact she presides over what Currency described as “the Wild West of governance” in Joburg.
Instead of focusing on improving the situation for the city’s residents, officials tried to increase the number of security guards for the mayor and other councillors. A court has now ruled that this is illegal.
But it is more evidence that those who currently run the city are more interested in themselves than serving its residents.
The reason for all of this is, of course, politics.
While installing your own solar panels on your own roof does not affect anyone else, drawing water from an aquifer through a borehole can.
The ANC does not have a majority, and governs with help from several smaller parties. Despite the fact that it is in a coalition with the DA in national government, the DA has been kept out of power in Joburg.
Consistently, the DA has said that it believes the council needs to be disbanded and fresh elections held across the entire metro. But this would require two-thirds of the current councillors to vote for such a motion. Which, of course, they will not do.
In the meantime, several other important processes are playing out.
Many who live in the richer suburbs have already found ways around the problems of Joburg’s electricity infrastructure. They are among those who have built about 5,000MW of solar capacity across the country.
This leaves them dealing with the problems of water infrastructure.
Unfortunately, while installing your own solar panels on your own roof does not affect anyone else, drawing water from an aquifer through a borehole can.
While this can be contested, there does appear to be some evidence that too many people drawing too much water from aquifers could lead to this water running out. And, perhaps, to other longer-term consequences.
This is unlikely to stop people from taking steps to secure water supplies for themselves and their families.
The net result of this is that Joburg could well see much more inequality, in that it will be divided between those who battle to get enough drinking water to survive, and those who have plenty of water for their swimming pools.
This means the city will be separated into those who have water and electricity, and those who don’t.
The social implications of this are huge, it can only lead to more discord, frustration and anger.
For some, the local elections will be the one chance the city has to be saved. But a brief look at the political forces at play suggests this may not be the case.
And while people can live without electricity, they cannot live without water. Which means the stakes are only going to get higher.
This then means that the local elections, due to be held in about 18 months, will be crucial for Joburg.
For some, it will be the one chance the city has to be saved – if there is a change in the political leadership, perhaps there will be a change in the city.
But a brief look at the political forces at play suggests this may not be the case.
There is probably one big assumption that can be made, that the ANC is likely to lose a large share of the vote.
Considering that it fell to just under 35% in Gauteng (from just under 50% previously) it is safe to assume that it will fall significantly in Joburg too.
In fact, the decline may be much more significant.
This is because of the way the city has been governed, and because the ANC has played such a big part in it.
It was the ANC that supported Al Jama-ah’s Kabelo Gwamanda as mayor, despite the fact that its own coalition principles said it should not support mayors from minority parties.
When evidence emerged that he may have been involved in a scam, and stolen money from Soweto residents, the ANC defended him. It was only when it was certain it could elect its own mayor that the party allowed him to resign.
Gwamanda has now been arrested, which means that many residents may well hold the ANC responsible for supporting a criminal as mayor.
The ANC’s current mayor, Morero, has also been almost strangely absent during times of crisis. It seems unlikely he, and those around him, will be able to mount a strong campaign.
While all of this may mean the ANC loses votes, it is much harder to predict where they will go.
Some will go to MK (of course, this is not certain, much may depend on whether MK can form a coherent political party, and stop the suspensions and leadership changes which have become its hallmark).
ActionSA has also done well in Joburg in the past, but it may suffer as a result of its decision to work with the ANC in Joburg and Tshwane.
Others will go to the DA, if only because it has strong structures on the ground in many suburbs, and is able to convince its supporters to actually vote.
But it seems unlikely in the extreme that the DA will get anything close to 50%.
All of this means that there is likely to be a very muddled picture after the local elections.
It is entirely possible that the ANC and the DA end up still as the two biggest parties. But if the Gauteng ANC still refuses to work with the DA, and is able to prevent the Joburg ANC from forming such a coalition (despite recent calls from at least one senior member of the ANC Youth League in Gauteng) then the current situation will persist.
When Morero took over as mayor in 2024, he said residents should not expect major improvements in the two years before the local elections. Unfortunately, he was correct.
The other option, of course, is that the DA is able to win enough votes to form a coalition with other smaller parties, as it has done in Joburg and Tshwane in the past.
But it would not be easy.
One of the other assumptions that could be made ahead of the local elections is that many people will simply not vote. This means that those one-person parties who are able to get enough support will be able to enter the council.
This increases the risk that bigger parties are held to ransom by smaller parties (unless the law is changed before the local elections).
And even when the DA has governed in Gauteng, there is not much evidence that it was able to make any improvement. As the situation in Tshwane has shown, it is able to create its own scandals.
When Morero took over as mayor of Joburg in 2024, he said something very few incoming leaders would say – that residents should not expect major improvements in the two years before the local elections, while he was mayor.
In this, unfortunately, he was correct.
He may just have been wrong on the timeline. It may be much, much longer before residents do see any major improvements. DM