https://www.yahoo.com/news/once-africa-world-class-city-123908974.html
Once Africa’s world-class city, Johannesburg is decaying before residents’ eyes
March 30, 2024
From the outside, Johannesburg does not look like it is doing well.
Roads littered with potholes. Broken traffic lights not repaired for months. Rotting rubbish in the streets.
But from the inside, the scale of the problems facing the biggest city in South Africa and the richest and most industrialised in the continent is even worse.
From taps regularly running dry to daily four-hour power cuts – known locally as load shedding – life for many people in Jo’burg has declined dramatically.
The decline of southern suburb Forest Hills is a case in point.
Previously dominated by poorer white people, in recent decades it has become more mixed as black people sought to move out of the city’s apartheid-era townships.
“Although never wealthy, things used to at least work [around here],” Stuart Marais, a longtime resident and local city councillor, told The Telegraph.
“Traffic signals are regularly vandalised and are not repaired in under six to eight months. Grass is growing into our roads which haven’t been fixed for decades,” said the 63-year-old. “Broken cars lie around and many residents put their rubbish out onto the streets and it lies there rotting.”
It was “far too dangerous” to walk around at night, he said. “The decay in this part of Johannesburg is massive.”
Mr Marais says the blame lies squarely with the municipality, where the African National Congress hold the most seats.
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Author: danfromsquirrelhill
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