Joburg residents are ‘defacing’ potholes – and the city is not happy about it!

Speak to any Joburger these days, and they will tell you how the city’s roads have fallen into disrepair. The Metro’s hot seat has changed hands a number of times in recent years between the ANC and DA (and their respective coalitions), with newly-elected mayor Thapelo Amad now also facing a vote of no confidence. All the while, basic infrastructure continues to be neglected.

Nowadays, it’s not unusual to drive down the tree-lined streets of affluent suburbs like Parkhurst and find yourself playing dodge-the-donga.

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That’s why Joburgers Fletcher Mhlongo and Guy Schoeman (not their real names) have joined a band of disgruntled residents who wanted to make a statement. They have taken to the streets with a spray can and a mission – to highlight the shabby state of the roads in their neighbourhoods, but also with a clear sentiment of who they believe is to blame.

“As a resident of Johannesburg, I have felt completely at the mercy of an incompetent ruling party, who receive an inflated salary for doing very little,” Mhlongo told The South African.

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“It has become abundantly clear that if we don’t take some kind of action and highlight the crumbling infrastructure that is our current reality, the rot will continue.”

On Friday, the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) released a statement condemning these acts – “The JRA has noticed a trend where our roads are being defaced with spray painting around potholes that have been repaired by various organisations,” it read.

The JRA also cited a public roads by-law that empowers the Council to “remove such item and in addition to any penalty which may be imposed in terms of this by- law, recover the cost of removal from that person.”

Yet Joburgers feel that it is the residents who should, in fact be reclaiming money from the Council.

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“We, the citizens of Joburg, payers of the municipality’s salaries, feel cheated, disrespected, and powerless. While Joburg falls apart, our civil servants ignore their duty to their employees – us,” Schoeman says.

The JRA says it understands that residents and road users are frustrated with driving on roads riddled by potholes but is reminding residents that “the City’s by-laws do not authorise any person or organisation to engage in the unlawful act of repairing potholes or branding any of the City’s roads.”

“The JRA will continue to work hard to ensure that our roads are safe to travel on for all the residents of the City.”

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In essence, communities will continue to wait for service delivery but are forbidden to fill potholes themselves. It’s very much a case of you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t, and the frustration of this stagnation is felt by many.

“The majority of Joburg’s civil servants, whose salaries we pay, behave like entitled brats,” Schoeman added.

“When our civil servant employees are not stealing from us directly, they are stealing from us indirectly, through laziness and incompetence”

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