Jhb mayoralty: From the frying pan into the fire
Amos Masondo has announced he won't be back. This is a good thing. His tenure has been marked by maladministration and mismanagement on a spectacular scale. The people of Johannesburg deserve better.
But the ANC itself doesn't seem to think so.
The ANC seems to think the people of Johannesburg deserve worse - so senior structures in the ANC have endorsed Parks Tau as the party's mayoral candidate, the very person who, as the city's political head of finance, oversaw the city's ongoing billing fiasco.
Such a decision, if confirmed, would be to take Johannesburg out of the frying pan and casually discard it into the fire. It would also confirm that the ANC does not have the concerns of ordinary voters at heart; but rather the interests of those who would represent it.
Mr Tau, as head of city finance, is the ANC member directly responsible for Johannesburg's shambolic finances. The inability of Mr Tau's finance operation to correctly bill residents left many without water and electricity connections after the metro illegally disconnected them. This after Mr Tau's finance division presented them with outlandish bills amounting to tens of thousands of rands, amounts which people did not owe.