City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality: History
Following the end of the apartheid era, in April 1991 the Central Witwatersrand Metropolitan Chamber was formed as a "people-based" negotiating forum prior to holding a democratic election and the formation of a new administration for the Johannesburg area. Following the 1993 "Local Government Transition Act", the Greater Johannesburg Negotiating Forum was created, and this forum in September 1994 reached an agreement which entailed regrouping the suburbs into new municipal structures, the metropolitan local councils (MLCs), and the overarching Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, also known as the "Transitional Metropolitan Council" for the city.
The government of Johannesburg's metropolitan area evolved over a seven-year period from 1993, when no metropolitan government existed under apartheid, to the establishment in December 2000 of today's Metropolitan Municipality. An "interim phase" commenced with the 1993 Constitution. This saw the establishment at the metropolitan level of the Transitional Metropolitan Council (TMC) and several urban-level councils under and neighbouring the TMC. In February 1997 the final constitution replaced the interim constitution and its transitional councils with the final system of local government which defined the current category A, B and C municipalities. Today's City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality was created accordingly as a category A municipality, giving it exclusive executive and legislative power over its area.
The new post-apartheid administration was the "Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council" (GJMC), also known as the "Transitional Metropolitan Council", created in 1995. The council adopted the slogan "One City, One Taxpayer" to highlight its primary goal of addressing unequal tax revenue distribution. To this end, revenue from wealthy, traditionally white areas would pay for services needed in poorer, black areas. The City Council was divided initially into seven municipal substructures (MSSs), rationalised within a year to four MSSs, each with a substantially autonomous authority or "Metropolitan Local Council" (MLC) that was to be overseen by the central metropolitan council. Furthermore, the municipal boundaries were expanded to include wealthy satellite towns like Sandton and Randburg, poorer neighbouring townships such as Soweto and Alexandra, and informal settlements like Orange Farm. The four MLCs were: the Southern MLC covering Ennerdale, most of Soweto, parts of Diepmeadow and the old Johannesburg City and Lenasia; the Northern MLC covering Randburg and Randburg CBD, and parts of Soweto, Diepmeadow and the old Johannesburg City; the Eastern MLC covering Sandton, Alexandra, and part of the old Johannesburg City; the Western MLC covering Roodepoort, Dobsonville and parts of Soweto, Diepmeadow.
However, the new post-apartheid City Council ran into problems in part due to inexperienced management and political pressure, which contributed to over-ambitious revenue projections, over-spending, wasted expenditures and out-right fraud. In the newly combined metropole services were unnecessarily duplicated. But, by far, the biggest financial drain was the failure to collect revenues for services, which ranged from rent (rates) to utilities. Part of this failure was a result of the anti-apartheid boycott of paying the government.
In 1999, Johannesburg appointed a city manager to reshape the city's ailing financial situation. …