The shocking decline of Joburg in 10 short years, in pictures

Much of the deterioration is due to Joburg Water and City Power failing to complete reinstatements, along with a lack of maintenance by other city departments.

Johannesburg’s decline into ruin continues, with zero evidence of this being stemmed anytime soon. Colleagues, clients, acquaintances, friends and former residents who don’t visit the city frequently are shocked when they see just what state most of the metro is in.

Much of the decay is due to reinstatements by Joburg Water or City Power not being done, plus the general non-existent maintenance by other city entities.

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Read: Joburg needs G20 Summit more than Cape Town does – Southern Sun boss

The so-called boiling frog syndrome means that by and large us residents don’t actually notice how bad it has become.

A new page on X (formerly Twitter), Jozi vs Jozi paints what it terms a “harrowing picture” using images from Google Maps’s Street View feature from 2013 and 2023 (the latest update).

“Over the past 10 years, Johannesburg has deteriorated to the point that it resembles a city affected by armed conflict,” writes the anonymous author behind the account.

“The decay is visible at all levels – from the gradual breakdown of infrastructure in wealthier suburbs to the complete destruction in working-class areas like the central, east and west.

What the inner city, especially Hillbrow, has endured in just 10 years is unfathomable. The scale of the decline is staggering.

“The scale of atrophy and urban regression in Johannesburg is unprecedented. I can’t think of anywhere else in the world that has experienced such an intense collapse in such a short span of time – cities bombed in the Middle East, maybe.”

Most of the account’s posts focus on the inner city and surrounds. The author is often criticised for having a racist agenda, but has repeatedly pointed out that they are not white.

We tend to think that Parks Tau was the city’s last ‘good’ mayor. The truth is that the seeds of decline began under Tau (2011 to 2016), who prioritised hugely expensive vanity projects – remember the Corridors of Freedom, announced in 2013 – that remain mostly built … or rather mostly half-built. Amos Masondo was the city’s last ‘good’ mayor (2000 to 2011).

Olivia Street

Absa

Maboneng

Bertrams

Quartz Street

Kerk Street

2013 was not that long ago. The city (and country) was basking in a post-2010 Fifa World Cup glow, with billions of rands of new infrastructure still in decent condition.

The city’s Rea Vaya bus rapid transit system was (sort of) functional with a single route (Soweto to the CBD). The rest was under construction, including routes from town to Alexandra, and Alex to Sandton. Now, a decade later, both of these routes – part of Tau’s legacy – are still unfinished.

Louis Botha Rea Vaya

Joburg isn’t even doing the basics. Storm water drains remain unfixed for literal decades, and everyone – including local government politicians – is shocked when huge expanses of the city flood during heavy rains. And the days of there being budgets for plants to decorate verges are long gone.

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Storm water

While the account focuses on the inner city, it shines a necessary light on other areas too – some as far away from the CBD as Cosmo City.

No more tar

Cosmo City

Ontdekkers

Randburg

Witkoppen Road

Attacq recently used evidence of the decline across the rest of the city as a selling point for its flagship development Waterfall City.

Over the last decade, Sandton and Rosebank are mostly the same. This is largely down to privately funded improvement districts (these exist in Rosebank, Sandton Central and even Kramerville).

Read/listen:
Attacq bets big with R20bn to expand Waterfall City hub
‘The buzz is definitely back’ in Sandton
R8bn Oxford Parks is changing the face of Rosebank
Joburg needs the finest people to lead the city – Malose Kekana

The account deliberately does not seek to compare Joburg with Cape Town, although it could not help but share the stark contrast between verges and roadsides on the approach to OR Tambo International Airport and a similar one near Cape Town International.

Of course, OR Tambo is not officially in City of Joburg (the justification for its renaming in 2006) but in Ekurhuleni.

Parts of this metro (central Germiston, for instance) make Joburg look normal. Then again, this is a metro that cannot maintain the highway that is most visitors’ first impression of the province (and possibly the country).

A huge flag installation built with coloured stones for the world cup lays derelict and crumbling, nearly 15 years later. Every few months a crew of workers spends a day trimming the weeds. That’s about it.

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