Yesterday this newspaper reported on Johannesburg being caught in what the Centre for Development and Enterprise calls a municipal doom loop.

Services deteriorate, residents become less willing to pay, the city squeezes those who still do, infrastructure deteriorates further, and businesses and taxpayers look for ways out. The numbers show how serious the problem has become.

The most important number in that report is that infrastructure investment has fallen by around 50% since 2014/15. Per resident, it has collapsed by almost 70%. President Cyril Ramaphosa says the African National Congress will have a plan to turn Johannesburg around in 100 days – 100 days to reverse 10 years of infrastructure spending neglect that occurred under his supreme watch.

In part as a consequence of the low investment number, the city’s economy has grown by only around 1% a year in real terms over the past decade.

Gross unpaid bills owed to Johannesburg have risen from around R15 billion in 2014/15 to roughly R72 billion in 2024/25. The city itself owed suppliers more than R28 billion by June 2025.

Employee-related costs, meanwhile, have risen from R8.6 billion to R20.7 billion over the same period and now consume roughly 40% of the cash collected from customers. The usual answer will be another turnaround plan.

Johannesburg certainly needs better financial management, stronger collections, lower costs, and far greater infrastructure investment.

But there is a more fundamental question.

Why should one municipality govern all of Johannesburg?

The current City of Johannesburg is itself relatively new. Before the creation of the single metropolitan municipality in 2000, greater Johannesburg was divided into several metropolitan local councils operating beneath a wider metropolitan structure.

It is time to revisit that model.

Johannesburg should be broken into a series of smaller, democratic, and financially independent municipalities.

Sandton and surrounding areas could have one municipality. Soweto another. Randburg, Roodepoort, the central city and other natural communities could similarly govern themselves.

Each should have its own elected council, mayor, budget, and administration.

Most importantly, they should compete.

A municipality that keeps streets clean, maintains water infrastructure, fixes roads, keeps rates reasonable, and processes development applications quickly should attract residents, businesses, and investment.

A municipality that fails should lose them.

That would introduce something Johannesburg desperately lacks today: direct competition between local governments for taxpayers and economic activity.

Some services would still need to be coordinated across greater Johannesburg. Bulk water, major transport networks, and other metropolitan infrastructure do not stop at municipal boundaries. These could be managed through regional institutions or agreements between municipalities.

But refuse collection in Randburg does not need to be controlled by the same political administration responsible for Soweto. A pothole in Roodepoort does not require a government stretching all the way to Sandton.

Local government should be local.

Smaller municipalities would also contain political failure. One dysfunctional coalition or incompetent administration would no longer be capable of dragging an entire urban economy of millions of people down with it.