“In Joburg, Potholes Don’t Get Filled, They Get Names & Some Even Have Birthdays” Zille Vows To Fix

Helen Zille walked onto a crumbling Johannesburg street last week and said what every frustrated commuter already knows: the potholes here have names, histories, and some have been around long enough to celebrate birthdays.

The Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg has placed infrastructure repair at the centre of her campaign pitch, vowing to overhaul the city’s deteriorating road network if the party secures the mayoral chain. Zille allegedly intends to deploy a rapid-response maintenance unit targeting the worst-affected suburbs first, including Soweto, Randburg, and Roodepoort, where certain craters have swallowed vehicles whole.

DA Johannesburg regional spokesperson Lerato Ngobeni confirmed that the pothole pledge forms a core plank of the party’s governance manifesto. “Residents have documented damage worth hundreds of millions of rands to their vehicles,” Ngobeni told reporters at a Thursday briefing at DA constituency offices in Braamfontein. The party intends to table a full infrastructure audit within sixty days of assuming office.

Johannesburg’s roads have deteriorated sharply over the past decade, with the City recording more than 40 000 pothole complaints through its MyJozi reporting portal in 2024 alone. The Automobile Association of South Africa estimates that vehicle suspension damage linked to poor municipal roads costs drivers an average of R8 500 per repair visit — a figure that hits working-class households disproportionately hard.

Along Ontdekkers Road in Roodepoort, a specific stretch near Constantia Kloof has become something of a grim landmark. Residents erected a handwritten cardboard sign beside one particularly deep cavity reading “Happily Turning 3 — Please Bring Cake.” Photographs of the sign circulated widely on social media in January, drawing nearly 12 000 shares before the city’s communications team quietly removed the post flagging it.

What remains unclear is whether Zille’s proposed unit would receive dedicated ring-fenced funding or rely on existing maintenance budgets that critics say have already been stripped bare. Johannesburg’s roads backlog reportedly exceeds R47 billion, a figure no single electoral term can realistically address. The deeper question every voter on those broken streets is asking is simple: after years of promises from successive administrations, what makes this time any different?

Collabo001 feedback-opera-news-app@opera.com