G20: How Joburg rushed to be ready

“Sandton is ready for its close-up,” the City of Joburg proclaimed on X in September. “This is a fantastic opportunity to showcase our iconic skyline and vibrant precinct.”

While this weekend’s G20 summit promises all the pomp and circumstance of a main event (or not, given that key nations such as the US are not there), it’s technically the culmination of more than 100 engagements that South Africa has led since assuming the G20 presidency last December.

The X post — complete with a video of Rivonia Road buzzing and fluorescing into the night — was meant to tee up Joburg mayor Dada Morero’s moment as host of one such event: the Urban20 (U20) mayors’ summit, which he co-chaired with Tshwane mayor Nasiphi Moya.

The U20 is an official group in the G20 forum. It is a co-creation of C40 — a coalition of 40 cities co-operating on climate issues — and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), which has similar goals.

The U20 framework enables municipal leaders to deliberate city-level interventions that further the G20 agenda and the UN’s sustainable development goals. Since the U20 debuted in 2017, delegates have been tasked each year with producing a communiqué endorsed by all mayors and submitting it to the G20 presidency in advance of the leaders’ summit.

“Cities are not just spaces where people live; they are engines of economic opportunity and social care. And crucially, the success of cities in delivering for their residents depends on access to the right financial tools and systems,” Morero said at the U20 mayors’ summit.

Not so fast, mayor Morero. On day two of the U20 summit, 3,000 Joburg municipal workers brought Rivonia Road to a standstill. Many of the protesters, organised under the South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu), sported the union’s red and yellow banners with the message: “No Grade 10, No G20”.

This refers to a nearly decade-long wage dispute. The base annual salary for general workers at the Johannesburg Road Agency, for example, is R132,056. That’s a category 8 salary, two levels of compensation below the equivalent position at neighbouring Ekurhuleni. Workers tasked with rolling out infrastructure and service delivery improvements in the run-up to the G20 summit said the brunt of beautifying the city fell disproportionately on their shoulders.

Workers told the FM they felt that the political and infrastructural reality on the ground in Joburg debases the city’s claim to be a catalyst of urban innovation and resilience. They said the G20 pageantry masks collapsing infrastructure and deepening inequality, aggravated by poor leadership.

Joburg has officially styled itself “a world-class African city” since 2006, during Amos Masondo’s 11-year tenure as the unified city’s inaugural mayor.

It has changed quite a bit since then. Masondo’s successor, Parks Tau, made a name for himself as a technocratic optimist who championed expansion of the Rea Vaya bus project and Wi-Fi accessibility. Tau, who is now national minister of trade, industry & competition, also embraced global city-to-city collaboration as mayor.

Early on in his term, Tau engaged with then New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and later hosted a C40 summit in Joburg. After leaving office, Tau led UCLG and the South African Local Government Association (Salga) simultaneously from 2016 to 2019.

One of the attendees at this year’s U20 was Berry Vrbanovic, mayor of Kitchener, Ontario, a city of about 250,000 not far from Toronto. He’s also the co-president of UCLG, one of the organisations behind the U20, and he attended the summit in that capacity.

We are definitely going to be holding the City of Joburg accountable, as workers who are also community members, to say: ‘What is being done now?

—  Lebogang Ndawu

“In the community of local governments at a global level, South Africa and Salga have been very engaged players and are highly respected for the work they have done — partly because they’re often the folks who try to be the consensus builders,” Vrbanovic said.

Vrbanovic told the FM that the U20 was “an opportunity for cities to engage early on, where decisions are made at a global level, in terms of how national governments deliver on policies”.

Regarding the Samwu protest during the U20, Vrbanovic said that while he cannot comment on South African politics, “municipalities in every corner of the world are finding themselves dealing with bigger issues, increased complexities and often inadequate sources of revenue to help them deal with the challenges that communities face”. He remarked at the U20 closing ceremony that “the social contract has been weakened by inequality, exclusion and eroding trust with governments”.

Eighteen hours later, on the other side of the Rand, ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe warmed up a crowd of 4,800 municipal councillors summoned to Soweto for a “roll call” for ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa. “It’s service delivery improvement or death for us,” Ramaphosa warned.

While the ANC seems to accept it is staring down a barrel as next year’s municipal elections come into view, it also clearly believes there is still time for improvements and negotiations.

Samwu’s Lebogang Ndawu says he worries that the infrastructure and service delivery improvements his workers have been delivering will stop once the G20 wraps up and the spotlight is no longer on Joburg. “We are definitely going to be holding the City of Joburg accountable, as workers who are also community members, to say: ‘What is being done now? Let it not be only done now. Let it be carried over.’”

Among the most visible projects rushed to completion for the G20 was the long-awaited Rea Vaya bus service phase 1C(a). Morero ceremonially “opened” the new trunk line connecting Sandton to the Joburg CBD via Alexandra and Norwood during Transport Month on October 23. However, the November 1 launch date came and went. Amid operational testing and disputes with local taxi associations, it remains to be seen when the 16km route, on which construction began in 2014, will open to the public.

With just days to go before the G20 summit, Samwu and Morero cut a deal. The city reallocated R4bn from its capital expenditure budget to satisfy municipal workers’ demands for increased compensation, a move that could face scrutiny from the auditor-general and store up other problems for service delivery.

The big missing chair at the summit will be US President Donald Trump’s. In September, Trump said Vice-President JD Vance would represent him, “because I’ve had a lot of problems with South Africa and they have some very bad policies”. He has since doubled down, commenting recently that “South Africa shouldn’t even be in the G20 any more” and then ruling out any US involvement.

Approached by the FM for comment on possible embassy or lower-level US involvement in the G20 and the implications for handover (the US hosts the G20 in 2026), the US state department would say only that “as president Trump and secretary Rubio [secretary of state Marco Rubio] have clearly stated, no US government official will travel to attend the G20 summit while the South African government engages in race-based discrimination against the Afrikaner minority and turns a blind eye to violent rural crime disproportionately affecting this community”.

Noting how the tenor of the G20 might tack in a different direction under the Trump administration, Vrbanovic said cities, and organisations such as UCLG and its U20, are uniquely positioned to steady shifts in the diplomatic landscape.

“If you look at the history around this, local governments have played an important role in keeping people and civil society engaged in dialoguing together, even at times when national governments may be having a hiccup in their diplomatic relations. I think cities have often risen above the diplomatic hiccups that from time to time happen among nation states.”