The City of Johannesburg (CoJ) plans to deploy a “bomb squad” to deal with the metro’s pervasive infrastructure issues, from potholes to vandalized street lights.
During the recent 2025 State of the City Address (SOCA), Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero announced that a high-impact implementation task force has been devised to tackle the area’s state of decay.
Morero dubbed this task force a “bomb squad,” explaining that they would be responsible for defusing the ticking time bomb that is Joburg’s crumbling infrastructure.
“In military language, a bomb squad has the responsibility of examining and removing bombs that are found and to prevent them from exploding,” said the mayor.
“This CoJ Bomb Squad must remove constraints that are impacting on the city’s ability to create the Joburg we want to see.”
Morero highlighted several other areas of concern that need to be addressed to prevent the further deterioration of South Africa’s largest city.
This included issues such as illegal mining, unauthorized electricity connections, land invasions, illegal dumping, and undocumented immigrants.
On the subject of illegal mining, the Gautrain service had to be suspended in February this year after an unlawful borehole drilling operation penetrated one of the railway’s tunnels.
This resulted in debris and damage to the railway, necessitating repairs that temporarily halted the service between the Park and Rosebank stations.
In response, the Gautrain Management Agency (GMA) launched legal proceedings against the perpetrators.
“Us damaging the Gautrain tunnel, us damaging traffic lights and removing them, it is a criminal act. Those criminal acts must be prosecuted,” said GMA CEO Tshepo Kgobe.
The SOCA also took note of the metro’s failing infrastructure, such as the pothole epidemic and the lack of functioning traffic lights.
There are an estimated 100,000 potholes in Joburg, and roughly 20% of the city’s 2,000 signalized traffic intersections are out of order owing to theft, vandalism, and vehicle accidents.
Lilian Ngoyi Street, which was destroyed in a gas explosion over two years ago, has also yet to be fixed, bringing additional scrutiny to the collapse of South Africa’s wealthiest city.
Morero labelled the issues as a crisis, stating that a new approach is urgently needed to prevent further decay.
“We need extreme actions to resolve our challenges. We must behave in an unusual manner so that we can see and yield different results,” he said.
The bomb squad leader will be 73-year-old Dr Snuki Joseph Zikalala, who will direct the team to eliminate barriers preventing service delivery in the metro.
A financial headache
Earlier this year, the CoJ revealed that it costs roughly R300,000 to repair a single traffic light.
The city’s management explained that it had witnessed a surge in criminal activity targeting road infrastructure, resulting in damages to around 20% of the metro’s robots.
The issue has grown so prevalent that the CoJ has spent R12 billion on servicing and repairing broken traffic signals thus far.
Furthermore, there are nearly 400 cases on record that still need to be addressed, equating to a repair backlog of over R70 million.
“We are working hard to resolve the challenge [of theft and vandalism], it’s not only traffic lights, it’s also a challenge on street lights lately,” said Gauteng MEC for Roads and Transport, Kedibone Diale-Tlabela
“Since December, we have experienced a lot of vandalism on street lights.”
The CoJ believes that a syndicate is behind the majority of these cases, as criminals often steal the circuitry and components from robots to sell on the black market.
The job of maintaining traffic lights has since fallen under the domain of the Johannesburg Roads Agency, which plans to implement new strategies to avoid further damages.
This includes new security measures such as underground chambers for robots that house the valuable metals in a concrete shell, making it far more difficult for opportunistic criminals to steal.
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