Mashaba's Five Problems With The City Of Joburg

Mayor of Johannesburg Herman Mashaba delivered his annual State of the City Address on Wednesday.

Before tabling his budget allocation for 2017, Mashaba was quick to highlight the city's plight. In his assessment, he focussed on issues of unemployment, infrastructure, housing, lawlessness and corruption currently plaguing Johannesburg.

This is Mashaba's first state of the city address. He became the mayor of South Africa's economic centre in August last year.

This is the list of the problems Mashaba believes his municipality is facing this year, which he plans to solve:

• Unemployment: "Johannesburg today has 862,000 unemployed people, with an unemployment rate of over 30 percent."

• Infrastructure: "Neglect to prioritise maintenance and repairs of city infrastructure has produced a 10-year R170 billion unfunded gap on capital infrastructure."

• Housing: "We have inherited a housing backlog, conservatively estimated at 300,000 units, and an average delivery of only 3,500 housing units per year...181 informal settlements have mushroomed across the city. More than half of these informal settlements have no basic services."

• Corruption: "Since taking office, we have been inundated with cases of corruption, nepotism and fraud."

• Lawlessness: "Dozens of buildings have been hijacked by slum lords and far too many families and communities have been destroyed by drug lords and crime."