By Selloane Ntshonyane
- Lolo Ndlovu, 23, has been job-hunting in Kliptown for a year and a half, sending roughly ten applications a week with nothing back yet.
- In Slovoville nearby, a mother says portable toilets go three weeks without cleaning and her children still use them despite the maggots.
Lolo Ndlovu sends out about ten job applications a week from Kliptown. She has been doing this for a year and a half. So far, nothing.
On Wednesday, Joburg mayor Dada Morero stood in a church in the inner city and named Kliptown as one of the areas where the City is implementing capital projects. Ndlovu did not know. Nobody had told her.
“I’ve been job hunting for a year and a half,” she said.
“There are not many opportunities, especially without experience, but I’m still trying to stay motivated.”
She is 23. She has been out of work since 2025. To get by, she relies on family support and cuts back on anything she does not need.
Morero’s State of the City Address, delivered on 20 May, set a target of 50,000 jobs for Joburg’s youth over the next five years. His speech also claimed that 96% of city residents receive sanitation services. The same speech put the city’s water main failure rate at 1,552 per 100km, the highest of any metro in South Africa, and acknowledged an infrastructure backlog of more than R220 billion.
In Slovoville, about five kilometres from Kliptown, 41-year-old Maletlotlo Mekgwe says the portable toilets in her informal settlement are supposed to be cleaned twice a week. They often go for two to three weeks.
“Sometimes it takes two to three weeks before they are cleaned,” she said.
“After about a week, maggots start appearing.”
When the toilets become unusable, residents fall back on buckets inside their homes. Mekgwe says children do not understand why the toilets are off-limits and use them anyway.
“They still use them and then they get itchy after,” she said.
GOOD party national chairperson Matthew Cook, speaking in the SOCA debate on Wednesday, said the reality outside the chamber is different from the picture painted inside it. He pointed to roads collapsing, substations exploding and unemployment he described as devastatingly high.
He said the administration has roughly five months before residents return to the ballot box.
“The measure of success is not how many announcements are made,” Cook said.
“It is whether people’s lives are materially better.”
The City of Johannesburg has said improving service delivery remains a priority and that response times and infrastructure interventions are being rolled out across all regions.
Ndlovu is still applying. Three times a day, most days. Kliptown is still on the mayor’s list. The two have not yet found each other.
Pictured above: Residents in Kliptown and Slovoville say they are still waiting to see the City’s promises reflected in their daily lives.
Image source: Supplied
