JOHANNESBURG — The Johannesburg waste management crisis has escalated into a full-scale disaster, prompting the Joburg Crisis Alliance to warn that the city’s current rescue plan for the embattled waste removal entity, Pikitup, is woefully inadequate. As uncollected refuse continues to pile up across suburbs, advocates argue that the breakdown in collection schedules merely masks deeper financial and governance failures within the metro.
While the Mayor of Johannesburg has acknowledged the growing emergency, attributing the disruptions to cash flow pressures at Pikitup, the city’s proposed solutions are facing intense skepticism. The Mayor recently announced a financial arrangement with the National Treasury to allocate funds for fleet maintenance, fuel, and landfill operations, alongside a plan for weekend catch-up rollouts.
However, Julia Fish, a Steering Committee member for the Joburg Crisis Alliance, argues that these short-term measures fail to address the root causes of the collapse. According to Fish, the current situation is the result of four compounding issues that have deteriorated over the last few months.
First, a new contractor brought on board in December is failing to deliver to required standards, necessitating strict consequence and performance management. Second, an ongoing labor dispute involving casual workers demanding permanent status and a living wage has led to depot blockades, preventing trucks from deploying.
Third, and perhaps most critically, the city failed to act on warnings that its landfill sites would reach capacity. Currently, two of the four landfill sites servicing the city are completely full, significantly increasing transit times for refuse trucks. A previously proposed waste-to-energy program, which was intended to burn waste, reduce electricity costs, and alleviate landfill pressure, has yet to materialize.
Finally, the city is grappling with severe liquidity issues. Pikitup lacks the funds to purchase diesel or maintain its fleet, with many trucks grounded due to unpaid hiring services and a lack of maintenance. Fish notes that simply adding extra weekend collection rounds cannot resolve these systemic fleet and financial failures.
Financial Constraints and Treasury Interventions
During a recent briefing, the Mayor stated that the city’s 2026/2027 budget is technically funded, provided it meets strict National Treasury conditions. These include ring-fencing payments to Eskom and Rand Water starting in July, regularizing R1.8 billion in unauthorized, irregular, and fruitless expenditure, and ring-fencing payments to Pikitup for waste management investments later in the year. Meeting these conditions is expected to unlock R3.6 billion in conditional grants that Treasury had threatened to withhold.
Fish, however, questions the viability of these financial maneuvers. She explains that under the National Treasury’s Operation Vulindlela and Municipal Services Trading Reforms, the goal is to ring-fence municipal entities to ensure a single line of authority. While this is being initiated with Joburg Water—the metro’s most profitable entity—Pikitup and City Power are far more financially constrained.
Pikitup is not a self-sustaining entity and is heavily cross-subsidized by over R1 billion annually through property rates. Under the current 70/30 revenue split, only 70% of ring-fenced revenue goes directly to the entity, while 30% cross-subsidizes the broader city. Fish warns that ring-fencing Pikitup in its current state would trigger severe cash flow issues, as the entity lacks the bulk payment autonomy enjoyed by Joburg Water and City Power. Furthermore, the city’s funded budget relies heavily on reducing non-revenue water and electricity losses and improving a collection rate that has stagnated at 83%.
Labor Insourcing and Executive Austerity
Addressing the labor disputes, Fish highlighted that approximately 70% of Pikitup’s frontline labor is outsourced. The Joburg Crisis Alliance advocates for the insourcing of these workers to ensure they receive a living wage, job security, and government benefits.
To fund this insourcing, Fish argues that the city must implement serious austerity measures at the top end of the wage bill. She pointed out the disparity in municipal spending, noting that while performance and financial assessments (PFAs) and bonuses have been instituted for senior management and the executive branch, these financial benefits have not trickled down to the ground workers who have been promised them for a decade. She insists that excessive spending on board structures, executives, and C-suite managers must be curtailed to afford proper compensation for frontline service delivery staff.
Calls for Provincial Intervention and Liquidation Threats
Looking ahead, the Joburg Crisis Alliance is demanding stronger intervention from the provincial government, noting that while National Treasury has imposed penalties and the Presidency has formed a working group, the province has been largely absent in addressing the city’s financial mismanagement.
Fish suggested that because entities like Pikitup are technically registered as private companies, they should be subject to the same corporate measures as any business that cannot pay its bills. She indicated that the Alliance might call for a liquidation specialist to be appointed to these entities if they remain unable to meet their financial obligations.
With an election year approaching, the Alliance is urging all political candidates to present clear, five-year governance plans to resolve these overlapping utility crises. In the immediate term, however, residents are left in a difficult position. While communities have previously been advised to transport their own waste to dump sites, the combination of full landfills and ongoing strikes makes this impossible, raising serious public health concerns.
Ultimately, the Joburg Crisis Alliance maintains that it will not accept the Mayor’s reassurances until concrete, structural changes are implemented within Pikitup and the broader city governance. As Fish summarized, the Alliance has seen similar promises in the past, and only tangible delivery will change their minds.
