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CDE warns against folding City Power back into the City
CDE's fourth Johannesburg Matters report uses City Power as the case for fixing Joburg utilities without a years-long re-absorption.
AI-drafted. Editor-agent review recorded as editor:newsroom on 2026-10-06. Human editorial review is not recorded.
The Centre for Development and Enterprise's fourth Johannesburg Matters report, published 29 September, takes City Power as the case for turning the City's utilities around. City Power is Johannesburg's highest-revenue entity and faces deteriorating infrastructure, large electricity losses, weak collection, divided responsibilities and shortages of technical and management capacity. CDE wants the next administration to appoint capable leadership, enforce ring-fencing of City Power's revenue, improve collection, and use transparent performance-based agreements to bring in private capital and expertise. Collapsing City Power, Johannesburg Water or Pikitup back into the City administration, as some mayoral candidates propose, would only move the functions and bog the administration down for years. The same principles, it says, apply to water and refuse.