Johannesburg Matters: Time for Action – Corruption in Joburg

Report 5: Time for Action – Corruption in Joburg focuses on what the City could do to protect itself from enemies within. Corruption robs the city of the resources needed to maintain and expand infrastructure. Worse, it has been exploited by people who profit from keeping the City broken: infrastructure theft creates contracts for repairs, water failures create demand for tankers, and dysfunction creates opportunities for emergency procurement. There is a powerful ‘crime-council ecosystem’ in Johannesburg. Political, business and criminal interests intersect and benefit from the growing dysfunctionality. Political influence over boards and senior management enables tender manipulation. Corrupt officials cooperate with criminals involved in infrastructure theft, sabotage and building hijacking; others engage in extortion. Violence and intimidation protect these interests and threaten investigators, whistleblowers, politicians and legitimate businesses. A new Johannesburg administration should act quickly to build an anti-corruption system that can withstand resistance, prevent opportunities for corruption, detect wrongdoing, investigate it effectively, disrupt the networks behind it, punish those responsible and protect those who expose it. The report sets out ten immediate priorities for a new administration to make corruption harder to commit and conceal, easier to investigate and more likely to result in arrests. Johannesburg desperately needs leaders committed to dealing with corruption and criminality in and around the administration and its politics. The report draws on research commissioned by CDE from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Joburglary: Assessing the Crime-Council Ecosystem in the City of Johannesburg (October 2026), see below.

Full Report media release Joburglary