Where were you when Johannesburg collapsed around us, Mr President?

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s shock at finding out about everything in South Africa that does not work has become a joke by now, making citizens wonder where he lives that he does not see how bad service delivery is, how corruption continues unabated and the people of Johannesburg who pay his salary battle with potholes, broken traffic lights and electricity and water that, like our leaders, is missing in action.

The people of Johannesburg have been complaining for years that our city is failing to be “a world class African city”. Nobody listened. They simply continued their political games in the city council, trying to see who could bully the other parties the most.

They even let the big municipal building in Braamfontein fall into so much disrepair that it is no longer safe to work there.

While they were playing power games, our city started to collapse. Potholes became more numerous and bigger. Traffic lights do not work for months, if not years. Streetlights have not worked for years. Storm water drains and streams are not maintained, leading to floods when there is heavy rain, as we saw earlier this week.

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Holes dug by Joburg Water when water pipes are fixed are left open and dangerous for months, if not years. Lillian Ngoyi Street literally blew up and years later, it remains a gaping hole.

The Johannesburg library has been closed for years due to non-existent maintenance. Our art gallery is in such disrepair that experts fear the art will be damaged.

Mr. Ramaphosa, where have you been? Remember at the beginning of your first term when you would go into the real world and talk to real people? Remember when you used to go and walk on the Sea Point promenade and chat to everyone?

I wish you could do it here in Johannesburg so that we can show you how government is failing us. Not a planned PR visit with your entourage, but a real meeting with the people of Jozi.

Do you care that students can no longer sit in the library and smell the old books, drinking in the knowledge that lives there?

Do you care that I cannot take my granddaughter, who loves art, to the art gallery to see the work of the great artists?

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Now you are worried that overseas visitors for the G20 will come and see the real Jozi and decide not to invest here. Why do you care more about what they think than what we, the citizens of Jozi, think of our city? We are invested here and we invest all our money here. And we pay our taxes.

And now you want Jozi to be spruced up for foreign visitors, with the mayor promising that the roads the G20 visitors will use will be free of potholes and broken traffic lights in November? Do you know that when he was elected he told us not to expect much over the next two years?

I find it hard to believe you are the same man who got the whole country behind you when you said “Thuma mina”. But when we sent for you, you did not come.