Last week the ANC-led coalition of doom in Johannesburg was meant to table the city’s 2026/27 medium-term budget. Instead, it presented a fairytale, one that could only be produced in the ANC’s unique school of mathematics.Just weeks ago the party’s own national finance minister wrote to mayor Dada Morero, in effect warning Johannesburg is bankrupt. But on Wednesday last week the city’s new MMC for finance, Loyiso Masuku, gave the finance minister and the residents of Joburg the middle finger, proudly announcing an operating budget that is 10% larger than last year’s version, which had already proved unaffordable.It’s not so much that the ANC thinks money grows on trees. Rather, it thinks money can simply be squeezed from the pockets of residents, even in the middle of a devastating cost-of-living crisis. Residents are expected to pay 12.5% more for water, 11% more for sanitation, 8.6% more for electricity and 6.2% more for refuse collection.What do they get in return? Water cuts. Power outages. Sewage running down their streets. By comparison, Cape Town has expanded its rates relief package to protect lower and middle-income households by raising the rates-free rebate for these homes up to R620,000 — more than double Johannesburg’s. It has kept electricity increases well below that of Eskom and Johannesburg. Increases to water and other tariffs are also well below Johannesburg’s. Despite this, Cape Town has managed to announce a South African record infrastructure budget that exceeds that of all three Gauteng metros combined. The R8bn increase in the Joburg 2025/26 budget goes entirely into the city’s operating budget — the part of the budget that pays for things such as salaries and day-to-day consumption. In plain terms, the money is eaten up. By contrast, the capital budget — the money that should be invested in roads, water pipes, substations, traffic lights and other infrastructure that delivers long-term value to residents — has not been increased.The real purpose of this fairytale budget is to absorb a R10.3bn “politically facilitated agreement” with municipal workers union Samwu. A “politically facilitated agreement” is code for a politically-motivated feeding scheme designed to buy loyalty. Or, in the words of the ANC’s own finance minister, an “illegally signed agreement” because it was funded by money that exists only in the ANC’s fairytale fantasy-world of municipal budgeting.None of this appears to bother Masuku, who was herself recently inserted into a newly created deputy mayor position, with all the associated costs, to manage a factional power struggle after the ANC’s recent split regional conference in Johannesburg. There is plenty of money for her. Just as there is money for 12 of the 13 heads of Joburg’s municipal entities to earn above the stipulated maximum. Most notably the CEO of the Johannesburg Property Company, who received a tidy 60% increase this year to reach a salary of R5.5m.Overall, executive pay for Joburg’s senior management has increased by 26% since 2022, despite a 3.3% public sector guideline. But, of course, when it comes to fixing the basics of local government — burst pipes, potholes and broken street lights — then Johannesburg’s governors claim to have insufficient funds. This is obviously all bad news for the residents of Joburg. But there is one piece of good news: the National Treasury appears to have had enough of this nonsense too. This budget is unfunded, unlawful and flies in the face of the Treasury’s scathing letter to the city of April 23.The DA will not allow this corrupt administration to flush away the last of Johannesburg’s precious and fast-depleting resources. We will not allow the ANC to abuse ratepayers to buy political loyalty and bail out its own financial recklessness.We reject this fairytale budget. We will call on the relevant authorities to hold those responsible to account for their obvious breaches of the Municipal Finance Management Act. If Joburg is to have any chance of recovery, this madness needs to stop now.Zille is DA mayoral candidate for Johannesburg.