Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba on Thursday cancelled the City’s R1-billion co-production programme Jozi@Work, which was spearheaded by the previous administration, saying that it was littered with patronage.

Jozi@Work, a programme designed to allow communities to partner with the city in the delivery of municipal services in their neighbourhoods, was launched in September 2014.

In his quest to root out corruption in the city administration Mashaba has already cancelled “vanity projects” of the previous African National Congress (ANC) administration worth R270-million per year.

Those projects include, among others, mushroom farms, paper produced from stone, solar-powered bakeries using mango flour imported from South America, and the implementation of bicycle lanes.

In a statement on Thursday, Mashaba said he had been struck by how communities despised the unfairness of the city’s projects to provide short-term work opportunities under the banner of Jozi@Work.

Mashaba said communities had been complaining that these work opportunities were handed out on the basis of membership of the previous governing party.

“Each project was outsourced to a middleman, known as a Capacity Support Agent (CSA), which effectively became a patronage network for the previous governing party. These CSA’s would become rich overnight while many in our communities remained without work opportunities,” Mashaba said.

“After a mayoral committee held last week, I am pleased to announce the end of an era of patronage with Jozi@Work.”

Mashaba said the city was starting work on a new programme to be modelled on fairness and equal opportunity, which would be unveiled in six months’ time. Among the changes in the new programme would be the removal of the CSA, with the city employing community members directly.

“I have instructed the administration of the city to commence work on revising this programme and rebranding it so that it is no longer associated with the patronage and unfairness of the past,” Mashaba said.

“The process of producing an accurate indigents list in our city, which will serve our efforts to assist the most vulnerable in our city beyond even this policy, has already been initiated.”

Mashaba said he was looking forward to announcing the launch of the new programme “as the city begins a new era of bringing fairness and opportunity to our residents”.