Johannesburg it’s often described as Africa’s richest city home to many of the biggest companies and more millionaires than any other city on the continent but documents seen by Bloomberg show it’s $12 billion behind on vital maintenance to its water Road electricity infrastructure improvements needed for services to be maintained to its 5 million residents the Decay is plain to see roads are riddled with ptal that lie unattended for months power outages due to dilapitated substations and cables are a regular occurrence and it loses almost half of its water to leaks early this year a l we in the city went without water for as long as 11 days after a lightning strike disabled the pumps at a key Reservoir and the city struggled to get water flowing through the pipes again for now the city has no clear plan as to how to resolve the issue the council last month agreed to borrow $140 million at a crippling interest rate to try and plug the hole and oppose significantly above inflation increases for property rates and utility charges in July