The City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality is a metropolitan municipality that manages the local governance of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is divided into several branches and departments in order to expedite services for the city.

Johannesburg is a divided city: the poor mostly live in the southern suburbs or on the peripheries of the far north, and the middle class live largely in the suburbs of the central and north. As of 2012, unemployment is near 25% and most young people are out of work. Around 20% of the city lives in abject poverty in informal settlements that lack proper roads, electricity, or any other kind of direct municipal service. Another 40% live in inadequate housing with insufficient municipal housing.

During the apartheid era, Johannesburg was divided into 11 local authorities, seven of which were white and four black or coloured. The white authorities were 90% self-sufficient from property tax and other local taxes, and spent Rand 600 (USD $93) per person, while the black authorities were only ten percent self-sufficient, spending Rand 100 (USD $15) per person.

The first post-apartheid City Council was created in 1995. The council adopted the slogan "One City, One Taxpayer" in order to highlight its primary goal of addressing inequal tax revenue distribution. To this end, revenue from wealthy, traditionally white areas would help pay for services needed in poorer, black areas. The City Council was divided into four regions, each with a substantially autonomous local regional authority that was to be overseen by a central metropolitan council. Furthermore, the municipal boundaries were expanded to include wealthy satellite towns like Sandton and Randburg, poorer neighbouring townships such as Soweto and Alexandra, and informal settlements like Orange Farm. The four councils or Metropolitan Local Councils (MLCs) were the Northern MLCl, Southern MLC, Eastern MLC and Western MLC (sometimes referred to as Metropolitan Substructures), under a central metropolitan council. This arrangement ended in 2000.

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