Following the end of the apartheid era, in April 1991 the Central Witwatersrand Metropolitan Chamber was formed as a "people-based" negotiating forum prior to holding a democratic election and the formation of a new administration for the Johannesburg area.

[8] The council adopted the slogan "One City, One Taxpayer" to highlight its primary goal of addressing unequal tax revenue distribution.

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.

[9] However, the new post-apartheid City Council ran into problems in part due to inexperienced management and political pressure, which contributed to over-ambitious revenue projections, over-spending, wasted expenditures and out-right fraud.

But, by far, the biggest financial drain was the failure to collect revenues for services, which ranged from rent (rates) to utilities.

32 of 2000 replaced the GJMC, its four MLCs and also the neighbouring Midrand Local Authority, with the new "City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality" from 6 December 2000.

[13][14] The iGoli 2002 plan went into effect and returned some sectors into "cash cows" that helped support the city in general.

[18] The present day City of Johannesburg was created from eleven existing local authorities, seven of which were white and four black or coloured.

[10] Although Johannesburg was divided into eleven administrative regions, these new divisions did not correspond to the areas governed by the former local authorities.

[22] The first undertaking of the newly created City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, as mapped out by the "Igoli 2002" plan, was to restructure Metro Gas, Rand Airport, and some sports stadiums as stand-alone corporate entities.

In 2010–11, the municipality faced a qualified audit from the Auditor-General following a large number of billing issues, as the result of the flawed implementation of a SAP system.

[24][25] The municipality covers an area of 1,645 square kilometres (635 sq mi), stretching from Orange Farm in the south to Midrand in the north, and contains two big urban centres, Johannesburg and Midrand, and nine more smaller urban centres, namely Roodepoort, Diepsloot, Killarney, Melrose Arch, Randburg, Rosebank, Sandton, Soweto, and Sunninghill.

Residents can lodge complaints, report service problems, and perform council-related business more quickly.

The relationship is similar to that of the larger utilities and agencies, such as City Power, and is designed to maximise efficiency.

An overall Metropolitan IDP looks at the bigger picture and ensures that LIDPs don't conflict or lead to wasted resources.

In the election of 1 November 2021 the African National Congress (ANC) won the largest share of the seats on the council with 91 but once again did not achieve a majority.

[31][32][33] The city management team head office is the Metro Centre Complex in Braamfontein, which is responsible for overall administration, financial control, supply of services, and collection of revenues.

Some of the key city service functions are supplied by separate, self-contained entities, each run on business lines with its own CEO.

These departments have been "corporatised" into separate businesses, run by new managements on performance contracts, and tasked to cut their subsidy levels by R100-million in the next five years.