Joburg fire sparked by inaction on buildings hijackings

The City of Johannesburg last did an inspection of the building that caught fire, claiming the lives of 74 people, four years ago.

Acting chief of Joburg emergency medical services Rapulane Monageng said the building was last inspected in 2019, the year it was hijacked.

“Before that could happen, fire safety would go in with other stakeholders from the city…and make sure we tick all the boxes that the building is compliant.

“It was indeed inspected in June 2019, from then we never went back to inspect the building,” said Monageng.

“We wouldn’t want to go back in there in a hostile environment… there were tussles [with building hijackers] in between and no one would want to see us come and do and enforce [the law]…in that space.”

The building in Marshalltown, which once housed vulnerable women and children, is among those hijacked in the city, with the metro saying it had tried to evict people but were faced with litigation.

Since the scourge became rampant around 2008, various mayors have seemingly been making promises to deal with it.

But 15 years later, authorities have done little to deal with the escalating problem.

The mayors include Amos Masondo, Parks Tau, Herman Mashaba, Jolidee Matongo, Mpho Moerane, Mpho Phalatse and Thapelo Amad.

On Thursday, a fire that broke out in one of the hijacked buildings in the CBD claimed the lives of 74 people – 12 children and 62 adults.

Among the deceased were 24 females and 40 males, with 10 people burnt beyond recognition.

City manager Clint Brink said the city had previously leased the building to the provincial department of social development as a shelter for abused women but was later invaded and hijacked at the conclusion of the lease agreement.

He said in 2019, a police raid resulted in about 140 foreign nationals being arrested for illegally collecting rent from tenants but no update was available from the police.

The injured were admitted at Helen Joseph, South Rand, Tembisa, and Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic hospitals.

Brink said 61 people had been treated for injuries, and 16 of those had  been discharged.

He said there were efforts to provide families with the relevant social and psychological support, through the city’s disaster management as well as 16 social workers to assist.

• In May 2009, Masondo said the city had approved an expanded legal section to deal with hijackings in the inner city and surrounds.

During his state of the city address in 2010, Masondo promised residents he would rid the inner city of building hijackers and prosecute them by the end of the financial year.

He was mayor between 2001 and 2011, and at the time praised law enforcement after nine building hijackers were arrested.

Building hijackings involve properties being taken from their legitimate owners and landlords, and populated with tenants from whom hijackers would demand rental money without providing basic services such as water, electricity, refuse removal and sanitation.

• In 2012, Parks Tau who was mayor between 2011 and 2016 said the hijacking of dilapidated buildings especially in the inner city must be countered; adding that 1,294 people had been arrested and 57 cases have been to court at the time.
• Herman Mashaba – mayor from 2017 until 2019 – in his first year in office returned three hijacked buildings to its owners after the hijackers had prevented them from accessing the properties in 2016.

Mashaba, who had labelled building hijackings as a humanitarian crisis, wanted to rid buildings of hijackers so that the buildings  could be turned into affordable residential units for South Africans.

He said the city had conducted an audit on 500 buildings and found that 134 of them were illegally occupied.

• Jolidee Matongo – who served as mayor between August 2021 and September 18 2021 – had bemoaned the slow pace in resolving the scourge of hijacked buildings, attributing to instability with the Joburg Property Company.

He said dealing with hijacked buildings would assist the city finding solutions be brought back so we can redevelop them for social housing.

• In 2021, Mpho Moerane said the ANC in government had devised the Inner City Regeneration Charter, which projected the elimination of dilapidated and hijacked buildings by 2015.

Moerane had, however, blamed the failure of the project on the refusal of owners of the affected buildings to rehabilitate them or allow the city to take control of them. He was mayor from October 2021 to November 2021.

• Mpho Phalatse, who was mayor between November 22 2021 until January 26 2023, said they had begun taking back hijacked buildings, mostly in the central business district, to their owners.

Some of the buildings had been abandoned by their owners and taken over by criminal syndicates, renting them out without paying rates and taxes. She said if the owners could not be traced, they will convert the buildings into affordable housing, among other things, to bring more people closer to economic opportunities. 

sibanyonim@sowetan.co.za