Joburg inferno raises questions over city’s service delivery failures

The tragic deaths of more than 70 people in a fire that gutted a dilapidated building in the Joburg CBD on Thursday has brought into sharp focus the systemic collapse of infrastructure and the municipality’s inability to deal with a 20-year problem of hijacked buildings.

It has also brought to the fore fears held by legitimate property owners that they are being overrun by slumlords who preside over decaying buildings.

City of Johannesburg emergency services spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said emergency services were alerted to the blaze in the five-storey Osindiso building on the corner of Delvers and Alberts streets in Marshalltown at about 1.30am on Thursday.

Firefighters managed to evacuate people, but could not save the 74 people who perished in the fire. Another 52 people were injured.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, who cancelled a scheduled address to the nation to visit the scene of the disaster, said the incident should serve as a “wake-up call for us to address the situation of housing”.

“This building is owned by the city and they sought to try and get order in this building. There were attempts made ... [This is a] lesson for us ... we [have] got to address this problem [and] root out those criminal elements,” Ramaphosa said.

“It’s these types of buildings that are taken over by criminals who then levy rent on desperate families,” he said.

The government would implement initiatives to “root out all criminal elements and restore the livelihoods of those who live in the city”.

Ramaphosa said the tragedy would be investigated, adding that Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi and relevant authorities were in the process of “setting up an investigation. We need to go to the bottom of what caused the fire.”

The Johannesburg Property Owners and Managers Association, which represents the majority of Johannesburg inner-city property investors and managing agents involved in the rejuvenation of the inner city, has accused the metro of disregarding pleas by residents to fix the crumbling infrastructure.

“The entire infrastructure of the city is deteriorating, from potholes to water pipes crumbling, to half-completed electrical connections. They ignore the pleas of residents to fix these issues and instead spend all their time trying to figure out how to get more money from residents,” said Angela Rivers, GM of the association.

Rivers also accused the metro of being aware of the issue of hijacked buildings but doing nothing to address this.

“There are 57 hijacked properties in the Johannesburg CBD that I am aware of. The issue of hijacked buildings goes back 20 years,” she said, adding that it had discouraged investment and driven some developers away.

Prof Marie Huchzermeyer from the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits, said: “The question needs to be, what is the future if there continues to be no will to prosecute hijackers, to hold owners and hijackers to account for noncompliance and exploitation, and to implement participatory in situ upgrading of these buildings? This will be a future of increasing exploitation, increasing gains to be made by hijackers, and increasing precariousness for those occupying these buildings in the absence of alternatives.”

Huchzermeyer said the inability to deal with hijacked buildings points to “decay” in the municipality’s willingness to develop a viable plan to provide accommodation for low-income households in the inner city.

Rashid Seedat, executive director at the Gauteng City-Region Observatory, said the issue of hijacked buildings is not the only problem facing the city.

Others included the deterioration in capacity for environmental health and planning control enforcement; poor intergovernmental co-ordination around housing and service provision; and collapsed sectional title arrangements.

Prof Owen Crankshaw of the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol, singled out overcrowding for the emergence of unsafe buildings.

“Sadly, I think that fires in high-rise buildings will recur if the local authority does not step in and do its job by regulating the practices of landlords and residents,” Crankshaw said.

Officials and property owners in the city have also been hamstrung by legislation in dealing with the illegal occupation.

The Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act, which sets out to prevent arbitrary evictions, has made it impossible to evict anyone unless they have alternative accommodation provided by the city, said Rivers.

“The city is incapable of providing alternative accommodation. [It] needs to use its own bylaws to evict people from buildings that have deteriorated so badly.”

In the wake of Thursday’s disaster, the government washed its hands of the responsibility of housing those displaced by the fire, with officials initially suggesting the building had been occupied by illegal foreigners.

Minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni initially said the “majority of those who reside in hijacked buildings are not South African and they are not in this country legally and the government cannot provide housing to illegal immigrants”.

The EFF said the calamity is “a consequence of decades of blatant negligence and lawlessness” in the inner city.

“It is the direct outcome of years of permitting dilapidated structures to exist within the Johannesburg CBD, devoid of adequate upkeep or any form of vigilant oversight,” EFF spokesperson Sinawo Tambo said.

“The EFF has always insisted that addressing the problem of hijacked and dilapidated buildings ... requires the provision of temporary housing for residents [and the establishment of] permanent, low-cost housing alternatives.”

Joburg transport MMC Kenny Kunene said the hijacking of buildings would only stop if the property legislation was amended, because the law says “you must go to court if you want to evict people from a hijacked building, and when you get the eviction order you need to find them an alternative accommodation. How could you possibly do that?”

Kunene, the deputy president of Patriotic Alliance, said illegal foreigners are a problem in the city and called for “mass deportations” as the city was losing revenue from illegal water and electricity connections.

Socio Economic Rights Institute (Seri) executive director Nomzamo Zondo told Business Day: “From the information available, the incident is probably due to an abandonment of the building by the city or its tenants. The fire is not due to Seri’s representation of unlawful occupiers in the CBD who have never refused to move but requested that their eviction must not leave them homeless.”

ActionSA president and former Joburg executive mayor Herman Mashaba said he was dismissed as xenophobic and as a person who “hates poor people” when he led a campaign to reclaim hijacked buildings during his tenure as mayor.

Mashaba said that by the time he left office in October 2019 his administration had identified “over 600 hijacked buildings” in the CBD. Of those buildings, 154 had been “passed through council and awarded to the private sector” to build affordable accommodation.

“As far as I am concerned, this was an accident bound to happen. When I brought this potential tragedy to South Africans, some people and so-called human rights lawyers unleashed insults and name-calling against me, including the ANC reporting me to the SAHRC [SA Human Rights Commission],” said Mashaba.

DA Joburg caucus leader Belinda Kayser-Echeozonjoku said the tragedy has left a scar on the city that will not be easily forgotten, adding: “There will be a time to find the cause of this blaze, and a time to hold people accountable for their actions or inaction — and they will be held accountable.” With Kabelo Khumalo

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