OPINION: Govt failure at heart of inner-city decay, society’s desperation and frustration

According to Joburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda, there were 188 hijacked buildings in the city, and of those, 13 belong to the metro, while other government departments own five others.

The rest are privately owned.

Some government officials, including a cop who is yet to be traced, were nabbed for their alleged part in hijacking buildings.

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Raw sewage streams through the corridors of these apartment blocks, rubbish piles up in the basements, and - where there was space - shacks had been erected inside the building to create some semblance of privacy.

When speaking to the occupants of these buildings in Hillbrow, Marshalltown, and Braamfontein, it became apparent that the popular narrative, claiming the buildings were occupied and hijacked by primarily foreign nationals, was misguided.

Briefing media outside the hijacked Vannin Court building, a day after criminals allegedly robbed and killed a man before escaping into the dilapidated structure, Community Safety MMC Mgcini Tshwaku said their investigations led them to high-ranking officials and businesspeople behind the property syndicates.

READ: Hillbrow's Vannin Court building 'disaster waiting to happen'

“In the Department of Public Safety, there’s an undercover unit working on that. We know who they are; we’ve traced them. You’re going to be shocked when we say their names. We have bank accounts where people are paying,” he said.

The occupants of these buildings, including the survivors of the Marshalltown tragedy, said they paid anything between R250 and R1500 for a spot in the partitioned, often crammed rooms.

The utterings in the public domain, sometimes repeated by politicians, implied some of the foreign nationals – predominantly from Tanzania, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Malawi – that were living in the Usindiso Building refused to be taken to allocated shelters because they were afraid such interaction with authorities would reveal their immigration status.

On Tuesday, Mayor Gwamanda told the council that more than 41% of the 200 families affected by the Marshalltown blaze had been assessed, and of those, 61% were foreign. He, however, did not mention their immigration status.

GALLERY: 

Project Manager for ACTION Support Centre’s Chipo Marunda, who was among officials from various organisations working at the Hofland Recreation Centre in Bezuidenhout Valley, which was being used to accommodate about 150 survivors of the Marshalltown blaze temporarily, explained why some were reluctant to accept social assistance readily.

He said in their experience, what often was intended to last a few days or weeks often extended to months and even years.

“There is a need to invest in longer-term shelters for individuals who find themselves in situations like this. The infrastructure that is there is very limited, and in so many of the cases that we’ve come across, the criteria for longer stay has been more for South African citizens.”

He agreed that undocumented foreign nationals and the negative sentiment towards them are a growing challenge in South Africa. 

“It’s important to highlight that even South Africans themselves find themselves without documentation because maybe a parent died, for example, and now the child cannot access documentation; they have a child, and it becomes a cycle.”

We found this to be accurate at Vannin Court where a woman who was living there said she had lost her ID and could not access many of the services that could improve her life, nor could she formerly apply for a job.

While undocumented foreign nationals do find refuge in these abandoned buildings, too, it would be wrong to suggest all this decay was caused solely by their presence.

Government failure remained at the heart of this lawlessness and sheer desperation.

Commenting on the situation, Angela Rivers from the Johannesburg Property Owners Management Association said building hijackings were not a new phenomenon.

“Twenty years ago, building hijackings were a lot more aggressive, a lot more violent. The hijackers would physically take over the building with strong violence and intimidation. Over the years, we’ve seen that tone down to more of an organised criminal syndicate.”

Rivers believes the metro alone would not be able to adequately address the housing challenges, which she added were exacerbated by COVID-19 when many people lost their jobs and thus the ability to keep their homes.

“We house over 350,000 residents in the inner-city. We know how to do it successfully. That’s lots of great models that work with communal bathrooms and shared ablution. There are lots of different ways to keep the cost and rental down.

“It’s a flow – you find two buildings that are empty, refurbish them they become your temporary social housing, then you can empty two more,” she recommended.

Asked if she believed the current crop of city officials could see such a collaborative effort through, Rivers said she was doubtful.

“We are fighting for everything – for your bill to be done correctly, for the bulbs of your streetlights to be changed. Everything is a battle, but it shouldn’t be that way because they are public servants…

“To add insult to injury, and this really blows my mind, they still give themselves increases seven days after 77 people have died.”

According to Action SA, the salary hike for councillors will cost the city an additional R5.5 million per year, or R20,000 per councillor.  

READ: Death toll from Marshalltown fire rises to 77

The caretaker at the city-owned Moth Transitional House in Braamfontein, revealed to reporters and the Emergency Service officials who were there to conduct an inspection of the building, that there were at least 300 families living there; and that of those nearly 50 were not from SA.

Residents were mainly from KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, but some came from within the metro.

In the case of the Moth House community, 147 individuals were moved from Newton to make way for developments.

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Three years ago, their water and electricity were cut. Criminals use the place as a hideaway, as they do the Vannin Court building in Hillbrow.

The absolute squalor that people are forced to live in haunted my thoughts since first reporting from the pavement of 80 Albert Street, just meters away from more than 70 lifeless bodies while contending with the distinct whiff of burned flesh.

For days, I battled to sleep. The devastation consumed my mind.

As a mother, I would be coming home to my children who were bathed, fed, clothed, and were growing in undeniable privilege and fortune…my heart ached for the many babies we left behind in those inhumane conditions when the cameras stopped rolling.

The people are suffering…THE PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING, and this government (in all three spheres) has repeatedly demonstrated that they have no plan to rescue this dire situation.

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