A police K9 unit patrols outside 80 Albert Street in Marshalltown, Johannesburg, soon after of the horrific inferno that left 77 people dead and scores more injured early on Thursday, 31 August 2023. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla) 
Dear DM168 reader,
A terrible, terrible human tragedy happened in the inner city of Johannesburg in the early hours of Thursday morning.
A “hijacked” shelter for women and children in Marshalltown, which the city of Johannesburg had deserted to fall into disrepair, was engulfed by a devastating inferno, leading to the horrific deaths of at least 74 people, among them 12 children.
My heart goes out to the families who lost their loved ones.
My heart also goes out to all the journalists, such as my colleagues Bheki Simelane, Naledi Sikhakhane, Nonkululeko Njilo, Michelle Banda and Felix Dlangamandla, who witnessed and reported on the unfolding tragedy.
Their stories and pictures give you a glimpse into the searing heartache that has befallen the families of all those who lost their lives.
In his story published on Daily Maverick’s website on Friday morning, Bheki spoke to informal trader Sphiwe Ngcobo, who lived at 80 Albert Street (the building that burnt down), with her family.
She was at her table trading outside when she heard a commotion. She rushed inside to find a man carrying her five-year-old daughter on his shoulder. He put her in an ambulance and paramedics performed CPR. The little girl started breathing again.
Ngcobo’s brother, who also lives in the building, braved the flames and went inside and brought out her two-year-old son. In one of the saddest passages I have ever read, she said to Bheki:
“He placed him on the ground. They also [gave him CPR] in the hope that he would be okay, but suddenly I saw them removing his clothes and then they told me that he was dead.’’
Naledi wrote of a woman who had to jump down from a third floor with her four-year-old child.
In what city, country, world, lifetime is this okay? All the people who lost loved ones and homes in this fire were tenants who paid slumlords to stay in an unsafe building, “hijacked” by criminals.
Bogus landlord
As Nonkululeko explained in her story, this building, known as Usindiso Shelter for Women and Children, intended for the most vulnerable, is the same one that was run by a bogus landlord jailed for illegally collecting rent from tenants.
More than 140 undocumented foreign nationals lived there and this number had grown to more than 200 families who were occupying the five-storey building when it was engulfed by flames on Thursday.
Why did the City of Johannesburg allow the building to be hijacked again by unscrupulous criminals who prey on desperate foreigners’ need for shelter?
It is one of 57 hijacked buildings that the Johannesburg Property Owners and Managers Association has identified and has repeatedly lobbied the City to do something about.
The City sat on its hands and did not implement plans to tackle Johannesburg’s hijacked buildings because, as our associate editor Ferial Haffajee wrote, the new political leadership instituted an investigation into the Problematic Properties task team, which was part of an anti-corruption unit called Group Forensics and Investigation Services.
Who is being protected by an anti-corruption unit being hamstrung?
The people of Johannesburg? No, the slumlords who hijacked those 57 buildings are the ones who definitely get away scot-free.
Xenophobes and political charlatans are quick to lay the blame for the problem of hijacked buildings with foreigners who have fled to South Africa from neighbouring countries such Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Mozambique. This is shameful scapegoating for the incompetence of a ragtag coalition government.
Economic refugees from our neighbouring countries have fled the strangulation of their countries’ economies by self-serving political elites.
Just last week Zimbabweans watched as another sham election legitimised the 80-year-old leader of that country’s 2017 coup, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and kept the ailing country, once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa, firmly in his ruling Zanu-PF party’s control.
It is for reasons such as this that we have thousands of economic refugees from neighbouring countries trying to eke out a living in our cities. Most are like Sphiwe Ngcobo, hard-working, decent people desperate to support their families.
Another scapegoat that city politicians from across the spectrum are blaming is the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI), a human-rights legal NGO. It has been rightfully protecting the constitutional rights of the most vulnerable to safe shelter and from illegal evictions. It cannot be blamed for the dereliction of duty on the part of the city officials and politicians who are responsible for allowing hijacked buildings to proliferate and fall into disrepair.
This is a tragedy that should not have happened. As with the recent explosion, caused by maintenance failures, that ripped up an inner-city street, callous politicians and officials have allowed Johannesburg to decline into a deathtrap — especially for the most vulnerable.
Fighting back
Our lead story in DM168 this week focuses on a group of people who are doing something about the equally callous politicians and officials running another city.
In a previous edition, our Durban correspondent Greg Ardé wrote about the boycott of Westville ratepayers and their clash with their hapless mayor.
There has been so much interest in this story that we sent Greg to get to know more about the people behind the ratepayers’ revolt and to find out about their impending court case against the municipality, as well as what the law says about a growing number of ratepayers around the country who have said “enough is enough”. Read and be inspired.
Here are three of my other favourite stories in the paper:
+ Read Marianne Thamm’s inimitable take on the bizarre attempt to get out of jail by Dr Nandipha Magudumana, who it is alleged helped her partner, convicted rapist Thabo Bester, escape from jail.
+ We have a delightful story by Chuma Nontsele, one of our Cape Peninsula University of Technology interns, about a teenager from Gugulethu and three young men who are off to Spain to learn how to work in the superyacht industry.
+ Last but not least, exclusively for newspaper readers, look out for our five-page Rugby World Cup special, with cut-out-and-keep posters that you can stick on your fridge or wall, telling you where and when each team will be playing. There are spaces for you to fill in the results as they unfold.
Don’t forget to share your views with me at heather@dailymaverick.co.za
Yours in defence of truth,
Heather
This article appears in our Daily Maverick weekly publication, DM168, which is available countrywide for R29.
