There is an unfortunate and destructive narrative that seems to have taken hold regarding the Joburg housing crisis – one that criminalises desperate people who are living in squalid buildings with few to no services. This is not helpful in that it does not deal with the “why”.
Poverty and being homeless are not criminal offences, so why are people being blamed for being the victims of a broken system? South Africa has a widely recognised inequality problem that pushes people to the margins of survival, and the Usindiso fire tragedy in 2023 highlighted the ugliness of this.
Last week, a statement by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa highlighted that it was the failure of the government to provide affordable housing that has resulted in the housing crisis. This is because of its failure to uphold section 26 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to adequate housing, requiring the state to take reasonable measures within available resources to progressively realise this right.
The report by the Commission of Inquiry into Circumstances Surrounding the Death of at Least 77 People and Dozens More Others Injured and Homeless at the Corner of Albert and Delvers streets, Marshalltown, Johannesburg Central Business District (Region F), led by retired Constitutional Court Justice Sisi Khampepe, has found that authorities, including the City of Johannesburg (COJ) and Johannesburg Property Company (JPC) were aware of the unsafe conditions from at least 2019, but took no meaningful action, and that multiple bylaws and national acts were contravened.
This means that the City failed in its responsibility to act on the information that resulted in the unnecessary deaths, which is why the commission has recommended that disciplinary action be taken against former JPC CEO Helen Botes and other COJ officials.
According to the report, it is “unconscionable, almost 30 years after the Constitution was made law, that the quest for proper and affordable housing is growing without any sign of abating. The City is encouraged to re-examine the budget allocated for [temporary emergency accommodation] as well as affordable social housing.”
It is a shame that a building initially erected for the purposes of subjugating the majority of South Africans under apartheid, and subsequently reclaimed post-democracy to provide sanctuary for women and children who were gender-based violence survivors, would meet such a demise. The irony that it would eventually no longer serve its intended use, fall into disrepair and then be hijacked by a housing syndicate cannot be overlooked and can be seen as a metaphor for the current political state of South Africa.
The country was rescued from the suffocating clutches of an unjust system in 1994, only to be hijacked by the criminality and corruption that has spread like a cancer through our state institutions.
Having received the commission’s report, Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi has a tough task ahead of him to turn our housing crisis around. The Usindiso tragedy and implementation of the commission’s recommendations will be a test of his resolve in leading the province through a particularly dark time – one that many of us will remember as a defining moment. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
