Evictions stalled as Joburg City battles hijacked buildings and housing shortage

Evicting people from illegally occupied buildings in Johannesburg remained one of the city’s most intractable challenges, largely because there is nowhere else to put them, according to Johannesburg MMC for Public Safety Dr Mgcini Tshwaku.

Tshwaku said while the city holds numerous court-approved eviction orders, both for privately and publicly owned properties, enforcement is constrained by the law and the city’s deep housing backlog.

“Look, the bad buildings in the city, we can clean them up. We can. There are eviction orders, quite a lot of them, both in the privately owned buildings and also in the publicly owned buildings,” Tshwaku said in an interview with the SABC.

“But the issue that we’re having is just the shortages of alternative accommodation.”

He cited the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act, which requires municipalities to provide alternative accommodation to people removed from occupied buildings.

“According to the Prevention of Illegal Eviction, any person who we take out of those buildings must be given alternative accommodation. So that is a debate where it is at right now,” he said.

Johannesburg’s inner city is riddled with so-called hijacked buildings, properties abandoned by owners, seized by criminal syndicates or unlawfully occupied over time.

Many have become overcrowded, unsafe, and disconnected from basic services, posing serious fire, health and crime risks.

Tshwaku also rejected allegations by ActionSA that he was complicit in illegal occupations or negotiating with criminal syndicates.

“I’m not sure what the guys of ActionSA are on about. They’ve never contacted me,” he said.

“There are allegations that I’m negotiating with the criminals, which is not true. What I’m saying is that the issue is that we don’t have any alternative accommodation.”

He said heavy-handed enforcement without engagement had worsened tensions between residents and authorities.

“We’re always going there with an operation. We go there and lash out and kick doors,” he said.

During oversight visits, Tshwaku said residents told him they were not criminal hijackers but long-term occupants.

“They said, ‘We’ve been staying there for almost 20 to 30 years. We wanted to pay the rates, but we cannot find the owner. The owner disappeared over 20 years ago,’” he said.

Some residents, he added, claimed they had paid money to people falsely presenting themselves as owners, only to discover no municipal accounts were being settled.

Tshwaku said the city was exploring interim solutions that balance legality, safety and practicality.

“Is it possible that we can get everyone else in this building, have a meeting with all of them and ask them, Are you able to pay rent?” he said.

“I can tell you now, a backlog of housing is quite a lot,” Tshwaku added. “So what do we do right now in the meantime?”

He said this was his plan to tackle the issue of hijacked buildings.

kamogelo.moichela@iol.co.za

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