Johannesburg - “Politicians are busy with motions of no confidence and senseless fights while the city is burning.”
So said a neighbour who tried to call emergency services to rescue scores of people trapped inside a five-story building in Marshalltown that caught fire early on Thursday.
Bheki Moyo said that after hearing screams from his neighbours who live in the building, he tried to call emergency services and the police. His pleas were met with an assurance that help was on the way, but Moyo said help arrived only two hours later.
“I heard people screaming and saw some of them jump from the upper floors. When I made a call, I was told help was on the way, but firefighters arrived only at least an hour after my call, and two hours after the initial calls from other people.”
Moyo said this could have been avoided had help come sooner. He said even though life in the building was bad due to criminal elements in the building, lives were lost.
“I was robbed by someone who stayed in that building, but that does not help, as people have died. We tried to call for help, but it only arrived two hours too late. Maybe the City needs to have mechanisms in place that trigger an immediate response during such times,” he said.
ActionSA leader and former Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba said the deaths of 74 people could have been avoided, and it should be declared culpable homicide.
“This was avoidable. It was an accident bound to happen, and in my world this is culpable homicide or murder. When I took over as mayor on December 1, 2016, I raised the issue of hijacked buildings in the city.
“At that time, the municipality was facing over 300 000 backlogs. I said we could not live like this. I said we were going to form a special unit where we were going to go after the owners,” he said.
Moyo said hijacked buildings would continue to kill innocent people if the City continued to fight for its positions while leaving its residents to suffer.
This is as more than 200 survivors, victims, and tenants of the five-story building pick up the pieces of their lives.
Gauteng MEC for Social Development, Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment, Mbali Hlophe, said alternative shelter was being arranged to ensure no one was left behind, regardless of their nationality.
“This is a humanitarian crisis, and we will not enter politics but intervene to ensure the victims are accommodated in various places. We will prioritise children and women in some of the places,” she said.
The incident, which has sent shock waves across the globe, occurred on the corner of Albert and Delvers streets.
According to reports, the building belonged to a non-governmental organisation abandoned, then hijacked by inner-city residents living there illegally.
A former tenant, Afikile Madiya, who lived in the building while it was still a shelter for women and children, told ‘The Star’ officials had done nothing to stop criminals from invading the building.
“This building was vandalised, and men started living here among us women. When we were living here, I was staying with my mother, and men started coming in, which compromised our safety as this was a shelter for women and children.
“People have been raped, and criminality sky rocketed immediately after the building was raised and vandalised. I am grateful I managed to leave this place in time before my mother died, as I was scared for my life while all this was happening. It is sad to see a place you used to call home in such a terrible state, and people you know being reported to have died or are missing,” she said.
Madiya said she always thought about her safety while living there, and was lucky to have moved out in 2021, after the building was taken over by rogue elements.
Some of the residents of Albert and De Villiers streets blamed the government for the fire and the unsafe building and living conditions.
Another resident, who did not want to be named, said the building housed at least 1 000 people, most of whom were undocumented. He said sometimes one room housed more than 10 people.
“This place was a haven for criminals, and lots of drinking and drugs were the order of the day here,” he said.
MMC for Community Safety, Dr Mgcini Ntshwaku, said the building was declared unsafe by the City’s emergencies, but they could not close it down due to interference by NGOs and other human rights organisations.
He said every time they came up with a piece-by-piece strategy to remove the residents, NGOs such as Seri took them to court, and they were nearly arrested in one of the buildings. He said the strategy had worked in a building called Metro Centre in Hillbrow, where they had moved people.
“We are going to use the same strategy, even though it takes too long,” he said. “I did indicate that this building would one day catch fire. The province and the City will sit down and implement this strategy to avoid litigation. We need a radical approach. We have volumes of reports, but people still take us to court as a result.”
Ntshwaku said the City was not able to legally connect electricity to such buildings, which is why they wanted NGOs to stop litigation against the City. However, Madiya said the government was to blame for the deaths.
“This place was for women. We informed the government authorities a long time ago, when we noticed men vandalising this building after they started to hijack it. The government knew this was a shelter, but they left it like this without rescuing it,” he said.
The Star