Tshwane's hijacked buildings turned into mini informal settlement and motor spares shop

Some of the City of Tshwane’s hijacked buildings have become mini informal settlements and motor spares shops.

On Wednesday, as part of the city's Reclaim Our City operation, officials visited hijacked buildings in Bloed Street, Pretoria West. 

Mayor Nasiphi Moya said one building has been transformed into a mini informal settlement with more than 300 shacks built inside.

This poses serious health and fire safety risks as people living in the building have connected illegally to the power substation in the yard. 

“There are shacks built in here and there's more than 300 people who live here. There are pregnant women, there are children. We have issued them with notices of eviction. We will rope in the home affairs department and SAPS and our social development department to assist us. There's a lady we found here from Mozambique. She's got a passport but she's sick.”

Moya said they aim to reclaim the city.

“We also need to check the conditions in which these people live here. They have connected illegally with our electricity, with water. This was not supposed to be a building where people live. This is one of the things that drive us to have the Reclaim Our City programme, because there's a lot of lawlessness in our properties and the longer we ignore this the more the problem becomes bigger,” Moya said.

Residents in the building are paying rent to unknown “landlords”. 

“Reclaiming hijacked city buildings is important to avoid the disaster experienced in Johannesburg in 2023, where more than 50 people died when shacks illegally built inside the Usindiso Building caught fire,” she said.

The city discovered another of its buildings hijacked in Bloed Street which has been turned into a motor spares shop. 

“These guys say they buy cars from auction, strip them, sell parts, and we don't have SAPS with us to check the legality of the cars,” she said.

The city shut down the motor spares shop through bylaw enforcement and said the business does not have a lease to use the city’s property. 

“Pretoria West is notorious for issues of scrap and second hand cars and this is another type of lawlessness we can't ignore. They don't have the lease to show us who they lease this from, they have found a private vendor who gives them electricity. They pay for the electricity but it's not the meter of the city. So when we say we want to reclaim the city, this is the sort of lawlessness we must rescue the city from.”

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