‘I'll fight these criminals until the day I’m no longer on this earth’: Mashaba takes on building hijackers

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba says Gauteng metros are suffering financially from criminals taking over state and privately owned properties.

Mashaba told TimesLIVE that the Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and Johannesburg municipalities needed to prioritise the reclaiming of abandoned and hijacked buildings they are not receiving rental money from. He said these buildings were being managed by people who were stealing rent money that should be going to local government.

The former Johannesburg mayor, who has previously talked tough on municipalities getting back ownership of  abandoned and hijacked buildings, said that mission remained important to his party.

“We will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that city administrations prioritise reclaiming these buildings,” he said.

Mashaba said ActionSA had recently helped the owner of a property he’d  bought for R2.6m in Germiston in Ekurhuleni regain his property after it had been hijacked.

“No law enforcement agency was prepared to help him. He was paying R25,000 a month to the banks and yet rental money of tenants was going to the people who had hijacked the building,” said Mashaba.

A man had been arrested in January for the hijacking, Mashaba said.

Mashaba said people who hijacked properties faced no consequences. “Eventually this country is going to be taken over by criminals,” he said.

He claimed that property hijackers were working in collusion with municipal officials.

“They work with people inside the municipalities and they inflate your rates. You get a bill of about R200,000,” he said.

“While you are fighting with the municipality they [criminals] threaten you and in the long run you lose your house and it gets hijacked. The problem is much bigger.

“I will fight these criminals until the day I’m no longer on this earth.”

Last August the Ekurhuleni council passed a motion to prioritise the resolving of the problem of hijacked buildings.

Speaking to TimesLIVE this week, spokesperson Zweli Dlamini said most of the hijacked buildings in the region were privately owned.

“In most instances the critical impact [to the municipality] is that of revenue losses due to illegal connections to the services of the city without payment. 

“Affected services are water, electricity and waste management — which cost the city a lot and yet no cent is recovered.”

Dlamini said the municipality had established a team to address the illegal connections.

“We are also identifying details of the owners of the title deeds of all the buildings, especially those with outstanding arrears for rates and taxes, so that we can look at better ways of recovering these monies, including expropriation should it be necessary.”

A recent auditor-general report on the City of Johannesburg highlighted that it had electricity losses of R4.1bn and water losses of R2.1bn. 

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