Watershed for Usindiso fire victims as more help appears on the horizon

While the City of Johannesburg and the Joburg Property Company (JPC) have been identified as the entities liable for the devastating Usindiso building fire that led to the deaths of 76 people, it is the finding that the surviving families must continue to receive support and that work must be done to avoid future tragedies that moved one man to tears. 

Human rights activist Andy Chinnah, who was part of the fire support group involved in aiding the victims who were left destitute and with nothing, shed tears when he heard commission chair judge Sisi Khampepe order that a memorial plaque be made to honour those who died, that home affairs continue to replace the documents destroyed in the tragedy and that psychosocial support for traumatised survivors continue.

It was the contravention of laws and bylaws that made this more than a calamity

—  Judge Sisi Khampepe

Chinnah, who has been actively involved in securing transport and meals for victims attending the inquiry hearings, and who has avidly followed the prosecution of the man who admitted to starting the fire to cover up a murder, was pleased to hear that those found liable for the tragedy — the City of Joburg and the JPC — are to be held accountable for their wrongdoings and failures.

Speaking at the release of the final report, inquiry chairperson Khampepe laid out the sheer scale and volume of the task she was given when President Cyril Ramaphosa authorised Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s request to establish a commission of inquiry into the cause and consequences of the fire that happened on August 21 last year, in which 76 people perished and scores more were hurt. 

Chinnah said that initial reports of 77 deaths were declared incorrect after it was found that the remains of one of the victims had broken apart and been contained in two body bags instead of one. And while almost eight months have passed since the tragedy, not all the victims have yet been properly identified.

“The terms of reference of my mandate were to investigate the circumstances surrounding the fire, determine who must be held responsible and is liable, find out what lessons we can learn from this and make recommendations,” Khampepe said at the formal handover of her report to Lesufi on Sunday.

“We heard from 59 witnesses, two of them in camera, 39 statements were read into the record and another 281 were admitted, we had 2,630 pages of transcribed evidence and more than 6,000 more pages of evidence,” Khampepe said, describing the mountain her team had to deal with. 

She said though the City of Joburg had not been responsible for deliberately setting fire to the Usindiso building, it was liable for the conflagration that happened because it was the result of desperate living conditions inside the building which the municipality had been well aware of since 2019, and which they had blatantly ignored. 

“It was the contravention of laws and bylaws that made this more than a calamity.”

These included:

• firefighting equipment being used to bring drinking water into the building;
• illegal electricity connections left exposed and uncovered;
• shacks erected inside the building;
• evacuation features blocked by living spaces;
• chains and locks securing emergency doors; and
• rampant crime allowed to continue unchallenged.

Speaking at the report handover on Sunday, Lesufi said he had already notified Joburg executive mayor Kabelo Gwamanda of the report findings, and that these would be formally served on them and the JPC on Monday morning. 

“They have rights and may take legal action if they don’t agree with or accept what’s in the report, but I am not changing a comma or a word,” Lesufi said, adding that it would become a provincial responsibility to ensure all the recommendations were fully implemented if the City of Joburg failed to do so as they would be gazetted. 

Lesufi said the report identified the Usindiso building hijackers, gave the names of the people who collected the rent and detailed the modus operandi. This information, he said, would be used to hold the criminals to account and would form part of the special interventions to be deployed in other hijacked and abandoned buildings in the city to ensure that such incidents could not continue. 

“But the report is still fresh. This is not a time to cast aspersions,” Lesufi said, offering assurances that action would be taken to hold all responsible entities and individuals to account. 

The second part of the report, which carries a timeline for recommended actions and more fully lays out the plan, will be released on May 13.