Lindokuhle Majola, 38, could only watch in disbelief as the building he initially moved to as a temporary shelter in 2009 deteriorated into squalor.
Majola recalled that he was among a group of people who were moved from a dilapidated building in Carr Street in Newtown to make room for a new development.
Without any means of income, he moved to the Moth House building, a transitional house, with about 143 other occupiers. At the time, he recalled, they were only meant to stay there for 12 months.
He said they moved into the area when the City of Johannesburg was ordered by the high court to find them a temporary shelter, but since then it has been more than 15 years.
“Now they are claiming that we have hijacked a building. We arrived in 2009 with a court order. Then it was fine, there were security officials and cleaners, but as time went on, the cleaners stopped coming to work,” he said.
He said security guards who were placed at the entrance gate and a caretaker suddenly stopped going to the building. As one of the leaders in the area, he said they have constantly contacted the City of Joburg about the problems, including issues of maintaining the building and more people occupying the flats.
Majola was among a group of people who were reluctant to move out of the building when the city was relocating residents to a temporary shelter after it had obtained the court order in October.
Monica Hassamo from the Inner City Resource Centre, an organisation which was formed to uplift and develop residents in the inner city, said residents were moved into the building in 2009.
“They have stayed here in transitional housing, which was supposed to be six to 12 months, then it became a permanent stay from 2009 to 2024,” she said.
She added that in October this year, the city told residents they had obtained an order to evacuate them, but alleged that this wasn't communicated properly.
She said the city was allegedly only communicating with one person from the flats, and residents only speculated but didn’t believe that individual.
“The city should have been transparent and communicated with people in time because it was speculation from October, saying we are moving you, but they did not know where they were going. That was the biggest concern to the residents,” she said.
City of Johannesburg spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane said they have been constantly communicating with residents since they obtained the evacuation order in October. He said the initial evacuation was in October, but some of the residents raised an issue with schooling as some of their children were writing exams.
That was when they agreed to do the evacuation in December. “Today we started with the process because some residents had already packed their stuff for the past two months and they were starting to complain saying, you said we are moving and when are we moving? We did engage with the residents here,” said Modingoane.
He said in properties like the Moth building, there would be different dwellers advocating for their programmes and they have been engaging with the leadership responsible for co-ordinating.
For now it is a temporary arrangement until we sort ourselves out, together with them
— Nthatisi Modingoane, City of Joburg spokesperson
“You might find out when they convene their internal meetings, that those residents who are complaining were not part of those meetings, we might not know all the details.”
The building was a transitional housing facility and after the allocation of units to individuals, people started to ignore certain conditions that were set by the city which they should have been complying with, he said.
“People started breaking some of those rules, not allowing our officials to come and enforce rules and started blockading our officials when they come to inspect the conditions of the building.”
The city got a court order to access the building and assess the conditions. They found the conditions had deteriorated, he said. About nine buildings, most of them private, have been deemed inhabitable, and one of them used to be a hotel.
“These people are going to Fleurhof, and as we prepare for other evacuations, we will announce where the other people going. There are different options. We know people here can afford to pay rent and they are working.”
Most of the residents who would be evacuated would go to social housing facilities, pay rent and would stay there for as long as they were willing to pay, Modingoane added. The defaulting ones, the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Joshco), would take steps in terms of their policy to collect rentals.
“There are those that have been found not to have the means, that approach will have to be an RDP approach — they will have to look at the waiting list to see whether they have applied, did they qualify, when or are there any projects where they can be taken. For now it is a temporary arrangement until we sort ourselves out, together with them.”
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