EDITORIAL | The fire is a reminder Joburg is one of the most unequal cities in the world
Instead of looking to blame someone for the Joburg CBD fire, we should look to build something positive from this
It is a tragic irony that the Johannesburg inner city building where more than 70 people were killed in a fire in the early hours of Thursday morning is an old apartheid heritage building. The entrance to the block identifies it as the “Central pass office”, the place where “dompas” documents were collected as part of the apartheid pass law system regulating movement in formerly white suburbs. This happened at the height of our country’s darkest times of inequality and discrimination. Sadly, the building fire reminds us that Johannesburg remains one of the most unequal cities in the world, buckling under an influx of job seekers — because it is also one of the richest cities in Africa...
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