EDITORIAL | The fire is a reminder Joburg is one of the most unequal cities in the world

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.

While the shiny hub of Sandton is the playground of the wealthy in Johannesburg, just around the corner lies the shantytown of Alexandra, where shack fires have become a regular occurrence, illustrating the life-threatening risks of living in an informal settlement. Every shack fire death should bring us to a stop and force public and private institutions to seek answers on how to make safer living a reality. Every shack fire death should count. From the three deaths in one lonely shack fire in Alex in 2020 to the staggering 74 deaths in Johannesburg’s inner city on Thursday. Perhaps the scale of this week’s devastating fire in a hijacked building, littered with self-built shacks inside, will finally force the message home that we need a complete rethink on Johannesburg’s homelessness crisis. 

It is easy to point fingers at the city, politicians, the poor, nonprofit organisations, the building hijackers. Just the exercise of seeking blame proves how layered the problem is.

Hijacked and abandoned buildings in the inner city are not a new problem. City officials have had some failures and some successes in dealing with this complex matter, straddling issues such as drug abuse, poverty, homelessness and common criminality, where self-appointed landlords simply take over buildings. In 2020, TimesLIVE reported on a once-hijacked building that was turned into student accommodation. The building, formerly known as “Cape York” also had a fire in 2017 and one man, trying to escape the blaze, died after leaping from the third floor. Six others died inside. The nine-storey block of flats has since been refurbished — creating some 190 construction jobs in the process — to house more than 500 students. 

It can be done. The negative can be turned into something positive. Even if we begin with pockets of successful projects, it is still a start. In the aftermath of this tragedy, it is easy to look for a culprit to blame for the senseless loss of lives, which heartbreakingly includes 12 children. It is easy to point fingers at the city, politicians, the poor, nonprofit organisations, the building hijackers. Just the exercise of seeking blame proves how layered the problem is. This is where true leaders must look towards the future and start constructing the building blocks of a new reality where no-one will ever again have to face the torrents of tears of Thursday.