Kenny Kunene has used his stint as acting Johannesburg mayor to conduct a raid on one of the hijacked buildings in the Johannesburg CBD. These buildings have made the CBD look like a slum in some parts, scaring investors away.
Some of these buildings strain the city's resources because, somehow, there are water and electricity, and those services are not being paid for. There is also overcrowding in these buildings and poor sanitation as some of them do not have running water and facilities.
A multitude of them are a fire hazard, as seen with the Usindiso building fire which led to the deaths of 76 people in 2023. This neglect has led to abandoned buildings becoming a hotspot for crime and lawlessness and some harbour undocumented migrants.
During one of the operations by City Power to cut off illegal electricity connections in four hijacked buildings in Jeppe in 2023, the power utility abandoned its plans after tenants became violent and attacked journalists and technicians as the police pulled out of the operation. The entity’s revenue protection team, with police and the JMPD, had planned to disconnect several hijacked buildings.
People from other provinces looking for job opportunities flock to the CBD only to find themselves forced to squat in these unsafe buildings where cardboard partitions are the norm, as some were previously office buildings.
During his raid in one of the buildings on Tuesday, accompanied by Johannesburg public safety MMC Mgcini Tshwaku, Kunene found a crèche operating behind walls made of cardboard and mattresses.
“The lawlessness that we are seeing in the buildings that are hijacked leads to these illegal crèches in inhumane conditions. So we are assisting the parents of those children by clearing all these illegal buildings,” Kunene said.
He said the city will expropriate hijacked buildings where owners cannot be found.
It's easy for an acting mayor, such as Kunene, to create public relations gimmicks knowing the limitations imposed by the finite hours in office. They also know their solutions won't be tested over time
The issue of hijacked buildings has been the bane of successive city managers who seem not to know what to do about them.
After the Usindiso blaze, the City of Johannesburg indicated it planned an urgent application to get clarity on court rulings that have frustrated efforts to reclaim abandoned and hijacked properties in the inner city.
The city had hoped its legal action would draw a line under the failed attempts of successive administrations to rejuvenate the inner city and provide it with a legal framework to tackle the problem, which has worsened since businesses fled the city since the late 1980s.
However, nothing has come of that planned court action. Close to two years later, the city still finds itself with these hijacked buildings. This is not a small problem. In September 2023, then city manager Floyd Brink said there were 188 “active” cases of hijacked buildings in the city centre.
It's easy for an acting mayor, such as Kunene, to create public relations gimmicks knowing the limitations imposed by the finite hours in office. They also know their solutions won't be tested over time.
But the city's mayor, Dada Morero, will soon return to his job. We hope he will return with renewed zest and zeal — even if this has eluded him in his first 10 months in office. Either way, the city's residents require him to come up with concrete plans and actions to eliminate these unsafe spaces. The city can neither afford further deterioration nor Kunene-style gimmicks.
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