Authorities say a building fire has killed many homeless people

A building burnt out by a squatting fire: more deaths in South Africa than London or Grenfell Tower fires

In one of the worst fires in South Africa’s history, 74 people were killed and dozens were injured when a fire ravaged a building where people had been squatting in dangerous conditions.

This is nothing new in this city of 6 million but made headlines this week after the worst fire in recent memory prompted renewed calls for action and led to much political finger-pointing. Authorities are still investigating what exactly caused the disaster.

People lit fires in the winter to keep warm, according to a local government official. There is a fire that officials are looking into.

By midmorning, the fire had been extinguished and firefighters were combing the structure floor by floor, searching for bodies. The emergency services stated that at least 12 children were dead.

The blaze was one of the most deadly residential fires in recent years. The toll is already higher than that caused by the blaze at Grenfell Tower in London.

The Johannesburg emergency medical services building is a “hijacked building”: Witnesses say a fire broke out in the five-story building in the heart of Johannesburg

The New York Times reporters went to the building in May for an article about the chaotic state of South Africa. They saw garbage sagging out of second-floor windows, a pile of trash partially blocking the entrance and a building so overcrowded that people built tin shacks in the back lot.

After the dawn of South Africa’s democracy in 1994, the building became a shelter for abused women and children. The building, which is still owned by the city, was hijacked when that moved out. The building last had a safety inspection in 2019, the year gangs took it over, according to Rapulane Monageng, acting chief of Johannesburg emergency medical services.

There were security gates that were locked when there was a fire that broke out in a five-story building. A mother tossed her baby out of a second-floor window after she jumped from a window.

A witness who didn’t give his name told television news channel eNCA that he lived in a building next door and heard people screaming for help and shouting “We’re dying in here” when the fire started.

Another 43 people were injured in the blaze, which broke out at about 1 a.m. in the heart of Johannesburg’s central business district, Johannesburg Emergency Services Management spokesman Robert Mulaudzi said.

Abandoned and broken-down buildings in the area are common and often taken over by people desperately seeking some form of accommodation. They’re referred to as “hijacked buildings.”

The building fire in Johannesburg’s Central Business District is back: the misery of gang-hijacked towers comes into focus

According to Mulaudzi the death toll was likely to increase as more bodies were trapped inside the building. Three hours after the fire was started, firefighters had worked their way through three of the building’s five floors.

Inside, the haphazardly partitioned buildings have broken windows, dark stairwells, piles of garbage and sewage, and people’s few belongings — a dirty mattress, a cooking pot.

She said she paid the cartel who had hijacked the building 1,200 South African rands a month in rent, about $60. For that she lived in a makeshift shack erected within the building with her two children and boyfriend.

A Zimbabwean, Ndlovu is, like many of the fire’s victims, a migrant from a poorer African country who came to Johannesburg — often dubbed “The City of Gold” — looking for a better life but encountering crime and xenophobia.

People in a country with high unemployment who are desperate for housing have taken to squatting in the multi-story buildings, forced to pay rent to the criminal gangs who now run them.

The building that caught on fire is in what’s still called the Central Business District, even though big corporations have long moved out to the safer suburbs, leaving behind abandoned office spaces that, in South African parlance, have now become “hijacked.”

For some privacy many living in buildings like this use bits of wood, curtains and cardboard to divide their space — all highly flammable materials, especially when many residents cook on fires in large metal drums or use candles when the illegal electricity connection attached to the squat fails.

Some people have suggested that candles might have been the cause of the fire. South Africa is in the midst of a power crisis and there was a blackout at the time, residents said.

The woman, who sells snacks on the street, said she lost everything in the fire. She said herself and her children had only survived because they’d spent the night of the fire staying at her sister’s house.

Source: With Johannesburg’s building fire, the misery of gang-hijacked towers comes into focus

The Johannesburg’s building fire, the misery of gang-hijacked towers comes into focus: A witness to South Africa’s dark past

“When I see today happening this thing, I think God was the one moving me there,” she said. “I see” The other lady lost a child and the other child is in the hospital.

Meanwhile, Mthabiseng Maimane, from a neighboring apartment block, complains criminal elements in such hijacked buildings are contributing to Johannesburg’s already shockingly high crime rates.

I fear for my children. they can’t even go outside to play,” she said, adding that there are drug gangs and crystal meth addicts in the abandoned tower blocks.

There is a chronic problem of housing in the province and the fire demonstrates that, according to the head of the department.

“There are cartels who prey on who are vulnerable people. He said the buildings are in the hands of the people who collect rental from them.

The building at 80 Albert St. that burned this week — and which officials say may have housed as many as 200 families — has a history that’s testament to South Africa’s dark past.

Source: With Johannesburg’s building fire, the misery of gang-hijacked towers comes into focus

The problem of where to place the anti-evictions in South Africa: a wake-up call on the city’s affordable housing crisis

Some officials blame the country’s strong anti-eviction laws for making it too hard to remove people once they’ve occupied a building. These are essential to protecting the dispossessed according to nongovernmental organizations. There is a question of where to put them.

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the site in the aftermath of the tragedy, saying it was a “wake-up call” regarding the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Opposition groups claim the government knew about and neglected the problem for years. They say billions of rands have been lost to corruption over the years that could instead have been used to build housing for the poor.

That’s cold comfort for those who are homeless now, and for the many South Africans and foreign migrants who live in hijacked buildings with no place to go.