Mayor leads ‘bad buildings' inspection in CBD

The Citizen

23-05-2025

Members of the Mayoral Committee, led by Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya, recently conducted a 'bad buildings' walkabout in Pretoria Central.
The effort formed part of the metro's Reclaim Our City (ROC) initiative, a programme aimed at exhilarating urban renewal and stomping out lawlessness across the metro.
The mayor was joined by members of the Mayoral sub-committee, the TMPD and SAPS as well as the Bad Buildings Committee (BBC), a team tasked with identifying and revitalising hijacked, abandoned and derelict buildings in the CBD and surrounding areas.
On May 22, Moya led the expedition to various identified spots around Pretoria Central and West, where an utter disregard for the metro's by-laws was on full display.
The stakeholders convened on Sophie De Bruyn Street where they visited several spots in the vicinity including illegal scrapyards, make-shift residential premises and non-compliant businesses.
'This is one of those buildings that is owned by the city (Bloed Street), but as you can see, there are shacks inside here. I was here three weeks ago, and then, around 300 people were staying here who were served evacuation notices because it is obviously not safe for people to stay here. As you can see, these used to be shacks and now they've been dismantled, you can see that people have moved out, but there are a couple of them who are still here,' Moya said.
'We are trying to avoid a situation such as the Usindo disaster. We need to prevent it. This is one of the buildings we are targeting. For us, it is the whole block that we want to demolish here and provide this piece of land [for housing]. We do have a housing shortage in our city, and we want to deal with our housing needs and attract businesses to the city,' Moya said.
The mayor said there are, however, processes that need to be followed, so the city cannot simply arrive and demand that occupants leave.
ALSO READ: Tshwane looks to Expropriation Act to take over derelict buildings
She described the tour as a fact-finding exercise, saying that some of the properties where these illegal dealings have been occurring were not known to the city.
The mayor said the TMPD, Building Control and partnering stakeholders will decide the course of action to ensure they are not met with the same sight in a few weeks.
She insisted that the previous figures the BBC have indicated regarding the identified buildings which need attention have increased after her Pretoria West visit.
According to the mayor, the city intends to demolish the entire block to build a housing project similar to the Marabastad Townlands.
To address homelessness, the mayor is calling upon NPOs and social organisations to join the party, insisting that the challenge with relocation is that illegal occupants may not want to conform to the rules at shelters.
Environment MMC Obakeng Ramabodu said that a main issue he observed was the lack of compliance with city by-laws.
'We have a lot of by-laws that many people are not aware of, some are made known, but there are some that only exist on file, so we need to make sure that we implement them,' Ramabodu said.
MMC for Roads and Transport Tlangi Mogale said that among the profiling they completed, illegal occupants consist of both South African and foreign nationals.
'We can confirm that most of the people are foreign nationals, but we do have some South Africans as well. They do form part of the indigent programme of the city, but we don't have a scouting team to find them. However, what we also advise is that they come in and work with our NGOs and NPOs, with which we have partnered and signed MOUs to assist them,' Mogale said.
ALSO READ: Tshwane operation finds hijacked building with over 300 shacks
Mogale said that there are a lot of buildings that the city wants to capitalise on and the BBC allows them to proceed with their plans.
'For the longest time, we haven't been playing our part as the city to capitalise on these buildings. If you go further west of Pretoria, you'll realise that we've got so many hijacked buildings which are losing us a lot of revenue because we've been sleeping on them,' Mogale said.
Spatial Planning MMC Sarah Mabotsa said the demolition plans are necessary as the buildings surveyed are not suitable for human occupation.
'What we're going to do moving [forward] is that we'd like to rezone this building and convert it into low-cost housing. We're trying to address what we call 'Apartheid spatial planning', where people are living far from where they work. If we can rezone this, then people will be able to work and enjoy life here, and this is city property,' Mabotsa said.
'So many people would like to live in the CBD and they can't afford these expensive houses, that's why we've come up with this.'
The stakeholders also visit the Tshwane Events Centre or Pretoria Showgrounds for a clean-up operation of this strategic city asset. The mayor said they are working on plans to host a market in the next few weeks as part of the city's economic revitalisation strategy.
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