Collapsing buildings and lapses in safety bedevil the SA construction sector

Daily Maverick

28-05-2025

The construction sector has one of the highest accident rates of any industry in South Africa, with 1.5 to two fatalities per week. It is classified as one of the top four high-risk industries in the country, according to Deputy Minister of Employment and Labour Jomo Sibiya.
Building collapses occur when a structure fails and partially or fully collapses, endangering human lives and health. This can result from various factors, including structural failures, poor construction practices and external forces such as fires or earthquakes.
The effects of a building collapse can be devastating, leading to loss of life, injuries, property damage and significant economic and social disruption.
George disaster
On 6 May 2024, the Neo Victoria project, a residential building under construction, collapsed in George, Western Cape, killing 34 workers and injuring 28 – a tragic disaster and among the worst in the South African construction industry.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said, in extending his condolences, that 'we know that many of you are in grief. There's no worse grief than people who have lost their loved ones… We are here to give comfort, and there will be a need for… psychosocial support. And when that is the case, we will have people who will give that support… There will be assistance for those who are in hospital to be well treated, there will be assistance for those who have to be buried. There will also be compensation that will have to go through the channels of our various institutions.'
Most of the dead were foreign undocumented labourers from Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. To date, there is no record of their names. After all, in South Africa, undocumented migrant labourers are expendable.
The Minister of Human Settlements, Thembi Simelane, presented a report by the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) to the parliamentary committee on human settlements on 4 April 2025.
She said 'it's a report which indicates the failure of our systems at the NHBRC… There was a lapse of enrolment requirements which were overlooked by our internal staff at the council… There was a lapse… with regard to the structural engineering and drawings and the details which were not fully disclosed as they should have been…
'We also had missing detailed material information about the construction… The contractor cut corners. Our system enabled him to cut corners by not following our standard operating procedures and even approving without the fulfilment of all the necessary attachments that needed to be done.'
There were also design flaws, poor quality concrete, and safety alerts were overlooked.
Deadly KZN collapses
On 18 May 2024, four construction workers died and one survived following the collapse of an embankment at a construction site in Zen Drive, Ballito. On 29 March 2025, two workers employed by a construction firm were digging a trench on Canehaven Drive, Phoenix, when a retaining wall and sand and metal reinforcement fell on them. It was established that the deceased were Mozambican nationals.
On 19 November 2013, a section of the second floor of the partly completed Tongaat Mall collapsed, killing two and injuring 29 construction workers. Construction of the Tongaat Mall had commenced without the building plans being approved.
Gralio Precast, the company developing the mall, was a beneficiary of many tenders from the eThekwini Metro. A commission of inquiry was appointed by the Department of Labour and chaired by Inspector Phumudzo Maphaha to investigate this collapse.
The investigation found that the collapse was due to substandard construction work and several contraventions of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and construction regulations which included the following: poor plan design; the contractor's failure to comply with regulations; contraventions of the safety and health regulations; missing steels and columns; lack of supervision on site; an important site diary was missing; lack of health and safety audits; inappropriate building materials (cement imported from Pakistan did not meet South African Bureau of Standards requirements).
These reasons can be attributed to a reckless, calculated strategy by the developer to save construction costs and compromise the safety of onsite workers. For example, a beam with insufficient steel bars may have led to the collapse. According to an engineer, the beam should have had 19 steel bars. Also, some of the concrete used was less than a third of the required strength.
In May 2016, the then minister of labour Mildred Oliphant acknowledged that while there was clear evidence of impropriety, she was not in a position to give the names of people and companies implicated.
NPA failures
Instead, she handed over the inquiry results to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in KwaZulu-Natal for further investigation and action. However, as reported by News 24, eight years on in May 2024, Natasha Ramkissoon-Kara, spokesperson for the NPA, said that 'investigations are ongoing, and we are therefore not in a position yet to make any decision in respect of the matter'.
However, it is common cause that the NPA has a poor history of initiating prosecutions and achieving convictions in high-profile cases involving malfeasance.
This delay by the NPA in investigating and prosecuting those implicated in deliberately compromising safety in the construction sector has national implications.
'No such thing as an accident'
An analysis conducted for the South African Institute of Occupational Health in May 2024 by Professor of Construction Management at Nelson Mandela University, John Smallwood, emphasised the ongoing safety issues and the need for extensive measures to enhance the industry's health and safety practices.
According to Prof Smallwood: 'There is no such thing as an accident… noting that what are traditionally termed accidents are often the result of management failures…Workers exposed to hazards and risks are people with a body, mind, and soul, who invariably have a partner, a family, and are derived from a community.'
He emphasised that unforeseen accidents are often 'planned by default' through actions or inactions, highlighting the necessity for a change in the industry's safety approach.
Lennie Samuel, a senior inspector and forensic investigator at the Department of Labour, similarly contended that the absence of oversight and management failures was the main reason for the collapse of buildings.
The causes of most of the incidents examined could be traced to senior management, who fix only the immediate causes or symptoms rather than the underlying issues. Regrettably, the outcomes frequently result in injuries, disabilities, deaths and collapses.
A comprehensive strategy is essential to decrease accidents in the South African construction sector, including training, recognising hazards, appropriate tools and processes, and implementing robust site management practices and a robust safety culture.