Latest news with #JoburgPropertyCompany
The Citizen
16-07-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
Take your greedy hands off Joburg parks and sports facilities
Instead of fixing billing failures and recovering billions in unpaid utilities, Joburg officials are targeting public recreation spaces for financial gain. Wanderers Stadium is one of the properties earmarked for review, as the municipality begins the process of redefining cherished community spaces. Picture: Sydney Seshibedi / Gallo Images Joburg Property Company (JPC) spokesperson Lucky Sindane reckons the city needs to 'move with the times' and that it wants to redefine what is meant by parks and recreation facilities, including some of the city's most well-known sports clubs and leisure locations. JPC's general manager for commercial and city-focused interventions, Sizeka Tshabalala, says the process will review how the city is compensated for the land use as current agreements are 'not talking to our current business model as the city'. The current agreements covering sports club facilities and even golf courses 'don't make business sense'. And so, there you have it. In a desperate attempt to gouge money out of ratepayers, our municipal mandarins plan to turn land into cash. All the while, they continue to turn a blind eye to the billions of rands in spiralling debt owed by consumers in places like Soweto. ALSO READ: Joburg's residents fuming as city aims to cash in on public parks and sports clubs We would suggest that taking time and applying your collective municipal management brainpower to recovering that which is being stolen from the city – which is what nonpayment for electricity is – you would come up with something which would talk to your current business model. That, of course, isn't going to happen. JPC says the reassessment process will entail reclassifying portions of land, but only after an 'extensive public participation process'. Something like what was done with the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project, then? It is deeply offensive that the city continues to hike property rates on the basis that homeowners must pay for the facilities allegedly provided to them. Given that we don't get much in the way of good roads, our refuse removal service is patchy and our street and traffic lights are often out of order, we deserve at least some value for our money. That we get in our recreation facilities, such as they are. Take your greedy hands off them. NOW READ: No budget, no bridge, no answers from JRA
The Citizen
13-05-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
Kliptown Square crumbles under JoProp's watch
Once a beacon of hope, Kliptown Square is now a vandalised, neglected shell under the Joburg Property Company's neglectful care. The Soweto Hotel and Conference Centre is seen on 12 February 2021 in Kliptown, Soweto. Situated at Freedom Square, the hotel could close its doors due to vandalism and theft of electric cables in the area. It initially opened in 2007. Picture: Michel Bega Anywhere else, it would be an astounding example of incompetence and neglect were a municipal property company to say it has to 'regenerate' an important national historic site decaying after just 20 years. Yet, the Joburg Property Company is doing just that to the memorial at Kliptown Square in Johannesburg … never mind that the site has fallen into disrepair on its watch – and while it is responsible for its upkeep. Kliptown Square should be one of the most iconic sites to commemorate the liberation struggle, because this was the place of the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 – a pledge to make this country a better, more equal, place for all its people. Now, according to vendors who struggle to ply their trade there, it is in a state of neglect, vandalism and filth. It's a far cry from the idealistic construction opened with much fanfare in 2005 by the then president Thabo Mbeki. ALSO READ: WATCH: Tensions high in Kliptown over disconnections [VIDEO] The business centre is stripped of its roof, electricity and plumbing. When the businesses moved out, the homeless moved in. This now is what tourists will see when they come to experience the country that people like Nelson Mandela sacrificed so much for. We should be ashamed. NOW READ: WATCH: Kliptown residents 'live in squalor' despite historic connections
