18 hours ago
Johannesburg's housing crisis is like a movie on loop
Housing crisis: The City of Johannesburg must take action now to prevent a repeat of the 80 Albert Street building fire in which 88 people were injured and 77 died. (Delwyn Verasamy)
I decided to rewatch the movie Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema. Besides being an excellent film directed by Ralph Ziman, I started examining the fictional protagonist Lucky Kunene.
He is a symbol of struggle and represents individuals who were involved with the hijacking of buildings in Jozi's suburb of Hillbrow during the 1990s. The character Lucky is not a real person, but the movie is based on real-life events, and it got me thinking.
How much has changed since then?
Well, basically nothing. In fact, I think the situation has worsened. I was in the Johannesburg city centre the other day, and the decay is nothing short of a tragedy. Looking across the once-iconic skyline that was home to some of the tallest buildings in Africa, it's hard to digest what has happened to the City of Gold.
At about the time of Lucky's rhetorical escapade in 1990, Ponte City was hijacked. Then, in 2021, they officially declared the building to be Africa's first-ever vertical slum.
Riddled with lawlessness and gangsterism, it was home to 8000 people, which is way past the legal occupancy rate for this building. Water and electricity were cut off from the building, and people threw so much trash into the centre of the building that it built up 14 storeys high. In later years, when the trash was finally cleaned up, they found 23 bodies.
That's a pretty big fall from grace considering Ponte was once the tallest building in Africa for 48 years straight, measuring 172m in height. It was beaten by a skyscraper in Egypt — only 5m taller.
Someone suggested that Ponte City be converted into the world's first vertical prison. From a design perspective, this might not have been a bad idea for the building itself. But, from a surroundings perspective, a building with such a prominent location surrounded by corporations, bank headquarters and schools was probably not a good match.
I took a tour of Ponte City and according to the tour guide, who lives in Ponte, there are seven hijacked buildings and nine abandoned buildings in the suburb of Berea, where Ponte City is located.
According to reports over the years, 643 buildings have been hijacked in Johannesburg, specifically in the Hillbrow, Yeoville, Berea and Joubert Park areas. More recent estimates have stated that this number has grown to more than 1100 buildings.
When a building is hijacked, it means that the building has been occupied without permission. The owners of the building, or its managing agents, no longer have control over the property. How does this happen? The owners of the buildings cannot be traced. They die, move overseas, or no longer pay the costs of maintaining their assets.
Water and electricity are often cut off by the city, and there are zero sewerage services. These buildings then become unsanitary and dangerous places to live.
All the while, criminals force the tenants to pay rent to them and not to the owners of the building.
The hijacking of buildings is a symptom of seriously deep-seated social problems in our society.
The government's way of dealing with the hijacked-building crisis reminds me of my favourite South African term 'now now' — which could mean they will start dealing with the issue in the next five minutes, five months or five years. The range is what you dream of with no concrete solutions in place or a timeline to make those dreams a reality. And so the solution to the abandoned building problem remains precisely that, a dream without a plan of action.
Many of these buildings are owned by the government. How can our own government no implement its policies and reclaim what is rightfully theirs? Ironically, they love to pass policies, but what about when it comes to implementing them?
People are dying in these buildings, and the solution is in limbo.
Remember the story about the five-storey building at 80 Albert Street, Marshalltown in Johannesburg city centre that caught on fire on 31 August 2023?
The building was constructed in 1954 during apartheid and served as the main administration office for Johannesburg's non-European affairs department. People of colour would essentially collect their 'dompas' here. Later on, it transformed into the Usindiso Women's Shelter until its
By 2019, more than 400 individuals occupied this property. The emergency exits were all locked or blocked at the time of the fire, in which 77 people died and 88 were injured.
More recently, I have read that our current Johannesburg mayor, Dada Morero, plans to relocate his office from Braamfontein to this building. Renovations of the building are expected to be completed this year.
If our government cannot uphold standard occupancy levels and fire regulations in their buildings, how can we expect other landlords to follow suit?
Herman Mashaba, one of the um-teenth mayors of Johannesburg over the past decade, floated around some good suggestions once upon a time. He proposed the conversion of dozens of hijacked buildings, abandoned and government-owned buildings into social housing projects. He brought to the table ideas for incentives such as providing investors with rates and tax exemptions for the period of one year if they could include an affordable housing component in their development. This was not necessarily a bad start as far as solutions go. However, I don't recall any of the above happening during or after Mashaba's tenure.
When Mashaba left his mayoral position in 2019, the City of Johannesburg passed an Inclusionary Housing Policy at the same time to encourage private companies to build social housing in the Johannesburg city centre. More specifically, it provides incentives for buildings with 20 units or more to allocate 30% of their units for low-income housing. Many agreed with the principle, while others were strong critics of the plan's practicality.
The sad truth is that when we fast-forward to 2025, I don't know of many projects that have actually implemented the Inclusionary Housing Policy to obtain its incentives. Sure, there have been approvals of a couple thousand inclusionary housing units since the policy's implementation; however, not many that I know of have been constructed. It seems the policy was not so attractive for developers after all.
And so here we are, it's 2025, and not much has changed. We're still having the same conversations. Still walking past the same burnt-out and hijacked buildings. Still holding the same memorials for lives lost in preventable tragedies. Still hearing the same political promises that come wrapped in red tape and delay.
What's most maddening is that the solution is right in front of us, and has been for years. We have the buildings. Hundreds of them. Some of the most well-located buildings in the country, in a city built on gold and ambition. But instead of being used as catalysts for urban rejuvenation, social housing, and economic upliftment, they sit empty, hijacked, or decaying, becoming ticking time bombs.
Not to mention that building costs are through the roof (excuse the pun). Rebuilding any of these buildings today would run into the billions. Sometimes conversions can be a cost-saving exercise in themselves.
Johannesburg's current mayor, Dada Morero, has recently discussed the city's plans to intensify efforts to reclaim the city centre and address issues related to crime and deteriorating infrastructure. I have also read that Morero plans to relocate his office from Braamfontein to 80 Albert Street. Renovations of the building, which were initiated after the fire, are expected to be completed this year.
Late last year, Morero announced that these problems would be addressed precinct by precinct.
Morero says fewer than 50 hijacked buildings in the city belong to the government. He also mentions that the city cannot find the owners of about 100 hijacked buildings. He suggests that possible expropriation without compensation could be a solution here.
In my opinion, if you can't manage your own buildings successfully, what is the point of taking ownership of others?
It should not take another fire, another news headline, or another round of blame-shifting for us to act. And yet, here we are, stuck in this loop of policy without implementation, vision without backbone, crisis without urgency.
If the government is serious about solving the housing crisis, then we need more than policies that look good on paper. We need plans to be executed. We need a multi-pronged approach: removing the criminals demanding rent from tenants, support for tenants in hijacked buildings, repairing the sewage, water and electricity, and putting in place refuse removal.
Public-private partnerships can rehabilitate abandoned stock, and real incentives for developers who want to build or convert properties for mixed-income housing could be provided.
And let's be clear, this isn't only a housing issue. It's a safety issue. A dignity issue. An economic issue. A human rights issue.
Until we stop viewing hijacked buildings as isolated cases and start addressing them as part of a broader urban failure, nothing will shift. We'll keep rewatching Jerusalema and asking, 'How much has changed since then?'
The answer must not be: nothing.
Because people aren't just looking for affordable housing. They're looking for proof that someone, somewhere, still gives a damn.
Ask Ash examines South Africa's property, architecture and living spaces. Continue the conversation with her on email (
