Latest news with #ReclaimOurCity
The Citizen
3 days ago
- Business
- The Citizen
SARS to support metro's Reclaim Our City operations
The Tshwane metro and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) recently announced their intention to form a partnership to address illicit trade. Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya said the illicit trade market has had negative impacts on the metro's communities and economy. Moya insists that through partnerships with fellow government stakeholders, the illicit trade market in Tshwane can be stamped out. 'We welcome SARS as a partner to the administration's commitment to deal with illegal businesses. Hundreds of operations have been conducted in the past nine months by the Tshwane Metro Police Department (TMPD), in collaboration with SAPS, the Department of Home Affairs and the Gauteng Community Safety Department,' she said. Since the start of the year, the metro has undertaken weekly by-law operations to address rampant lawlessness in and around the CBD and other parts of the metro under the operation dubbed 'Reclaim Our City'. The Mayoral Committee and the city's senior management met with SARS, led by Patrick Moeng, Chairperson of the Inter-Agency Working Group on Illicit Trade (IAWG-IT), on May 27. The meeting was to discuss programmes which would address illicit trade. The mayor said the initiative has already seen successes, and with SARS on board, it will intensify. The programmes have led to the closure of businesses and the arrest of dozens of illegal immigrants. Last week, the city uncovered an illegal paraffin distribution centre in Mamelodi that posed a danger to the lives of residents. 'This SARS collaboration will have a direct impact on the city's governance processes, help mitigate corruption, fraud and illegal practices, and improve Tshwane's economy and the lives of our most vulnerable residents,' Moya said. Do you have more information about the story? Please send us an email to bennittb@ or phone us on 083 625 4114. For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord's websites: Rekord East For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
The Citizen
23-05-2025
- Politics
- The Citizen
Mayor leads ‘bad buildings' inspection in CBD
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. Do you have more information about the story? Please send us an email to bennittb@ or phone us on 083 625 4114. For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord's websites: Rekord East For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Eyewitness News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Eyewitness News
People evicted from hijacked buildings in Tshwane can apply for indigent programme
JOHANNESBURG - People evicted from hijacked buildings in the City of Tshwane can apply for the indigent programme to access alternative accommodation. As part of operation 'Reclaim Our City'- city officials evicted residents from buildings that it owns in Pretoria West. Reclaim Our City is focused on addressing bylaw violations, regulation compliance and cleaning up the city. READ: Tshwane loses 34% of its water, 22% of power supply through illegal connections at hijacked buildings - Modise On Thursday, Mayor Nasiphi Moya and other officials visited the buildings in the area to finalise their plans of cleaning up the empty structures and begin demolition. MMC responsible for road and transport, Tlangi Mogale said the programme is also open to other homeless people in Tshwane. "We also have homes and NGOs in partnerships, and we have signed MOUs with the city of Tshwane, where they actually have to house these homeless people, and they do get a subsidy to help the indigent people."
TimesLIVE
24-04-2025
- TimesLIVE
Tshwane's hijacked buildings turned into mini informal settlement and motor spares shop
Some of the City of Tshwane's hijacked buildings have become mini informal settlements and motor spares shops. On Wednesday, as part of the city's Reclaim Our City operation, officials visited hijacked buildings in Bloed Street, Pretoria West. Mayor Nasiphi Moya said one building has been transformed into a mini informal settlement with more than 300 shacks built inside. This poses serious health and fire safety risks as people living in the building have connected illegally to the power substation in the yard. 'There are shacks built in here and there's more than 300 people who live here. There are pregnant women, there are children. We have issued them with notices of eviction. We will rope in the home affairs department and SAPS and our social development department to assist us. There's a lady we found here from Mozambique. She's got a passport but she's sick.' Moya said they aim to reclaim the city. 'We also need to check the conditions in which these people live here. They have connected illegally with our electricity, with water. This was not supposed to be a building where people live. This is one of the things that drive us to have the Reclaim Our City programme, because there's a lot of lawlessness in our properties and the longer we ignore this the more the problem becomes bigger,' Moya said. Residents in the building are paying rent to unknown 'landlords'. 'Reclaiming hijacked city buildings is important to avoid the disaster experienced in Johannesburg in 2023, where more than 50 people died when shacks illegally built inside the Usindiso Building caught fire,' she said. The city discovered another of its buildings hijacked in Bloed Street which has been turned into a motor spares shop. 'These guys say they buy cars from auction, strip them, sell parts, and we don't have SAPS with us to check the legality of the cars,' she said. The city shut down the motor spares shop through bylaw enforcement and said the business does not have a lease to use the city's property. 'Pretoria West is notorious for issues of scrap and second hand cars and this is another type of lawlessness we can't ignore. They don't have the lease to show us who they lease this from, they have found a private vendor who gives them electricity. They pay for the electricity but it's not the meter of the city. So when we say we want to reclaim the city, this is the sort of lawlessness we must rescue the city from.'
