Demolished Pretoria building now crime hotspot

Months after the Chevrolet garage moved from its premises in Arcadia, Pretoria, and the building was demolished, it remains a pile of rubble, litter and crime.

While walking past the site where the former Chevrolet building stood just a few months ago, a man urinated in the rubble while a mother and her two children sat across the street selling nuts.

One of the owners of the premises, Van Zyl Oosthuizen, said the contractor was scheduled to start the clean-up process by yesterday. He said the contractor promised week after week to start cleaning up, with no results.

“I don’t know when they will start. They have replaced the fence around the property so many times because it’s vandalised and stolen each time,” he said.

The contractor, Carly Parker, said his workers have been robbed so many times, they refused to return to the site in Pretoria.

“The first team of workers were attacked, assaulted and chased off the site by the homeless. The homeless then started breaking the windows and doors and stripping the place for cables,” he said.

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“The second team was too scared to work there. They were also robbed on site and ran away. They refused to return.”

But Parker’s problems didn’t end there. “They also stole the electrical cable out of the ground. That’s why that paving looked like that. Then I received a fine from TMPD [Tshwane Metro Police Department]. It wasn’t our fault and I explained to the metro police [officer] what happened, but he told me it wasn’t his problem.”

A resident, Shaye Phala, said it was unsafe walking along that stretch on Nelson Mandela Drive because criminals hid behind the rubble and snatched people’s phones.

The TMPD had not responded by the time of going to print.