Inspection of CBD reveals hijacked buildings are rampant

The Metro’s Bad Buildings Committee recently conducted a tour of 24 derelict buildings and sites in the CBD and Pretoria West.

Accompanied by the TMPD, metro departments, committee members and supporting officials, MMC for Corporate and Shared Services, Kholofelo Morodi, led the delegation through the streets of the CBD to gain insight into the task that lay ahead to address decaying city infrastructure.

The tour aimed to look at metro-owned, government-owned and privately-owned bad buildings in the inner city.

Issues such as illegal connections, decaying buildings, illegal businesses/residences, vagrancy, drug use and other by-law infractions were found to be rampant throughout the visits.

Morodi says the Mayoral sub-committee on bad buildings hopes to put most of these buildings on the market to see if they can be transformed into student accommodation, low-cost housing and private investments in the city.

“There is a lot of lawlessness, people don’t respect our laws here. We have found a lot of illegal connections to our water and electricity, people are burning things inside these buildings and people operating businesses without leases or agreements with the city.

“There will be criminal cases because they’ve basically hijacked these buildings, we are going to go after them using the criminal justice system and the people living in these buildings are living there at their own risk, so we would have to evict them once court orders are obtained, we can evict and the landlords will face criminal charges,” Morodi said.

The MMC says the metro will engage with government and private owners regarding maintaining their buildings and settling debts.

Failure to do so would result in expropriation and city-owned properties would be placed on the market.

Community Safety MMC, Hannes Coetzee, says the metro has included council-owned buildings in the visit to ensure that their house was in order.

“There are a lot of derelict buildings and even though we have a by-law for derelict buildings, it needs to be revisited. If you look a the building here (365 Du Toit) it belongs to a private order but you can see for yourself the mess around it. This is what we are trying to do regarding inner-city rejuvenation, we want to clean up the city,” Coetzee says.

He says that restoring buildings for student accommodation is the most important task for the metro to accomplish regarding bad buildings and the city is not spared from the work that needs to be done.

“We have to as a city also pull up our socks. We have to look at our asset register and see which buildings belong to us, and which ones belong to national government and public works.

“We also have to have inter-governmental relations (IGR) with other departments to make sure they attend to their buildings. Once a building is hijacked, it comes to court order procedures and you have to provide a place for the occupants to stay.

“This is part of the cleaning-up strategy to make sure that the city is clean, because I always believe a clean city is a safe city,” Coetzee said.

Sarah Mabotsa, MMC for Economic Development and Spatial Planning, says that most of the buildings the committee came across were hijacked by undocumented people.

“Moving forward, we need to protect our Capital City. We will be communicating with the owners, some of them are privately owned but they have been neglected.

“So we will be communicating with owners and issuing contravention orders indicating the issues with their buildings and they must approach us. In some cases, they owe water and electricity as well.

“In this building for example, (241 Nana Sita Street), the electricity has been disconnected but because an illegal water connection has been made we find people living in such conditions. We’re pleading to whoever coming to our city and our country to respect the laws of the land because we can’t allow lawlessness of this kind. We want to rebuild and revitalise our city,” Mabotsa said.

In June, Tshwane will host the U20 Sherpa Meeting, a meeting meant to help shape G20 recommendations. Mabotsa says it would be unacceptable for dignitaries from foreign nations to see the Capital City in the current state.

She also says that in cases regarding hijacked buildings, opportunists arrive and claim to be landlords, extorting money from impoverished or undocumented illegal tenants.

“People are desperate and then they pay these landlords. Even now while we were inside, we were asking that lady for the details of the landlord collecting rent from her so we could approach them and advise them that the activities they’re conducting are illegal and take further action.

“We are appealing to residents to do the right thing. In South Africa, we have a property law that requires you to have a proper lease agreement with your landlord’s name on it. If not, come to our offices to find out who is the real registered owner of the property you’re living in,” Mabotsa said.

The metro recently obtained a court order to demolish illegally constructed buildings on Erf 1313 and Erf 1312 located at 510 and 514 Luttig Street, Pretoria West.

These structures, erected by George Asaba and GABSA Consolidated Prop (Pty) Ltd, were built in violation of the National Building Regulations and Building Standards.

The metro initiated legal proceedings after it was established that the buildings were constructed without approved building plans, posing significant risk to public safety and contravening municipal by-laws.

The court authorised the metro to proceed with the demolition to uphold urban planning regulations and maintain order within the municipality earlier this week.

Metro-owned bad buildings

– HB Philips (vacant and vandalised)

– City Hall (vacant)

– Old Fire Station (hijacked with illegal connections)

– Kruger Park (Dilapidated and vacant)

– COT Homeless Shelter (hijacked and dilapidated with illegal connections)

– COT vacant land on 330 Sophie De Bruyn (hijacked for parking purposes)

– COT vacant land on 346 Sisulu Street (hijacked for parking purposes)

Government-owned bad buildings:

– Telkom Towers (vandalised and used for SAPS parking)

– Gauteng Provincial Government (abandoned and dilapidated)

– NDPW&I Nabcat House (abandoned, no site security)

– NDPW&I Paul Kruger Street (vandalised with illegal connections)

– Karel Schoeman Building DID Provincial Government (dilapidated)

– PWP Building National Government of RSA (abandoned and vandalised)

– National Government of RSA, 105 Minnaar Street (abandoned and vandalised)

– National Government of RSA, 125 Minnaar Street (abandoned and vandalised)

Privately-owned bad buildings:

– 195 Nana Sita (hijacked, dilapidated, overcrowded, subject to prostitution and drugs)

– 159 Nana Sita (dilapidated, unoccupied and vandalised)

– Sol Sons Inv (Pty) Ltd, 241 Nana Sita (residential flats with shops at the bottom, dilapidated and hijacked)

– Silprins Prop (Pty) LTD, 15 Sisulu Street (dilapidated, with make-shift crèche and illegal connections)

– Al-Hakemum CC, 259 Sophie De Bruyn Street (dilapidated, vacant flat block with one-shop operation)

– Hadjiapostolou Ekaterni, 207 Jeff Masemola (occupied flats, no food certificate, with illegal connections)

– Hadjiapstolou Ekaterni 209 Jeff Masemola (no food certificate with illegal connections).

– 365 Du Toit Street (abandoned, vandalised and vacant)

– Van Riebeck Building Octodec Investment Limited, 295 Fancis Baard Street (abandoned, vandalised and sealed off).

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