Tshwane operation finds hijacked building with over 300 shacks
Some shacks were found to be illegally using the metro's electricity and water.
Tshwane Mayor, Dr Nasiphi Moya recently led a by-law enforcement effort in Pretoria West where a hijacked building with over 300 shacks was uncovered on Bloed Street.
The Mayor being was joined in the operation by supporting city officials and law-enforcement teams as they continued their Reclaim Our City initiative by visiting various spots throughout the metro at random to ensure by-law compliance becomes the norm.
The stakeholders also shut down a scrap yard in Pretoria West operating illegally.
The Mayor says that reclaiming the city remains a top objective for the metro to avoid disasters such as the tragic Usindiso building fire, where 77 people died in a hijacked building in Johannesburg.
“This is one of the City’s buildings that has obviously been hijacked as you can see, like the case of Usindiso.
“Over 300 shacks are built here and there are hundreds of people staying here, there are pregnant women, and there are children and obviously, as the City, we must do something about that. So the first thing is that we have issued them with a notice that we want to evict them, we will obviously rope in Home Affairs, 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 very sick. While we know we are targeting bad buildings and reclaiming our city, we also need to check the conditions that these people are staying in,” Moya said.
Over 300 shacks have been built inside this city owned property on Bloed Street with residents paying rent to unknown landlords. Reclaiming hijacked City buildings is important to avoid the disaster experienced in Joburg in 2023, where over 50 people died when shacks illegally… pic.twitter.com/qNRigw7sP7
— Dr Nasiphi Moya (@nasiphim) April 23, 2025
The Mayor says that the illegal occupants illegally connected to electricity and water networks despite the building not being intended for residential occupancy.
Moya says that such rampant lawlessness is the reason the Reclaim Our City initiative exists, and many metro-owned buildings are in a similar state.
At the scrap yard, stakeholders were told that vehicles bought in auctions were scrapped there for sale as parts, however, it was still shut down because it didn’t comply with metro regulations.
“We don’t have Saps with us to check the legality of the cars but from our by-law enforcement team, we are busy writing a notice to prohibit them from continuing because they don’t meet some of our compliance requirements. One of the things with Pretoria West is that it’s notorious for these issues concerning scrap yards and second-hand dealers and this is another type of lawlessness that we can’t ignore.
“One, they don’t have the lease to show us who they are leasing this property from, they have found a private vendor who gives them electricity, they are actually paying 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 kind of lawlessness that we must rescue this city from,” Moya said.
ALSO READ: Tshwane looks to Expropriation Act to take over derelict buildings
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