Johannesburg fire disaster: why eradicating hijacked buildings is not the answer

• They have placed the blame on the informal occupation of abandoned buildings, a phenomenon known as “hijacking”.
• They have also blamed immigrant populations who, they say, are the primary residents of such buildings.
• To solve the problem, they argue, hijacked buildings should be expropriated and redeveloped by the private sector.
• The rhetoric by politicians and city officials treats the latest tragedy as a freakish problem of hijacked buildings occupied by migrant populations.

A pervasive problem

• Yet this problem is not limited to hijacked buildings.
• As these cases show, eradicating “hijacked” buildings would not have solved failures to comply with fire regulations in legally occupied buildings in the city.
• Nor would eradicating “hijacked” buildings remove the risk of fire posed to low income groups across the city as a whole.
• But the shack dwellers movement Abahlali Basemjondolo successfully challenged this initiative in the Constitutional Court.

Disposable lives

• According to the geographer Martin Murray, shack fires underscore the disposability of the lives of the poor.
• South Africa’s acute levels of inequality and poverty mean that some people can afford to buy their way out of risks while others cannot.

Helping without eradicating

• Government does indeed have a vital role to play in promoting the right to decent housing for all.
• A good example is the City of Johannesburg’s recent inclusionary housing policy that obliges developers to include affordable housing in all projects.
• These and many other measures – rather than the impulse to “eradicate” – are the basis through which society cares for vulnerable people.