PART ONE: City held to ransom | Inside the Marshalltown building takeover
In 2018, a building on 80 Albert Street in Marshalltown was hijacked when a group of women allegedly revolted against a non-profit company (NPO), and refused to leave what was then a women’s and children’s shelter.
The shelter was being run by Usindiso Ministries.
According to a research paper, which focused on the shelter as a case study, Pastor Jean (Jay) Bradley, who had been working with the shelter since 2001, took over the running of it in 2003.
In July 2007, the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) Department of Arts, Culture and Heritage declared the building a heritage site.
Usindiso Ministries only registered as an NPO in 2010, with five directors.
Bradley ran the shelter for women and children for 15 years before things allegedly took a turn for the worst in 2018.
CoJ city manager Floyd Brink said there were challenges regarding the occupants, and “because of the hostility and stalemate, the building was then invaded.”
Former director and chairperson of the Usindiso Ministries board, Pastor Glyn Weldschidt, said depending on a woman’s circumstances, the shelter would house them for between six months to a year.
"There were a couple of women that needed to move because they were becoming an issue, and so when those women were told to move, they started to rebel. They just stood up and said they’ve got ‘connections’ and they are going to hurt us, as the board, if we don’t move - and so we moved. Jay (Bradley) ran for her life because she was told ‘if you come here, we will kill you’.”
Weldschidt said they allegedly engaged the city about the situation, but to no avail.
He further alleged a case was opened with police - although he could not recall details of the case, claiming Bradley had been involved in registering it.
He alleged Bradely had gone into hiding.
“I honestly can’t get hold of Jay. I would have told you if I could and I probably would have told you why she’s feeling the way she’s feeling, what she’s feeling, or where she even is. She might not even be in Joburg anymore; she might be in Cape Town for all I know.”
Attempts to reach Bradley proved futile.
Brink said the building was owned by the city and leased to the Department of Social Development.
But social development disputed this, claiming the department was only involved in finding a suitable NGO to run the shelter.
Provincial spokesperson Nkosana Mtolo said the department did not have any lease agreement with the CoJ.
“Our involvement is not necessarily with the building, but with the NPO [Usindiso Ministries]. Between 2011 and 2013, about ten years ago, we were funding them. They were running a shelter which caters for women, so that is as far as our involvement was. We did not get involved on any other issue or level, except our interaction with the NPO that we were funding at the time.”
This is confirmed in a letter to the Gauteng social development department, dated 24 January 2013, and signed by Weldschidt, which reads:
“As our foundation is Christian based, we have to chart a new path forward, and therefore regret to advise of our decision to become self-sustaining, and therefore will no longer require funding from the Department of Social Development, as agreed by our Board.”
Weldschidt said thereafter, they began applying to the National Lotteries Commission for funding.
“Majority of the funding we were then getting from the lottery. We would also get some funding from churches, but the majority was through our applications for funding to the lotto.”
The Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), mandated to manage and develop the CoJ property assets for council, were in charge of repairs and maintenance of the building.
JPC spokesperson Lucky Sidane said they were aware the building was hijacked in 2018.
“When the NGO left the building, people took control. You leave a building today, and someone comes in tomorrow. It makes it difficult to get access because people move in within 48 hours.”
Sidane said once a building is hijacked, a lengthy legal process would need to follow.
“We have to rely on other departments. That’s where GFIS [Group Forensic Investigation Services] and JMPD [Johannesburg Metro Police Department] come in. They have to go in and profile the people who live there to ascertain whether the building was hijacked or not, and open a case, go to the court, and move people. You can’t just go into a building and move people - it doesn't work like that.”
CoJ puts the figure of hijacked buildings within the inner city at 188 - 17 of which belong to the CoJ.
PART TWO: City held to ransom | Good intentions turn into bad investments
Private investors Eyewitness News spoke to said political instability within City of Johanneburg (CoJ), and lack of will, has resulted in the inner city collapse.
For 15 years, property investor Mendel Goldman has been unable to evict the illegal occupants of a building he purchased in Hillbrow in 2008.
Goldman, through a trust, purchased one of the oldest churches in Joburg, the Presbyterian Church on the corner of Wolmarans Street.
“We bought the building because it was neighbouring one of the buildings we own, and it was a constant issue for us as a neighbour with the sewage smell and spillage coming out of that building and into our building - and the type of occupants living next door, being criminals in some instances. We wanted to turn it around, so we bought the property in order to improve our investment next door.
“Fifteen years later and we are still battling with the city - they are the biggest thorn in the process in getting that building clear. The biggest issue is that the city is by law required to provide alternative accommodation for these occupiers, and the city has employed delay tactics in providing alternative accommodation. It has been a terrible investment; we have lost millions of rands on it and the people living there are living in as bad, if not worse, conditions as the building in Marshalltown.”
During a visit to the building, three occupants who were part of the ‘building committee’ denied Eyewitness News access.
The illegal occupants of the building are represented by non-profit human rights organisation, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI).
Edward Molopi, research and advocacy officer at SERI, said their role was to ensure the rights of the poor were upheld. He claims at least 90% of the occupants they represent are South Africans, with the minority being foreign nationals.
He said should the rights of these illegal occupants not be upheld, tens of thousands of people would be homeless.
“Our approach is that poor people need to have a place in the inner city, and we don’t think it is the role of property developers to make that accommodation available. They have a role to play, but it’s the state responsibility to ensure that that is made available.”
Pressage Nyoni, liaison officer at Trust for Urban Housing Finance (TUHF) - a financial institution which finances property entrepreneurs within the inner city of Joburg - said within the last 15 years, the inner city has deteriorated significantly.
“We have a number of buildings that are currently hijacked, and our clients find themselves spending a lot of money on litigation processes, which are very cumbersome and take very long to resolve and as a result properties are hijacked."
“For me, it is the poor black investor who has taken his pension money and invested in the inner city and is losing it. I think the law has been a little bit unfair on the side of landlords. Buildings that are hijacked are never deprived of services - that gives you a certain thinking, ‘why?’ If someone has hijacked a building for five years, he’s not paying council, he’s not maintaining the building, a report has been made to the authorities and nothing is done about it.”
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Property Attorney Greg Vermaak, who has worked on evictions of illegal occupants in buildings within the inner city since the nineties, distinguished between the two forms of building hijackings.
“In the early 2000’s the city started dealing with what we call the ‘bad buildings’ and I evicted over 400 buildings of the type of Albert Street between 2001 and 2006 - leaving a relatively small number of these bad buildings. That was the period of what you call building hijackings, someone would arrive with a gun and say, ‘I am the owner now, and you will pay me rent’.”
He said within the last 15 years, a different modus operandi has been adopted by building hijackers where legal occupants of a building form committees and refuse to pay rent to the landlord, taking it upon themselves to maintain the building.
“What tends to happen is, if you have a building where there is some kind of argument - maybe people feel that the building is not being maintained adequately, you get the development of a committee and agree they will not pay rent. They try to pool their resources, collect their own rent to pay cleaners, security, and for services to manage the building. So, over the last 20 years, those have been the primary driver of hijackings - sort of tenant or committee hijackings.”
And despite Goldman, as well as countless other property investors hauling CoJ to court - they are ultimately left without recourse until temporary emergency accommodation (TEA) is provided for the illegal occupants.
This is due to a 2011 landmark Constitutional Court ruling referred to the Blue Moonlight case.
In it, the ConCourt found that the CoJ could not evict occupants of a building without providing adequate TEA. Thus, the ruling by the highest court in the land set a precedent in terms of how successful evictions can be carried out.
The ConCourt further noted that TEA should be a location as near as possible to the area where the occupants currently reside - creating further complications in terms of space within the inner city.
PART THREE: City held to ransom | Political instability boils down to TEA
Last month, the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) and the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (JOSHCO) - an ailing arm of the city mandated to provide and manage social and affordable rental housing - were hauled to the Johannesburg High Court by private property investors over a hijacked building they own.
The Casa Mia building on Soper Road in Braamfontein has been described as a disaster waiting to happen, from which gunshots are often heard emanating.
Peter Day of Jozi Housing, one of the applicants in the matter, said they were left with no option but to take CoJ and JOSHCO to task.
“In what city in the world will you have to take the municipality to court to ensure they enforce their own by-laws on their own building? It’s completely ridiculous when you think about it, but there is no political will to do anything about it. This building is another Marshalltown disaster in the making.”
According to JOSHCO’s 2021/22 annual report, R500,000 had been allocated to Casa Mia as part of their capital project in 2017, to convert and refurbish the building into low-cost social housing units.
But none of the funds were used in the previous financial year.
JOSHCO spokesperson Nthabiseng Mphela said that despite a contractor being appointed, the funds could not be utilised because the professional team needed access into the building, but could not go inside to finalise their assessments and drawings.
“The motion is viewed in a very serious light. We have acknowledged and expressed our deepest concern on the matter. We approached the illegal tenants, and requested for them to move and notified the law enforcement agencies which also failed to enforce the by-laws because the building is occupied by people who use armaments. As JOSCHO, we have begun an audit, did interim maintenance, condemned the building, and began a legal process for obtaining an eviction order,” Mphela said.
Another struggling arm of CoJ is the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), mandated to repair, maintain and develop city property.
JPC has over several consecutive years received an unqualified audit from the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA).
JPC’s 2021/22 annual report highlighted that “land invasions and illegal occupations have severe financial implications in the form of loss of assets and relocation costs to find alternative accommodation, and ensure the securing of the property to prevent future invasions.”
The main stumbling block when it comes to evicting illegal occupants of a building is for the city to ensure they can provide temporary emergency accommodation (TEA).
Providing TEA rests solely on the shoulders of the CoJ’s human settlements division.
Executive Director of Human Settlements, Patrick Phophi, told Eyewitness News that the TEA program did not form part of the “National Housing Code”, which is the basis for national and provincial funding - resulting in the program being underfunded, “as the city can only provide funding within its means.”
“The city has one source of funding for the Inner City, and that funding caters for affordable rental as well as temporary accommodation. In the past 10 years, the City has been solely funding Inner City Developments. It was only in the 2022/2023 financial year that the department received R7 million from the National Department of Human Settlements through USDG for Inner City Stock Upgrading.”
The budget for the TEA programme over the last Medium Term Expenditure Framework period (3 years) is as follows:
- 2020/2021: R30 million
- 2021/2022: R33 million
- 2022/2023: R15 million
Phophi said over the past three years, they have constructed some 421 units of both TEA units and alternative rental units.
“The bulk of the 421 units are alternative rents circa 2021 at Wolhuter (114 units and Skosana Court 117 units), and TEA at about the same time at Fraser House (104 units and 133 Albert Street 86 units). The budget for the year 2022/2023 was used to acquire two buildings in the inner city for conversion,” he said.
Joburg mayor Kabelo Gwamanda told Eyewitness News government on all levels had failed when it came to the inner city.
“A situation as devastating as an asset being repossessed or hijacked or repurposed against your will as a landlord using clandestine methods, the only thing businesses can do is report it to law enforcement, and then it becomes the role of law enforcement to do their job. When law enforcement fails, it becomes then the scope of local government, because local government have to conduct by-law enforcement - so it’s failure on different spheres of government, and it should be a collective responsibility that is taken because the city also has an equal role in where we are right now - but so do other spheres of government.”
He said he was well aware of the disappointment expressed by the private sector regarding hijacked buildings.
“I have a vested interest in knowing the individuals responsible for various aspects in the asset management in the city of Johannesburg, so I can be able to hold the city manager to account by saying, ‘what are you doing about this?’.”