With more than 70 people having died in the inferno that ravaged a building in Albert Street in Johannesburg, attention is turning to assigning blame.
The five-story building reportedly housed some 200 families, many of them foreigners unlawfully resident in South Africa.
Johannesburg City Officials, including Council Speaker Colleen Makhubele, placed blame for the tragedy on civil society bodies that had fought eviction efforts.
Makhubele said: ‘Why would you choose a course to fight for criminality? It doesn’t make sense to us. They need to find another course and allow the city to work. If we do not take over these hijacked buildings, we are never going to be able to clean up the city and have the programme to reignite the city because at every corner we are met with this resistance and the criminals hide behind this kind of support.’
Johannesburg MMC for Transport, Kenny Kunene, said that the law concerning evictions needed to be amended as it protected criminals, and that people illegally in South Africa should be deported.
But groups who have taken action on evictions hit back.
The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa said: ‘Seri has never litigated against the City of Johannesburg in relation to this building … However, Seri has consistently tried to engage the city to improve conditions in its shelters, to no avail. To shift the blame to NGOs, as people speaking for the city are currently doing, speaks to the municipality’s unwillingness to take responsibility for the inner-city housing crisis.’
An attorney from Lawyers for Human Rights argued that the role of such groups was merely to ensure that people are given proper protection by the law: ‘What we do is enforce laws that were put in place by the government to protect human beings. We don’t make the laws, so they cannot put the blame on us.’
Informal settlement residents’ group Abahlali baseMjondolo was scathing, especially towards Kunene: “We call on all people of good conscience to oppose this sickening xenophobia clearly, directly and bravely, and to work to build the unity of the oppressed across South Africa.
[Image: Ihsaan Haffejee https://www.groundup.org.za/article/in-photos-johannesburg-fire/]