An investigation into a deadly fire in Johannesburg last August that killed 76 people and exposed a housing crisis in South Africa’s largest city blamed officials who ignored “raising the alarm” for years.
The eight-month investigation, led by a retired Constitutional Court judge, published its findings in a report on Sunday. The report said years of inaction by city agencies had allowed the building to fall into a lethal state and blamed a high-ranking official.
“The consequences of the fire would have been mitigated if the city had fulfilled its legal obligations as a property owner and municipality,” the report says.
In the early hours of August 31, a fire ripped through an abandoned building in central Johannesburg. What was once a women’s shelter, had been virtually abandoned by city agencies, although it was government owned and managed by the Johannesburg Property Company, a government agency. Instead, around 600 people desperate for affordable accommodation were occupying the five-story building, creating a tinderbox that would spark one of the deadliest residential fires in South Africa’s recent history.
While a resident of the building later confessed to setting the fire, the report found that city officials knew of the “distressing conditions” and had allowed the building to become a fire trap. Once known as the Usindiso women’s shelter, the building was taken over by criminal organizations who collected rent.
The structure had no municipal electricity or running water. Instead, residents used the building’s fire hoses and extinguishers to collect and store water, and created illegal electrical connections. They raised partitions of wood, cardboard and cloth, built huts inside the rooms and cooked on paraffin stoves. Piles of garbage accumulated around the building. The structure was known as a haven for crime in the area, and yet law enforcement was virtually nonexistent, according to the report.
The city had known about these conditions for at least four years, according to the report. Authorities raided the building in 2019 and set it aside for demolition, but took no further action, according to the report. Dozens of people were evicted then, but the squatters returned in greater numbers.
The city’s fire marshal should have designated the building for emergency evacuation, the report said, a status that would have meant a faster response time of no more than eight minutes in an emergency like the Aug. 31 fire. Instead, the first fire trucks arrived 11 minutes after the emergency call, and more arrived 19 minutes after the call. During the investigation, witnesses said the city’s beleaguered fire department did not have enough trucks to respond to disasters around Johannesburg.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said Monday that it had not yet received the public report and would study its recommendations once it received it.
When firefighters arrived at the scene, they found blocked emergency evacuation points and exits that had been welded together by the occupants. Stairs and hallways were used as makeshift living quarters and fire extinguishers were empty or boarded up inside the illegal apartments, the report said.
As the fire got out of control, dozens of people jumped from the upper floors. A woman who testified at the inquest recalled the chilling screams of people trapped behind a steel door. Rescuers told the commission they had found 11 bodies behind a steel door.
During a fact-finding session in late January, a startling confession shocked the room full of attorneys and survivors when a 30-year-old man said he started the fire. The man, Sithembiso Mdlalose, said he had sold drugs for gangs who operated from the building. The night of the fire, he told the commission between sobs, he had strangled a man involved in a dispute and had tried to set the body on fire to hide the evidence. Mr Mdlalose has been charged with 76 counts of murder.
While the city of Johannesburg did not set the fire, it bore some responsibility for the lives lost, the report said. The commission recommended disciplinary action against officials in charge of the city’s housing, sanitation, electricity and water agencies. He also called for “appropriate action” against former Johannesburg Property Company chief executive Helen Botes for a “complete disregard for the management of the Usindiso building despite knowledge of the disastrous state since at least 2019”. The report does not suggest specific measures.
Botes reports to the mayor’s office, but has outlived 10 mayors.
After the fire, a Times investigation found that Botes had faced accusations of corruption and mismanagement of the city’s vast housing portfolio. In testimony before the commission, Botes blamed the squatters for violating city laws and the limited city budget for blocking an effective eviction. Like other officials, he also pointed to South Africa’s housing laws, which require the government to find alternative accommodation for evicted residents, as a challenge.
The original death toll was 77, but Sunday’s report revised it to 76. Among the dead were teachers and students seeking affordable accommodation, and dozens of migrants from other African countries who had moved to Johannesburg in search of work. Nineteen victims had not yet been identified. Dozens of survivors remain homeless and have moved into similarly abandoned buildings across the city. More than 80 people were injured.
In the months after the fire, city officials bricked up the building and placed barbed wire around its perimeter to prevent desperate squatters from returning. The commission recommended that the building be torn down and a memorial plaque be erected in its place to honor the lives lost.