80 Albert Street in Marshalltown caught fire last year and claimed the lives of 77 people.
The victims of the Usindiso fire, which claimed 77 lives last year, have called on the Johannesburg municipality to compensate them for the losses they incurred. This comes after the commission of inquiry into the blaze found negligence on the part of the city.
“We just want our lives back — we lost our clothes and furniture and it has been difficult for us financially to get it all back. Now we just want the city to help us get back on our feet because it is going to be almost a year and we are still in the same situation since the fire happened,” a 44-year-old woman, who was living in the building when the fire occurred, told the Mail & Guardian.
On Sunday, the commission chairperson, former justice Sisi Khampepe, handed over the first part of the report into the fire to Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi at a media briefing in Johannesburg.
The report found that the City of Johannesburg and its property management entity, the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), had known about the “appalling conditions” in the building since 2019 and yet “did nothing to address the ringing alarm bells”.
“The city’s failure to conduct oversight of the Usindiso building resulted in the death of 77 people when it caught fire in the early hours of the morning in August,” the report said.
“[The] building was not zoned for residential purposes; the building had been hijacked, remained occupied illegally and was overcrowded; crime was rife in the building and [it] was not habitable; the building had illegal electricity connections and water consumption; the building lacked firefighting equipment and installations and the JPC failed to maintain the property since 2003,” Khampepe said at Sunday’s briefing.
While the Marshalltown Fire Justice Campaign has welcomed part 1 of the commission’s findings, it expressed disappointment that there was no mention of financial compensation for the victims and survivors of the fire “who have suffered immense loss and trauma”.
“This will be essential if survivors are to have any chance of rebuilding their lives,” the chairperson of the campaign, Mametlwe Sebei, told the M&G.
According to City of Johannesburg records, the Usindiso building was managed by the JPC and was occupied by Usindiso Ministries, a non-profit organisation for abused women, until 2015. After that, it was “hijacked” by illegal occupiers, city manager Floyd Brink said in the aftermath of the fire.
The commission found that the city had not provided the building’s residents with water, electricity or waste management services, which led to them resorting to dangerous alternative measures.
“The building became a hazard because the tenants used fire equipment, such as fire extinguisher hoses, to draw water for domestic use,” Khampepe said.
She added: “The tenants also made illegal connections to a transformer to obtain electricity.”
Since the fire, the city has provided the victims with temporary accommodation in Denver, where there has been repeated flooding, with at least 10 incidents reported since last December.
“It is terrible. We sometimes don’t have electricity, and then there is flooding, and nobody comes to help — it feels like the city has forgotten about us after putting us here [in Denver],” one of the victims living in the settlement told the M&G.
Many of the tenants were found to be undocumented foreigners from Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho and Kenya.
The Marshalltown Fire Justice Campaign accused the city of using the victims as “scapegoats”.
“We are dismayed that the report does not address the need for accountability for the evictions, detentions and deportations of many surviving residents and the cruel response by the city to migrant families who survived the fire must be accounted for,” Sebei said.
During the inquiry’s hearings, witnesses testified that drug peddlers managed the building, with evidence indicating that some drug lords made up to R50 000 a day. The building was also found to be used for sex trafficking of children as young as 15.
“[It] became a crime-infested site, with witnesses testifying to the fact that there would be gunshot fire in the building, bodies of people killed in the building and people who would run into the building to avoid any possible arrest after committing crimes,” Khampepe said.
The commission confirmed that the fire was started by a man who testified during the hearings that he had killed a man in the basement of the building and tried to conceal the murder by burning the body.
Khampepe has recommended that the building be demolished and a plaque be placed at the site in memory of the deceased.
“All contraventions of the national acts and by-laws have been established and the city must engage an independent process to determine who must bear responsibility or liability for each of the contraventions found in our report and report any attendant criminal conduct to the relevant authorities for further investigation,” she said.
The Socio-Economic Rights Institute, which participated in the inquiry, welcomed the commission’s report and recommendations.