An apartment fire in the South African city of Johannesburg has killed at least 76 people including 12 children and highlighted the city’s housing crisis, which has led to terrible conditions in unregulated dwellings run by criminal gangs.
The fire — the worst in South Africa’s history — broke out Thursday night, quickly engulfing the five-story building in Johannesburg’s Central Business District. Around 600 people were estimated to be living in the building, although officials couldn’t say how many were present when the fire started. People desperate to escape the fire threw their children out of windows or jumped themselves, since the building did not have proper escape routes.
“This has given us a wake-up call, and I have said that our cities and municipalities must now pay attention to how people live,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Saturday at an event for the ruling African National Congress party. Though as Ramaphosa indicated the lack of enforcement of existing laws against such dangerous and exploitative living situations certainly led to Thursday’s fire, there are deeper social problems underlying the housing crisis.
So-called “hijacked” buildings are not a new phenomenon in Johannesburg; gangs take over abandoned buildings in the city center and charge people with no other options rent to essentially squat there. Though the city is the wealthiest in South Africa, there is a huge gulf between those with resources — many of whom live in the suburbs — and those without.
In this particular building people lived in squalid conditions and even squatted in the below-ground parking garage, according to the Associated Press. Many of the people who lived in the now-destroyed building were not South African citizens, city officials told the AP, and may have been in the country illegally. That could make identifying victims and notifying their families challenging if not impossible.
It’s not yet known what caused…
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