New deadline for city fire probe
● The commission investigating the deaths of 77 people in the Usindiso building fire in the Johannesburg inner city in August last year will get more time to get to the bottom of the tragedy.
The secretariat of the commission, chaired by former Constitutional Court judge Sisi Khampepe, told the Sunday Times that the Gauteng provincial government has acceded to its request for an extension of the deadlines it had been given to submit its two reports.
“The conclusion of the hearing for part A was extended to the end of March 2024 and the report is due end of April 2024. The conclusion of the hearing for part B was extended to the end of July 2024 and the report is due at the end of August 2024,” it said.
The commission has already missed its first deadline of November 30 last year, the date by which it was supposed to have completed its investigation into the circumstances leading to the fire and who should be held accountable. Part B of the inquiry will deal with the prevalence of hijacked buildings in the Johannesburg inner city.
The commission wrote to the provincial government late last year requesting an extension after starting work three weeks late. When it started the probe in October, the hearings were abruptly halted after emergency services in Johannesburg said the building used as a venue in Parktown was itself unsafe and did not comply with bylaws.
The commission has subsequently secured the SciBono Discovery Centre in downtown Johannesburg to be its venue when hearings resume on Wednesday. “A maximum of two witnesses [will testify] on resumption. The commission received in excess of 300 victim statements. The programme for the hearing of such evidence is being discussed with the legal representatives of such witnesses,” the secretariat said.
The fire in the hijacked five-storey building in Marshalltown was the worst such disaster in the city in recent history. It attracted international media coverage and brought into sharp focus the issue of hijacked buildings in the Johannesburg inner city.
Advocate Thulani Makhubela, one of three commissioners supporting Khampepe, was ordered to recuse himself last month after the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa accused him of xenophobic views.
The commission said Makhubela will not be replaced.
Meanwhile, on December 7, the Johannesburg high court interdicted the department of home affairs from deporting 32 people who survived the Usindiso inferno.
Lawyers representing survivors of the fire approached the court arguing that home affairs wanted to deport them to prevent them from testifying about what had actually happened in the Usindiso building.
Other survivors of the fire have since been moved from a recreation centre in Bezuidenhout Valley to an informal settlement in Denver.