12 years on, still a criminal haven
● The theft of a cellphone from a resident outside the decaying eight-storey Vannin Court in Pietersen Street in Hillbrow this week is an example of the dangers posed by hijacked buildings in Johannesburg.
The building has no water or electricity and despite several raids by police and city officials, the building is a haven for criminals while a syndicate charges rent to desperate residents.
When the Sunday Times visited the building this week, a group of men had just taken a cellphone from someone and were running away.
But despite the decay, there were children playing freely right next to the entrance.
Denzel Goldstone, chair of the Hillbrow CPF, said the organisation had not been able to establish who was behind the syndicate which hijacked the municipality-owned building.
“Some of the criminals who operated from the building have been arrested and sentenced but many of them do not live in the building. Right after the Easter weekend, police arrested four men who operated from the building and all of them were from Zola in Soweto.
“It is not every day that they mug people there ... The muggings do not often happen at night. Crimes are not committed inside the building but on the street. The criminals use the building just to disappear.
“It has been a nightmare trying to resolve the crime coming from the building,” Goldstone said.
He added that the crime has been taking place at the building for more than 12 years.
Goldstone said police and the municipality have tried to address the crime but the state of the property continued to attract criminals.
“It is about the will of the City of Johannesburg to fix the building. They did try, and came with police. Late last year, the city tried organising accommodation for the people in the building, but within a few days, other people had moved in.
“The municipality needs to clear that building and it must be cordoned off immediately and renovated. If you move people out and you take three weeks to start work, it will be too late,” Goldstone said.
Lucky Sindane, spokesperson for the Johannesburg Property Company which owns the building, said the asset was put through a procurement process and awarded to a developer in June 2019.
He referred questions about why the building had not been developed to the company which won the tender, EGC Properties. Efforts to get comment from the company were unsuccessful.
Sindane said there are efforts under way to curb the problem of hijacked buildings in the city.
In February, the city got nine court orders declaring privately owned buildings in the inner city unfit for habitation and giving authorities the green light to evacuate and demolish them.
The orders were granted after the Usindiso building fire in Marshalltown last August in which 76 people died, and are part of the city’s plan to upgrade and redevelop the area for safe and affordable housing.
“Though some of the interventions did not make a huge impact, the city is of the view that property hijackings require a multidisciplinary team consisting of professionals from other spheres of government working with the team from the City of Joburg to tackle this challenge,” Sindane said.
Hendrick de Klerk, director of security company Bad Boyz, said the criminals who attack unsuspecting pedestrians do not live in Vannin Court.
“In that building there are good people. I’ve got ladies I have known for decades who have lived there a long time. The problem is individuals coming from hostels, KwaZuluNatal and Zimbabwe. They are armed and use the building as a base from which they commit crime.
“The building is a crime haven. They stand in three groups of three at different points along the street. When a person comes, they will whistle for the next group to rob them,” De Klerk said.
Among the crimes are smash and grabs, and snatching cellphones from pedestrians and churchgoers. They also rob delivery drivers dropping off food. De Klerk said after committing the crimes, the men go into the building and change clothes to make it almost impossible to track them.
What makes the situation worse is that most of the victims do not want to open criminal cases.
“They are often illegal immigrants who do not want to open a case ... People get stabbed or shot here and when they are taken to hospital no-one knows that they were assaulted in Hillbrow.
“When we arrest the suspects, we take the victims and the suspects to the police station. Once the victims get their cellphones back, they do not want to testify and that collapses the case,” De Klerk said.
He estimated that there were 20 crimes linked to Vannin Court in a month but about three get reported to the police.
De Klerk said police needed to work differently and use intelligence-gathering as conducting raids doesn’t help. Neither does following the suspects into the building because there are many exits.
Police spokesperson Col Noxolo Kweza asked that a formal access to information request be submitted to get the statistics on the crimes linked to Vannin Court.
“The police are aware of buildings that are being used as havens by criminals. On several occasions the police have conducted searches and work with some of the tenants who report to the police about criminal activities. Police patrols are also highlighted at hotspot areas in the policing precinct. Hotspots include abandoned or hijacked buildings.
“This building being used by criminals is one of the challenges for the police. As and when criminals are identified, the police do conduct raids,” Kweza said.
Earlier in the year, the Sunday Times reported that the city had adopted a new system whereby it has the courts condemn problem buildings. This enables authorities to remove the occupants without going through a protracted eviction process.
However, this effort is restrained by the availability of alternative accommodation for people removed from the buildings.
The Gauteng government has established a commission of inquiry to investigate the cause of the Usindiso fire and why there are so many hijacked buildings in the city.