By Johnathan Paoli
ActionSA leader and former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba has sharply criticised the City of Johannesburg’s latest strategy on hijacked buildings, arguing that the approach announced by Public Safety MMC Dr Mgcini Tshwaku risks entrenching criminality rather than restoring order, safety and dignity in the inner city.
Mashaba’s response follows Tshwaku’s announcement that the City is shifting away from mass evictions towards direct engagement and negotiation with tenants occupying hijacked and abandoned buildings in the Johannesburg CBD.
Tshwaku has said the City is tabulating outcomes from recent operations, including enforcement actions, tenant engagement and plans to address public health, housing and safety challenges linked to these properties.
Under the revised approach, Tshwaku said City officials would engage residents directly to understand the history and ownership of buildings, the reasons for their decay, and whether occupants could afford to pay rent.
He argued that if tenants committed to paying into a City-controlled account, the municipality could stabilise unsafe buildings, ensure rates and services are paid, and carry out basic engineering repairs without relocating residents.
However, Mashaba dismissed the proposal as “only good on paper and for political convenience”, warning that it ignores the reality of severe decay, organised crime and human rights abuses associated with many hijacked buildings.
“With utmost due respect to MMC Tshwaku, we can’t be a country that negotiates with criminals,” Mashaba said.
He argued that most inner-city hijacked buildings are structurally uninhabitable and pose serious long-term health risks to residents, particularly children forced to grow up in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.
“People live in a stench that is certainly going to affect their health in the long term, with young children brought up in such squalor, daily harassed by criminal syndicates,” Mashaba said.
He added that several buildings are used for serious crimes, including human trafficking and the exploitation of undocumented migrants as cheap or forced labour in criminal supply chains dealing in counterfeit and expired goods.
Mashaba accused the City leadership of replacing decisive governance with what he termed “political theatre”, arguing that reclaiming hijacked buildings requires a firm, uncompromising approach rather than negotiations with syndicates that control access, rent collection and security inside the properties.
He rejected Tshwaku’s assertion that negotiating with tenants was the only practical solution given Johannesburg’s housing backlog.
Tshwaku has said providing alternative accommodation could take decades and that the City must “think outside of the box” to separate law-abiding residents from criminal elements, while involving Home Affairs to process undocumented occupants.
Mashaba countered that a clear plan already exists.
He urged Tshwaku to request the Inner City Rejuvenation Plan approved by the Johannesburg City Council in 2017, during Mashaba’s mayoral term, and supported at the time by multiple parties, including the EFF.
“When I was mayor, there was a clear plan to reclaim and repurpose problematic buildings in the CBD,” Mashaba said.
He claimed that these interventions stalled after changes in political leadership and coalition arrangements at the City.
The debate has intensified amid heightened public concern over crime in the CBD following the murder of media personality and security contractor Warrick “DJ Warras” Stock, who was shot outside a hijacked building while enforcing a court-ordered eviction.
Tshwaku has since led high-profile multi-agency operations targeting criminal syndicates linked to hijacked properties, while acknowledging challenges such as poor lighting, urban decay and limited capacity within law enforcement and Home Affairs.
Mashaba, however, warned that reacting to individual tragedies without a sustained, rule-based strategy would fail to restore safety and public confidence.
He said governance failures in the inner city have allowed criminal networks to flourish for years, often at the expense of vulnerable residents.
Mashaba called on the MMC to put the lives of people and their human rights first, stressing that restoring the rule of law, enforcing building standards and dismantling criminal control must take precedence over short-term political considerations.
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