By Julia Fish
Johannesburg is increasingly becoming a city where the rules seem to exist only on paper.
Illegal building activity, unchecked densification, illegal utility connections, hijacked buildings, overloaded infrastructure, and the near absence of effective oversight by the city’s Development Planning Department are no longer isolated failures. They are signs of a system that is no longer functioning as it should.
The Ormonde building — for which no plans were submitted – collapsed killing nine construction workers earlier this month.
Additionally there was a house collapse in Soweto in January with the building believed to have been structurally unsound.
There was the collapse of a wall in Doornfontein, possibly due to an illegal gas connection, and of course there was the Marshalltown fire, where 77 died in 2023, at a city owned property.
There are many more but less high profile building infringements on a daily basis.
We can go as far back as the 101-metre Bank of Lisbon blaze in September 2018, which killed three firefighters. A report into the fire was released five years later and it was found that basic fire compliance was never carried out — neither by the tenant, which was Gauteng government departments — or after being inspected by the city.
Residents have a right to expect that the city will monitor whether building plans are approved, whether land use complies with zoning, whether additions and alterations are lawful, and whether buildings are being used in ways that are safe and appropriate for the site.
But in practice, oversight is weak, enforcement is inconsistent, and consequences are rare.
Illegal buildings
One of the clearest examples is what happens when illegal building activity is identified. The city should act decisively, including by seeking and imposing stop work orders where necessary.
Yet residents almost never see these matters followed through to a proper conclusion.
Where the law is being flouted, enforcement should not end with paperwork. It should end in action, including demolition where the law and the courts require it. That almost never seems to happen unless it is a high profile matter — and this is not always guaranteed.
A serious question must be asked: Does the city simply not have the budget, or the will, to litigate these cases properly?
Has the department been captured or corrupted?
Because when enforcement is not backed by legal muscle, the message is clear. Break the rules, build first, and chances are nothing meaningful will happen.
That culture of impunity has consequences across Johannesburg.
The city cannot pretend ignorance. In too many cases, it knows where the risks are. It knows which properties are overloaded. It knows where land use has shifted beyond what the infrastructure was designed to handle. It knows where illegal connections are draining the system.
And why does it know? Because communities do report the bylaw infringements. And we know this because when they cannot get help, they turn to us at JoburgCAN.
What is missing is action.
This is especially visible in areas such as Berea and Yeoville, where ordinary family homes are increasingly being used to accommodate far more people than they were ever designed for.
Four-bedroom homes are being converted to house 10, 15 or even 20 people. Sewer, water and electricity systems that were planned for one level of use are being pushed far beyond capacity. That has consequences not only for the people inside those buildings, but for the wider neighbourhood and the city as a whole.
Not all of these buildings are hijacked. In many cases, there is a lawful owner and the city has full authority to intervene and say: this is unlawful, this use cannot continue, and this property must be brought into compliance. Yet again, there seems to be an unwillingness to act.
The result is urban creep, visible in neighbourhoods that are beginning to feel overwhelmed and cut off. It is no coincidence that more areas are turning to Community Improvement Districts (CIDs) and other forms of self-protection.
This should alarm everyone. Building law enforcement, zoning compliance and by-law enforcement are not side issues. They are central to whether Johannesburg remains governable.
Residents do not want chaos. They want compliance. They want safety. They want equal enforcement of the rules, not selective intervention and endless drift.
A family wants to know that if they buy a property in a residential area, their neighbouring property will not be turned into a nightclub — a reality for residents in Melville.
Johannesburg is not declining because its problems are too complex to solve. It is declining because for too long there has been too little oversight, too little enforcement and too little accountability.
Julia Fish is Managing Director of Joburg Community Action Network (JoburgCAN).