OPINION| Joburg won’t survive without enforcing its own rules

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.

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