Property hijacking remains headache for Joburg

One in 20 buildings in the Joburg CBD remain hijacked but the city's urban planners believe they have turned the corner in the battle against building hijacking.

People walk past one of the many hijacked buildings in Joburg which the council is trying to reinstate to its rightful owners.

There are an estimated 22 000 buildings in the Joburg inner city, more than 1 000 of which remain in the hands of slumlords who are robbing the city of economic benefits such as revenue from rates and taxes.

In the past five years, the City of Joburg claims to have attracted more than R9 billion in investment into the CBD through the rejuvenation and rehabilitation of buildings.

But according to William Pudikabekwa, manager of properties and investigation in the council's development planning and urban management department, the highest sentence that has been handed to a building hijacker was 10 years in prison.

"There are quite a number of cases against building hijackers that we have taken to court since 2009, but they are taking a bit too long to conclude," he said.

"There is a lot of corruption that happens within and a lot of threats aimed at our unit, which is targeting bad buildings in the city."

Pudikabekwa, who heads a task team made up of police officers, prosecutors and Sars officials to reclaim the city's high-rise buildings from hijackers, said they had had some "teething issues" since the unit started work in 2008.

In the past, police often charged building hijackers with minor offences such as trespassing and intimidation. They told complainants that it was a civil matter and that they could not help, according to Pudikabekwa.

But with the establishment of the task team, offences related to building hijacking – which is not a crime on its own – include the more serious charges of fraud and tax evasion.

The task team has more than 1 500 buildings on its radar.

In August, the council launched a "war room" – where the members of the task team are based – specifically to deal with hijacked buildings and ensure their reinstatement to their legitimate owners.

Since then, two suspected hijacked or bad buildings have been targeted every week and a process has been initiated to find the owners, who are compelled to adhere to strict conditions, including compliance with health and safety by-laws.

To date, 36 buildings have been wrestled from hijackers and handed back to their legitimate owners.

However, Pudikabekwa said seven of the buildings had since been re-hijacked.

"We now have to go back to court again and restart the process of taking the buildings away from the hijackers by applying for default judgment," he said.

"But from when we started, when Joburg was a ghost town, I think there has been a turnaround in that to date more than 2 000 hijacked bad buildings have been given back to their rightful owners. I am seeing the changes happening now in the inner city since we started with this process." He said the worst was over. "We are still facing some problems, like identifying owners of abandoned buildings. But unfortunately, even if we do manage to chase hijackers out of them, we don't have funds to put people on guard, so the building ends up being rehijacked," he said.

"We also have situations where several buildings have been fraudulently transferred into the hijacker's name but we have been unable to trace the culprit, which makes it more difficult to take over the properties."

Pudikabekwa believes, however, that the council is turning up the heat on slumlords with the many arrests that have been made, including those of council building inspectors who were allegedly extorting money from hijackers.

"One of the biggest cases we've got before the courts now is of one guy who we have linked to the hijacking of more than eight buildings that he fraudulently put under his name.

"He sold one for more than R3.5 million," he said.

"The guy tried to plea-bargain for R5m to avoid jail, but we have more charges against him," Pudikabekwa said.

Saturday Star

Posted at 08:53AM Feb 06, 2012 by Editor in Cities and Towns  |  Comments[1]