Put pressure on errant home owners, says Save Our Berea

CIVIC action group, Save Our Berea, along with local ward councillors, are issuing a warning that people in the community are “gatvol” and are preparing to take on errant landlords by taking the battle into the areas in which they live.

This comes after a meeting held recently between Save Our Berea co-founders, Kevin Dunkley and Cheryl Johnson, and ward councillors Martin Meyer, Chris Pappas and Mmabatho Tembe, where the issue of what was being done to address derelict buildings in Durban’s surburbs was discussed.

Save Our Berea said there had been no improvement on the buildings they had previously discussed with officials and that one of the problem buildings, the property in Sandile Thusi Road, continued to be an eyesore, where vagrants lived and drugs were an issue.

Save Our Berea’s Cheryl Johnson said when she and Dunkley first started Save Our Berea in 2013, one of the first issues they faced was what they called the Trojan Horses, a label they gave to buildings in residential areas that have been allowed to deteriorate to a point where they have become a springboard for criminals and drug users.

“The situation has not improved at all over a period of three years and the reason for that is two-fold. The municipality has failed to grasp the extent of the problem and they must shoulder the majority of the blame because they refuse to follow the success of dealing with similar issues in Cape Town and Johannesburg, where houses were taken over by the municipality after five years,” said Dunkley.

“The reason for this is purely political and we the ratepayers suffer at the hands of inept politicians who would rather do nothing than admit that other municipalities are doing things better.”

In response to this, Councillor Martin Meyer said this had been put through as a motion in council, however the Legal Department has said it is unconstitutional.

“We do however need to address this as this must have been challenged in court at some stage,” he said.

Councillor Chris Pappas said this tied in with the case of the property at 159 East Street, where the property which is part of a deceased estate, has been left to fall apart, and is housing a number of vagrants.

“This property has been left to degrade and no one in the family wants to inherit it. It is an empty shell which belongs to someone, but no one wants to take it on. This is where the municipality should step in. This issue has been raised with the deputy mayor, and it has been prioritised,” he said.

Pappas said new Town Planning By-Laws were put forward in council at the end of last year, however when this went to the committee for approval, the Legal Department had said it wanted to have another look at the by-laws as there were a few things they weren’t happy with.

The group said they felt in cases where these derelict properties were being rented out, the home owners were taking advantage of people who can’t afford to pay more, and were creating slums in the process.

Johnson said she felt the errant owners’ selfishness ‘knows no bounds’.

“They leave their properties to decay and devalue whole neighbourhoods, while they live in other upmarket areas where they are safe from a similar situation. Mostly the reason is a selfish one of profit where they want to circumvent the AMAFA regulations and/or apply for rezonings that if given, enriches them overnight,” she said.

“The City has a responsibility, but it is first the owners’ responsibility to clean up their properties. We need to come down hard on the owners of these properties, who are themselves living in affluent areas but are ruining our community,” said Councillor Meyer.

Hoosen Moolla from the City’s Inner City Thekwini Regeneration and Urban Management Programme (iTrump) Department, who was unable to attend the meeting, said the project to fix up buildings in the inner City had worked and over the past two months the department had shifted its focus to deal with a few buildings in the suburbs.

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