Metro gets ball rolling for unit to secure hijacked buildings

The metro’s special task force that has been appointed to identify hijacked and dilapidated buildings, especially in the CBD, will soon be gaining new momentum.

This multi-departmental team includes the departments of health, city planning, the environment, as well as the metro’s legal team. Officials have already been seconded to the new unit.

It will work in close co-operation with the newly established integrated by-law enforcement centre.

This is according to MMC for Community Safety, Grandi Theunissen.

A proposal for the future operational functioning of the unit is currently being submitted to city management, after which it has to be signed off by the mayor.

“Then we can get the ball rolling, preferably this month still,” said Theunissen.

In an interview with Rekord, he expressed shock about the condition of certain buildings in the CBD.

“It is unacceptable and contributes to crime. It is also dangerous. We don’t want another Marshalltown in Tshwane, with residents burning in unsafe buildings,” said Theunissen.

“We also cannot allow the CBD to fall into a state of lawlessness. Other residential areas where buildings and sites pose health risks for neighbours and residents are also on our list, but the CBD and its immediate environment will be prioritised,” he said.

The metro’s own hijacked and dilapidated buildings form part of this list, as well as the notorious Melgisedek building, regarded for years by residents of the surrounding Riviera neighbourhood as a crime nest.

He emphasised that in future, metro police will be trained to perform effective policing in terms of municipal by-laws as well as national regulations such as the Liquor Act and national building regulations.

“Metro police officials who will have to carry out this secondary mandate cannot perform their specialised tasks with their standard training and will receive advanced training, where law enforcement of by-laws will be included,” said Theunissen.

He was especially serious about putting an end to the slumlords manipulating and exploiting desperate occupiers of the CBD.

Rampant vandalism of buildings in the CBD is also an issue that will be prioritised.

The task force’s activities will be managed by the metro police offices.

“The metro police have a critical role to play in executing the mandate to make dilapidated and hijacked buildings safe and accessible again. The mode of operation, for example, will be to declare a building uninhabitable according to health regulations and then to liaise with the legal department on how to proceed,” he explained.

According to Theunissen, the metro police will be responsible for executing any seizure order or arrest, as well as the protection of officials while performing their mandate to combat the illegal occupation of buildings.

He stressed that the task team had already had a practice run when illegal occupiers who had broken several municipal by-laws were expelled from a property in Waterkloof Ridge.

Theunissen warned that possible corruption around the occupation of buildings would be investigated and whether slumlords have bribed metro officials, for example following the purchase of buildings, obtaining clearance certificates and registration of title deeds.

“We are also hard at work in having discussions with the deeds office about hijacked buildings,” he said.

He referred to recent talks between Mayor Cilliers Brink and Public Works’ new minister, Dean Macpherson, about the state of buildings owned by the state in the CBD, such as the notorious Telkom Towers.

Macpherson ordered that hijacked buildings belonging to the state in the Tshwane CBD be investigated as soon as possible.

“The same applies to provincial buildings. We want to collaborate with different levels of government to make the city more secure,” Theunissen explained.

He said giving the established task team an operational mandate falls under the metro’s greater strategy of solving and addressing old problems with new structures.

“The new overhead macro structure of the metro’s bureaucracy and its proposed way of working was approved last month by the city council and the microstructure will be submitted soon.”

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