Hijackers

Looming over South Africa’s economic capital are towers full of criminals. At least, that’s how Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba presented it when he announced that he’d be clearing out 500 of these building; as blights on a developing city, best emptied, renovated and sold with little regard for the illegal tenants. But of course, the reality is more complicated than that. These are Johannesburg’s “hijacked” buildings – a result of white flight from the city at the end of apartheid and the country’s high unemployment rate. As building owners fled the city and the country, residents had no clear sense of who was maintaining their homes. A stranger would arrive and collect rent, claiming to represent a new owner, only to disappear when the building’s water and electricity were shut off. Buildings fell into disrepair as more and more impoverished South Africans moved to the city looking for work, taking up residence in everything from empty warehouses to abandoned mosques. For people facing extreme unemployment and rural poverty, this was seemingly the best option to provide for their families.