Jozi housing crisis like a movie on loop

Abandoned buildings are people's homes and it wouldn't take much to make them safe

- Ask Ash Ash Müller

I decided to rewatch the movie Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema. Besides the fact that it's an excellent film directed by Ralph Ziman, I started examining the fictional protagonist Lucky Kunene. He is a symbol of struggle and represents individuals who were involved with the hijacking of buildings in Jozi's suburb of Hillbrow during the 1990s. The character Lucky is not a real person, but the movie is based on real-life events, and it got me thinking.

How much has changed since then?

Basically nothing. In fact, I think the situation has worsened. I was in the Johannesburg city centre the other day, and the decay is nothing short of a tragedy. Looking across the skyline that was home to some of the tallest buildings in Africa, it's hard to digest what has happened to the City of Gold.

At about the time of Lucky's fictional escapade in 1990, Ponte City was hijacked. Then, in 2021, the building was officially declared to be Africa's first-ever vertical slum. Riddled with lawlessness and gangsterism, it was home to 8 000 people, which is way past the legal occupancy rate for this building. Water and electricity were cut off from the building, and people threw so much trash into the centre of the building that it built up 14 storeys high. In later years, when the trash was finally cleaned up, they found 23 bodies.

That's a pretty big fall from grace considering Ponte was once the tallest building in Africa for 48 years straight, measuring 172m in height. It was beaten by a skyscraper in Egypt only 5m taller.

Someone suggested that Ponte City be converted into the world's first vertical prison. From a design perspective, this might not have been a bad idea for the building itself. But, from a surroundings perspective, a building with such a prominent location surrounded by corporations, bank headquarters and schools was probably not a good match.