By: Leah Laughlin '26
A fire in Johannesburg, South Africa tore through a building on August 31st that was being used as illegal temporary housing. The fire likely started from a candle or a fire in a metal barrel used by the squatters in the building. Approximately 75 people died with a dozen being children. The youngest child was only 18 months old.
The building that caught on fire was officially owned by the City of Johannesburg and its government. It was located in the Central Business District, even though most corporations have moved out of the area into more safer neighborhoods. The leftover buildings were left vacant, and due to the housing shortage, cartels have “hijacked” these buildings over and auctioned off spots to citizens of Johannesburg. Hundreds of people resided in this building, leading to overcrowdedness and raising the fire hazard levels. When the building caught fire, many people tried, and most failed, to flee through the fire escapes. Most were closed which caused more chaos and death. This led to extreme measures such as people jumping through the windows to try and escape. Some people threw their children out the window and had people below catch them in a desperate attempt to save them.
“In Johannesburg, the issue of stolen buildings is becoming a crisis, necessitating drastic action,” Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi said in a statement by the government’s official news agency. “A thorough intervention is required to ensure that disasters like the Marshalltown fire, one of the deadliest in recent memory, never happen again.”
This disaster rocked the government of Johannesburg, as this opened their eyes to how bad the struggle of jobless and homeless citizens actually was. Over 1.2 million people in Johannesburg are in need of housing and the unemployment rate was 29.81 percent in 2022. Most of the only places to live in are dirty, graffitied, and have broken windows.
The president, Cyril Ramaphosa, visited the site of the fire on August 31. The derelict building that was extremely overcrowded and unsafe gave him a shock.
“It’s a wake-up call for us to begin to address the situation of housing in the inner city,” Ramaphosa said.
“Maybe they (the government) need to be made more aware of the issues and aware of the people dealing with what’s happening. Definitely, more attention needs to be made about that,” NHS senior Alex Kirkman said.
“It might help bring awareness to it, but I don’t know if it would change it because sometimes people like to turn a blind eye.”
This fire was one of the worst disasters in the recent history of Johannesburg, and most people lost what little they had. A man named Wiseman Mpepa is one of them. He said he woke up to people screaming and saw that all of the exits were shut off, unable to be used. Mpepa lived in the building with his family, including his brother, his sister, and his brother-in-law. Mpepa said that he passed out from the smoke and doesn’t remember anything that happened after that.
“The smoke was coming to me, and after that, I just fell down. Then from there, I don’t know anything.” He lost all of his belongings and didn’t know where any of his family members were.
“I don’t have any plan, because everything, I lost,” he said.
The city of Johannesburg is going to take extra measures to help with the homelessness issues, and many activists have been speaking out through protests and articles being written
“I think that maybe they could run a donation of people that have extra clothing or furniture, things they want to get rid of.” NHS sophomore Ella Viau said.
They were originally focused on other parts of the city, but this brought the homelessness crisis to their attention. The funerals for all of those who passed have been being held in the past week, and many of the survivors attended.
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