The 83 men who were burned alive in a Johannesburg slum either waited patiently or dozed on the grass of a converted rescue center in the heart of a suburban community.
All were foreigners in South Africa – 68 of them from Tanzania and 15 Malawians – along with others who died in the fire at 80 Albert Street in the city’s run-down Marshalltown area in the early hours of August 31. 77 people the same.
Hundreds of people live in the dilapidated municipal building, where gangland landlords charge R2,000 ($105) a month for a room that sleeps four or more people. This is all most people can afford after barely making ends meet working as street vendors or doing odd jobs and sending remittances to alleviate poverty in their home countries.
Adamu, 28, one of the survivors, runs a small food shop near the entrance to the house. He said he came to South Africa “to keep busy, to try to make my life better…”. . I support my family with that business.”
He declined to use his real name out of fear he might be deported. Like others who lived through this disaster, he had to start over after losing everything and faced returning to another overcrowded ghetto. “You have no choice,” Adamu said.
The building where he nearly died once symbolized South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. It now reflects a systemic failure not only in South Africa but in economies across the region.
For decades, 80 Albert Street housed the offices of a white minority regime that issued the obnoxious “dompas” passports that restricted where black South Africans could go. After the onset of democracy under Nelson Mandela, it was converted into a women’s shelter and clinic.
Yet over the past decade, like many public and private buildings in the core of Africa’s richest cities, it has fallen into squalor.
Residents say police extort money regardless of passport integrity and South African landlords threaten them with guns, reflecting contempt for immigrants. “If you don’t pay, they throw you out on the street and say you’re not South African,” Adamu said.
More recently, financial crises and political bickering have meant clear warnings of the dangers have been ignored.
The cause of the fire was unclear, but survivors said the cluster of shacks and locked doors resembled an inferno about to happen. Many people were forced to jump from upstairs windows as the flames roared below.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said this week that the tragedy “highlights the need to address the housing challenges in our cities”.
But the Marshalltown building has been neglected as Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress battles opposition parties for control of the city.
In a 2019 report seen by the Financial Times, the council was warned that “the illegally occupied building was deteriorating rapidly”, including destroyed emergency fire systems, burned wires and illegal electrical connections. He also called on the municipal property company and the police to urgently recover and seal the house.
Councilor Mpho Phalatse said the “illegal” real estate company had taken no action and he had taken action to close the building’s clinic due to the mess. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Political instability after 2019, with an unstable opposition and the rotation of ANC governments, means further opportunities are lost. It will be difficult not only to clean up institutions such as real estate companies, but also to ensure immigration has the capacity to handle undocumented immigrants after deportation and provide them with emergency housing funding, as required by South Africa’s Supreme Court.
Falatse rose to become mayor but was ousted this year as the ANC attracted smaller opposition parties.
Since the fire, the coalition has shown little sign that institutional reform is a priority. “This clearly tells us that we do not have world-class African citizens who abide by the law,” one of its members said on the day of the fire.
“The current government is not really focused on rebuilding the city. Their focus is elsewhere,” Faraz said. “When you do that, there are consequences. Seventy-seven people died because you ignored critical advice.”
The deaths in the Marshalltown fire are an indictment not only of a city and a society, but of a region. Poverty traps across southern Africa, including in Malawi and Tanzania, but also in Zimbabwe, Lesotho and elsewhere, are driving migration to South Africa. South Africa has a relatively developed economy, but growth is stagnant and infrastructure is deteriorating.
In the more than four years since many Tanzanian and Malawi fire victims and survivors arrived in South Africa, their countries have undergone political change. But they still offer few financial incentives to return home.
In 2020, Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera became the first African opposition leader to win re-election. He promised to stop systemic corruption that siphoned off funds from dependent donors. But the World Bank said the southern African continent’s most densely populated country still faced a “protracted macro-fiscal crisis”.
In Tanzania, the strongman politics of former President John Magufuli died with him in 2021, but the country’s economy is struggling to absorb one of the world’s fastest population expansions. The World Bank said the population was just under 62 million last year and could rise to 140 million by 2050.
1995, the year Adamu was born, was a promising time for southern Africa. That year, his country held its first multiparty elections since independence. A year earlier, Mandela had won South Africa’s first democratic vote.
Despite the trauma of the fire and the hostility of some South Africans, most survivors at the rescue center feel they have no choice but to stay.
“We know South Africans in Tanzania hate foreigners, but we still have hope,” one person said. “We know they hate us, but we… still want to come.”
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