Garbage piles inside the Casa Mia building, in Johannesburg where illegal tenants say they collect and sell waste to survive.
Image: Simon Majadibodu/IOL
Over R10,000 - that’s how much one of the three men illegally occupying the hijacked Casa Mia building in Hillbrow in Joburg claims to earn by turning it into a waste recycling warehouse.
“We make a lot of money,” the man told IOL News during an operation led by Johannesburg MMC for Human Settlements Mlungisi Mabaso on Wednesday.
The visit was part of a city-wide inspection of hijacked buildings.
When IOL News entered the Casa Mia building, located on Soper Street, they were met with a strong stench, dilapidated infrastructure, and leaking sewage.
Piles of garbage, including plastic bottles, cans, glass and cardboard, were stacked throughout the garage area.
The three men living in the building appeared shocked by the unannounced visit.
One of them, who refused to be named, said they had been living there for more than three years.
“We are trying to make a living by collecting waste. We collect it around the city and sell it to make money,” he said.
Asked whether they were occupying the building illegally, he denied it.
“We are paying rent, but we are working for someone. That person is the one who pays rent to the building’s owners. We don’t know how much he pays,” he added.
However, Mabaso confirmed that the Casa Mia building is owned by the City of Johannesburg and that the municipality has not received any rent from its current illegal occupants.
When pressed about how much they earn each month from selling waste, the man hesitated but eventually said, “Yoh! We make a lot of money … It’s more than R10,000.”
He said they don’t know where they will go if the city evicts them.
“What is going to happen to us? We don’t have a place to go to. We are suffering and trying to make ends meet here.”
Inside the hijacked Casa Mia building on Soper Street in Hillbrow, where garbage fills the ground floor amid squalid conditions.
Image: Simon Majadibodu/IOL
Mabaso said the city intends to reclaim all hijacked buildings, starting with those it owns.
“The mayor (Dada Morero) instructed us to clean the inner city. We decided to prioritise our own properties first,” said Mabaso.
“We want to turn the inner city into a construction site, but we can’t do that when most of our buildings are hijacked.”
He said the city owns many hijacked properties through its entity, JOSCO, and will need to provide alternative accommodation during evictions.
“In the process of evacuation, we need to provide alternatives for the occupants. For us to be able to redevelop buildings, they need to be vacant first,” Mabaso explained.
The issue of hijacked buildings in Johannesburg has persisted for years, with little progress made.
Many buildings are reoccupied even after eviction efforts.
The problem drew national attention in August 2023, when 77 people died in the Usindiso building fire in Marshalltown, a hijacked structure illegally occupied under dangerous conditions.
IOL News previously reported that Mayor Dada Morero had acknowledged that addressing the hijacking crisis is more complex than previously thought.
“The challenges in the inner city are much bigger than we thought. We require as much partnership as possible, including from the provincial government,” he said recently.
He added that the city will soon unveil a formal plan to tackle buildings with existing court orders for eviction.
simon.majadibodu@iol.co.za
IOL News