The Daily - A Tragic Fire and Broken Promises in South Africa

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

This episode contains descriptions of severe injuries. Last week, a devastating fire swept through a derelict building in Johannesburg that housed desperate families who had no place else to go. The authorities had been repeatedly warned that it was a potential firetrap. Nothing was done, and at least 76 people died.Lynsey Chutel, who covers southern Africa for The Times, explains how Johannesburg, once a symbol of the hope of post-apartheid South Africa, became an emblem of just how bad the country’s breakdown has become.Guest: Lynsey Chutel, a southern Africa correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: An extensive paper trail revealed that the authorities in Johannesburg were warned repeatedly about the dangers in the building that burned down.Johannesburg, with a severe shortage of affordable housing, has hundreds of illegally occupied derelict buildings that officials and housing advocates say have become firetraps.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. A devastating fire in Johannesburg last week is raising troubling questions about chaos and dysfunction in Africa's richest city. and dysfunction in Africa's richest city. Today, my colleague, Lindsay Shutel, on how the city that was once a symbol of the hope of post-apartheid South Africa is now an emblem of just how bad the breakdown has become. It's Friday, September 8th.

So, Lindsay, tell me about the fire you've been reporting on in Johannesburg, which, as it turns out, is the deadliest residential fire in South African history. So last Thursday at about one o'clock in the morning, smoke began to rise from this downtown building. And by the time I woke up... Massive blaze in the Johannesburg CBD this morning. It is a very quickly developing story. It was all over the news. Firefighters rushed to the five-story building.

Now they are still searching through the building for more victims. And the death toll kept rising hour by hour. When I first turned on the TV, it was about 20 people. Then it was 40 people. Then it was 60 people. And then by the end of the day, it was 77 people. And I'd rushed down to the site and the bodies were laid out in the street. You can literally see that the bodies have been covered with metal sheeting with blankets people who had run out of the building were sitting there in shock on the

sidewalk and it was just a scene of such devastation this is the building itself you can see that it's it's burned from the back it's burned from the front and up here you can see some of the residents who were desperately trying to get out had left a mattress there and were jumping from the top floors. Even though the fire had been brought under control by the morning, by the time the sun came up, there was still smoke coming from the building and there were just crowds and crowds of people. And what we realized is that these weren't onlookers. These were people who lived inside this building.

So up to about 600 people, possibly even more, just standing there their entire lives, just in ruin and in embers, quite frankly. And as someone who's from Johannesburg, how did you understand what had happened? What did it look like to you? It felt horribly inevitable. So we have had a series of disasters in Johannesburg, and we've kind of just quickly moved on from them.

For example, a few weeks ago, a street quite literally exploded in downtown Johannesburg. Cars flew up into the air and thank goodness there were very few fatalities. And you would think that seeing a giant crack on a main road would shock people, but it didn't. By day two, people had to turn to their homes. They carried on, They cordoned off the road. And that tells you something about what Johannesburg is as a city. In the last few years, we've seen Johannesburg slowly decaying, becoming worse and worse every day. And for those of us, particularly South Africans, what we're wondering is if the economic capital

of the most prosperous part of the country, which is one of the most advanced economies in Africa. If you can't keep that city running, what does the rest of this country look like? And what is the hope for the rest of the country, quite frankly? Okay, so let's talk about that. How did Johannesburg get here? Walk me through it.

Bring me back to those hopeful early days. So Johannesburg is a relatively young city. It was when gold was discovered here in 1886 that everybody rushed here. And everybody from Eastern Europe all the way to China came to find their lives here and to make their fortunes here. It was an incredibly diverse city, but ironically, it's also where apartheid began. That is the system of segregation where black and white and all races were kept separately. And this is where Nelson Mandela, the iconic freedom fighter,

began this fight against apartheid. And this was with the sight of so much violence and political struggle and pain. It is my great pleasure to announce the President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr. Nelson Kholichala Mandela. Then came 1994. Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster

that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud. Apartheid ends and South Africa becomes a democracy. And Johannesburg sits at the center of that. It's the crown jewel of what South Africa could be. Neighborhoods are integrating, schools are integrating, and for better or for worse

shopping malls are popping up all over during the early 90s late 2000s they've got glass ceilings and cinemas the big mac has made it to south africa and there's a mcdonald's the hamburger giant is planning to open another restaurant this month then 15 more next year and in in downtown Johannesburg at this time, even though white businesses and white families fled the inner city, feared in crime, they were replaced with migrants who came from all over the continent, from as far as Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, would all come bringing their hopes to Johannesburg. And so it becomes this multicultural, diverse economic powerhouse

that just draws people from everywhere. And then... The decision was taken after only one round of voting. FIFA announces that the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be organised in South Africa. The first African World Cup will be held in South Africa.

It's uniting people, it's everything, it's freedom, it's everything, I just love it. And it's a real sense of optimism because the stadiums are going up, hotels are going up. Very well down to South Africa. I've never thought they could do it,

but they did it, man. They did it. I feel it for them. And it's this beautiful moment of what South Africa could be. We feel safe on the trains and coming here. It's a good vibe at the moment. Hopefully it can carry on after that.

But beyond the World Cup, things began to fall apart. And that's where the disappointment begins to set in. So walk me through that. What changed? So at this point, the party of Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress, is still in power. But we're beginning to see a different side of that party. This party that had these grand visions for South Africa becomes mired in corruption scandals from top to bottom, from the presidency all the way down to your local street councillor. to your local street councillor.

But what that means is that the money that should have been spent on building schools, on paying for university tuition, on building hospitals has disappeared. Unemployment is rising, there's an economic crisis that is growing and it turns into this sense of desperation that also drives violent crime in the city. And perhaps the most material ways that Africans are feeling it is that we literally violent crime in the city. And perhaps the most material way South Africans are feeling it is that we literally find ourselves in the dark. Around about 2012, 2013, rolling blackouts become worse and worse.

And South Africans learn to live with the fact that the country is unable to supply electricity. And that is just one of the many things it was unable to supply. And by 2019, particularly here in Johannesburg, there was a backlash against the African National Congress when voters decided that they would not keep the ANC in power and voted them out. And what happened when they were voted out? Like, what did that mean for Johannesburg? Well, what that meant was political chaos.

So smaller parties suddenly became kingmakers, parties that many South African voters had never even heard of. They were at the bottom of the ballot. And suddenly they became the swing vote. And these parties were then able to form coalition governments. But those coalition governments were so rickety that Johannesburg has had six mayors in the last two years alone. Wow. A mayor for each season. Precisely. I bet you if you asked any Joe Burger who the mayor is, they're not quite sure themselves. And so at this point, what that means is, who do you call when you're in trouble?

And so at this point, what that means is, who do you call when you're in trouble? Who do you call when services aren't working? A couple weeks ago, the copper cables on my street were stolen. Copper cables have become a great underground business. And so people rip out the copper wiring and it's sold as scrap metal. And that means that in your street, you will not have electricity, in my case, for up to a week. Wait, the copper cable in your street was stolen? Like from city power lines? From city power lines. So what happens is because we have these rolling blackouts, there is no electricity running through the copper cables. And that is the perfect time

to rip them out of the ground, to rip them out of power stations, and to sell them as scrap metal. And it's not just the copper theft. It is the trash collection and the heaps of trash that are piling up around the city. There are these huge crater-sized potholes. And terrifyingly, in a city with high crime, the streetlights don't work in so many neighborhoods. And that's what led me to start reporting on the decay of Johannesburg and just exactly what was happening. And back in May, my colleague Joelle Silva, the photographer, and I actually end up at A.T. Albert Street, which is the building that is now burnt and become the center of such an awful tragedy. And what I found was a hijacked building. Okay. What exactly is a hijacked building? Like I think of a

plane or a car when you use the word hijack. And that's nearly exactly what it is. So what happens is, is that you have a building that is seen as vulnerable, a building where the landlord is missing, where it's clear that there's nobody taking care of this building. And so what you'll find is that groups of criminals or groups of gangs sometimes will walk into a building and start taking over rooms. And they'll take over a room, they'll say, we live here now. And under threat of violence, the people who do live there, or people who want to move in, they start collecting rent.

So the landlord is completely kicked out, and criminals will collect rent for these buildings, start collecting rent. So the landlord is completely kicked out and people, criminals, will collect rent for these buildings in which there's often no running water, no electricity, no fire escapes, no trash collection. And the worst part is that there are dozens of them around the city. So it's almost as if these people, the hijackers, are kind of taking the building hostage, right? Like they have seized it and they're extracting rent from people. Precisely. You can quite literally steal a building

and have it function as a residential building without any oversight from the city and without any response from the city. Wow, that is wild. That is wild. What happens is that effect of the building that has been hijacked is that it affects the entire block. And so the people who are living inside, because it's a mix of people, right?

But the easiest is for criminals to move into these buildings. And so people walking past these buildings will often be mugged. They will be shot. But there are also people who can't afford to live anywhere else. And so they're living in these conditions as well. So it's a mix of the exploitation of Johannesburg's working poor, those people who came to Joburg to try and build a life and find that they can't even afford accommodation.

And how many of these buildings are there in Johannesburg? The number itself varies. The highest estimate is that it could be as many as 600. But that includes empty lots and houses, because just as you can steal a building, you can also quite literally steal someone's house. So what was this building like inside when you went in May? So I will be completely honest, I didn't go quite inside. Oh no. So the people living across the road warned us that we would absolutely be robbed if we went

near this building. And so we watched people going in and out, and we saw this heap of trash right at the entrance. We saw another heap of trash on the other side of the building, sagging on the eaves. The windows were broken. It was pitch dark. It was the middle of the day, but it was pitch dark inside the building because there was no light.

And there were rats scurrying around. And, of course, my colleague, Joao Silva, who is a well-known war photographer, went back the next day because he was determined to take a look inside. And he got only as far as the lobby. If my colleague, Joao Silva, only went as far as the lobby, Joao Silva is one of the most fearless people I know. We were together in Afghanistan. It must have been pretty bad. It was a case of he didn't know who was behind which door and that's where the threat would be. So João walks around the lobby and he sees exposed wire. He sees doors hanging off the hinges.

And he just remarked over and over just how dark and unsafe the building itself was. But in the aftermath of the fire, we've gotten a closer sense of what happened behind those closed doors, which I wasn't able to go. Talking to the survivors, people who lived inside this building, and how they feared for their lives, and how even they saw that this was an inevitability. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So, Lindsay, you finally find out what it's like to live in this building because you've talked to some of the people who live there. What did they say? So the morning after the fire, I go to a community center nearby that is housing many of the survivors. And in one of

the halls, women have been sleeping on donated mattresses with blankets. Can I come closer? Yes. And on one of those rolled up mattresses, I find a young woman and her mother. Her mother's name is Pearl. She's in her early 50s. It's like me and my mom, just us. And next to her is her daughter. The building we used to live at, there's another hijacked one. They had just moved from one hijacked building where it had become too unsafe for them because of the criminality in that building

into this building here. And how long were you living in the building? This is the third one. They'd been there for a couple months, but they said that life was hell. It was bad. It was bad. It was bad to have to go into a bike. Sometimes during the night we'd have to wake up and lie on our stomachs because there were gunshots right in the passage. It was bad. It was bad.

Sometimes at night we'd hear ghosts screaming. And you guys were paying rent for this? Yes. That's the worst part. They pay more than a thousand rand for this little corner of a room, which is about $50 just over. And they get this money from Pearl, who cleans the streets, and from her daughter's tuition fee that she gets from the state as a college student. They had no running water and so would use water from the fire hydrant

or collect water from an open drain. Whenever you had to pee or relieve yourself, you had to go like four streets away to go to council centre. They had no toilets and so they would walk up to the shopping mall two to three blocks up the road during the day and at night when it became too unsafe they would relieve themselves in buckets and keep it in the room. I had to be at home by five as long as it's not dark yet. The daughter could not get into the building after dark not because she was afraid of what was happening outside. We have people rob you inside the building. But because of into the building after dark, not because she was afraid of what was happening outside.

We have people rob you inside the building. But because of inside the building. She would rush home and lock herself in the room before sunset. Because of the day, I had no electricity, I was using wood. Inside the apartment? Yes. The only way to keep the room warm is to make a small fire in the room. And they knew this was a fire hazard,

and it was an awful choice that they had to make every day. So they knew that this building was going to be life-threatening. And how did they describe the night of the fire? So on the night of the fire, the daughter had been studying late, and it was too unsafe to go home, so she stayed with a friend. And it was just her mum at home. And her mum, Pearl, says round about after 1am, she'd gotten up and she wanted to relieve herself.

And she says, quite frankly, that something felt off. So there was a sense of foreboding and she began to pray. And what she remembers thereafter is suddenly she heard screaming. Saying, the shutter is burning, the shutter is burning. And people were banging on the doors and saying, there's a fire, there's a fire in the building. And what it seemed is that in one of the shacks on the ground floor or in the lot outside, there seems to have been a fire. And of course, we don't know exactly what the cause is just yet, but we do know that that fire spread

rapidly because of the materials within this abandoned, stripped building. I took a bed, then I walked out, I locked the bed like it. I was praying in my heart that, oh, may God just protect me, just show me the way. Pearl says she got out of her room, but she locks the door because she's hoping that she's able to come back at some point. And she grabs what she can. She says she didn't have time to grab her daughter's school books. And she runs outside, and as she's running, she takes the risk of running

down the stairs. We know a lot of people were too afraid as the fire leapt up and they jumped out of the third floor. Pearl is one of the lucky ones that made it down the stairs. But she says on one of the floors, there was a locked door. Some boat was banging, banging, crying. And she heard banging

and banging, and she says it was a sound that she will never forget, of a man screaming on the other side of a locked door. And she had to make that choice. Did she go and try and free him? She doesn't have a key. I never looked. I just thought of myself. I had to save myself because I know that I have a child to live.

If I die, she will be left alone. That's what was running in my mind, that no one cannot die in this fire. You have to save yourself or this child. It's the choice of, does she save herself for her daughter, who she lives for, or does she run and try and save this man who she doesn't know, because the truth is she doesn't really know her neighbours.

And so many of the people, when I spoke to them outside, they said, we didn't really know who we were living next door to because people were in and out then no one went there because we're running for our lives we didn't know how far is the fire and what is going to happen maybe the building is going to explode we just ran out she makes the choice and she runs in the opposite direction from the man who is screaming. And when she finally makes it out into the street, she looks back and the building is aflame. So while we're standing there, some of the people are throwing themselves from the roof. Second floor, third floor, people are dying in front of us. And people are jumping and some of them are falling to their deaths.

And people are jumping and some of them are falling to their deaths. And as she's saying this, she shakes her head and tears are just filling her eyes. But her daughter, she's hardening herself at this point. She says that, quite frankly, she just wants to move on from 80 Albert Street. I feel like all these people are relieved that what happened happened because they were looking for a way out. You're looking at them and they're free and they're relieved deep down inside because it was hell. She doesn't want to have that memory. You said that people clearly knew that a fire like this was possible, that these hijacked buildings, you know, are a phenomenon, and that there are over 600 of them.

You called this inevitable in some ways. So who's at fault here? You know, when I got to the scene, I asked the mayor that same question. I said, people have been calling you about this building for years, to my records, at least since May. So who is at fault here? And he said, while his administration is new, everyone is at fault. And that is a catch-all, because that means that no one person will be held accountable here, because what this building represents is a

series of failures within the city and a series of failures within the country, quite frankly. So my colleague John Eligo found a trove of documents that showed emails between city environmental officials sending emails to people in the health department, their colleagues in public safety, their colleagues in the Johannesburg Property Company, which was the state-owned entity that ran this company. And they said, we have had inspections here at least from 2017. They listed all the problems with the building and they said that this is a bad building. It is turning into an emergency situation

and we should do something about it. What we did not find is what exactly people did about it. Residents who live across the road, those are the people that I interviewed back in May already, said that they had also called the police. They called the police when they heard screams. They called the police when they thought there was a murder, when they saw a woman being thrown off the third or fourth floor. And the police would come, there would be a raid, but

then life would return to normal. And it would just go right back to the way things were. And so there are all these failures at every step. And when city officials were doing this sort of tour around the disaster, giving press conferences, giving press briefings, blaming each other, I asked one of the city officials, when was the last time you were inside this building? When was the last time there was an inspection? And he said to me, it was in 2019 because we couldn't risk going into a hostile environment, hostile environment where people lived. So stepping back for a minute here, Lindsay, you know, going back to something we talked about

at the beginning of our conversation, Johannesburg as the symbol of hope and optimism that really all of us had about South Africa back in 1994. And now here we have this. And I mean, you know, I don't want to read too much into it. We just had our own disastrous fire in the state of Hawaii. But it does seem safe to say that this fire has shown Johannesburg to be a symbol of something else.

What would you say it is? I think Johannesburg at this point is a symbol of the disappointment of what South Africa could have been. Johannesburg has all these precincts in which the city tried to build and create and make it safe and livable. But even as I was driving here, I would see a

developed building and next door was a hijacked building. Every time there is one step forward, there are two to three steps back. And to be sure, there are great gleaming stretches of the city that still show the old promise. But more and more for so many people, the city just doesn't hold the promise that it used to. Lindsay, as someone from Johannesburg, whose life has spanned this period, how do you see it? You know, I grew up between a part of Soweto and Johannesburg suburbs.

I was bussed into school back and forth every day. I've traveled from one end of Johannesburg. And what I've loved about the city is its innovation, its diversity, its sense of energy. And what I am finding is that the spirit of the city is slowly waning and struggling. slowly waning and struggling. The city is struggling to rise above this political disaster. It's struggling to rise above decades of neglect. And it's struggling to rise above what is becoming a national problem in South Africa, where it seems as if there is no clear path forward. And it seems as if the people who have been entrusted in steering the city and steering the country

into this future that everybody dreamed about in 1994 are unable to do it. And so for the people that I have been talking to, what they're seeing this is, is a leaderless city. And that question is important because we are months away from a pivotal election. Next year is not only the 30-year anniversary of democracy in South Africa, it's also an election year where some pundits are saying that they believe that the ANC will go to its lowest margin yet.

It will still win. that they believe that the ANC will go to its lowest margin yet. It will still win. But what we're seeing then is the likely that it will be at its weakest. And so what we're questioning then is who steps into that gap. And what I think is that the lesson here is rather than relying on a political party to step into that gap. What I have seen in the days after the fire is South Africans and immigrant communities coming together to try and help each other, to feed each other,

to find homes for each other, to help each other bury their dead. And so what I hope is that South Africans will find their humanity in what has truly been an absolute tragedy. And I hope that unlike the previous times, that Johannesburg doesn't just move on from this one. Lindsay, thank you. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you should know today. On Thursday. Let me tell you something, New Yorkers. Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an end to. I don't see an end to this. New York Mayor Eric Adams escalated his rhetoric over the influx of migrants to the city, claiming in stark terms that the crisis was existential. This issue will destroy New York City.

Adams, a Democrat in his second year in office, has clashed with leading members of his party as New York City has struggled to provide housing and services to the migrants, who now number 110,000. For months, he has criticized President Biden and New York's Governor Kathy Hochul for failing to help the city. But his comments on Thursday were the most ominous yet and drew praise from Republicans and condemnation from some Democrats. And Peter Navarro, a trade advisor to former President Donald Trump, was convicted on Thursday of criminal contempt of Congress over his defiance of a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The verdict, in federal district court in Manhattan, made Mr. Navarro the second top advisor of Trump's to be found guilty of contempt for defying the committee's inquiry. Stephen Bannon, a former strategist for Mr. Trump, was convicted of the same offense last summer. convicted of the same offense last summer. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennis-Sketter,

Luke van der Ploeg, and Alex Stern. It was edited by Michael Benoit, contains original music by Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lindsay Garrison, Claire Tennesketter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon-Johnson,

Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Mark George, Luke Vanderploeg, MJ Davis-Lynn, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoit, Liz O'Balin, Aastha Chaturvedi, Rochelle Banja, Diana Nguyen, Marianne Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Zipko, Alisha Baitube, Muj Zaydi, Patricia Willans, Rowan Nemisto, Jodi Becker, Ricky Nowetzki, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reed, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexi Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern,

Dan Farrell, Sophia Landman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devin Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Tamad, and Olivia Nat. Special thanks to Sam Dolnik, Paula Schumann, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sophia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Barelli, Maddie Messiello, Isabella Anderson, and Nina Lassam. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you on Monday.