The government has announced ambitious plans for hijacked and abandoned buildings it owns across the country, including establishing a dedicated team to assist with investigations.

The new strategy will entail early detection and intelligence gathering on potential invasion of state land, hijacking of unoccupied buildings, and rapid response to eviction of illegal occupants before 48 hours elapse as prescribed by law.

It is hoped that the approach will include investigations and arrests of shark landlords and state-owned building vandalisers and/or looters, and provision of security and escort services for government officials during site visits to illegally occupied land and buildings.

The plans include the arrests of undocumented foreign nationals and on state-owned properties they unlawfully occupy.

The government will provide security services to the sheriff of the court on serving illegal occupants with eviction court orders as well as during eviction operations.

Nyeleti Mthetwa, deputy director-general responsible for real estate management services at the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI), revealed details of the plans last week during the SA Local Government Association’s (Salga’s) two-day national municipal legal practitioners’ forum.

According to Mthetwa, the government will develop a comprehensive plan or strategy to effectively address the challenge of hijacked and illegally occupied buildings including coordinated measures by local, provincial, and national spheres of government in addressing the problem of a piecemeal, fragmented approach, which is often reactive.

She said current measures are insufficient, ineffective, short-term, and unsustainable and that the DPWI is planning a summit for all stakeholders on a date that will be communicated.

The stakeholders the DPWI wants to be involved in include the South African Police Service, Justice and Home Affairs departments, Salga, municipalities, and businesses.

"A proper root cause analysis must be conducted to avoid knee-jerk reactions to these. Treating symptoms, not addressing the root cause, and unable to arrest the accelerated decline/dilapidation and put an end to the challenge," explained Mthetwa.

The plans will see the identification and audit of state-owned properties that are illegally disposed of, unlawfully occupied and/or encroached, unregistered, un-surveyed, surveyed, and incorrectly vested.

The government has undertaken to implement corrective measures to evict illegal occupants and reverse ownership back to it.

Ultimately, this will lead to regularising leases with illegal occupants, where it is possible, and the surveying and registration of all state property, where necessary.

The government believes there is a need for a crackdown on hijacked buildings, which are prone to occupational health and safety hazards, and pose a danger to the lives of the illegal occupants.

The DPWI is in total looking at 1 287 properties that were identified by an Ernst and Young forensic investigation in 2016, and since then, the department has undertaken a due diligence exercise to determine the nature of the illegal occupation so that the appropriate action may be taken.

Results of the preliminary internal verification processes revealed that there are mainly four categories of illegally occupied properties – irregularly occupied (residential), which involves family members of former public servants who may have passed on and left their relatives in the houses or due to changing government housing policies.

The government plans to regularise their stay in the properties by signing lease agreements and payment or rental.

Illegally occupied (residential, vacant land, and commercial buildings) involves active and deliberate illegal occupation of government property. The government’s strategy is to evict and recover its properties from the illegal occupiers.

There are over 1 600 vacant DPWI properties, some of which are vacated by user departments due to lack of maintenance, residential properties run down due to overcrowding and dilapidation, and a lack of management by the government to which such are allocated.

To protect its assets from being vandalised, the department hires security companies or guards to safeguard them while making every effort to let them out to interested individuals and entities.

"The costs related to the safeguarding of vacant state-owned properties and associated holding costs have caused a serious hike in budget costs for vacant properties," the department complained.

However, due to the limited security budget, not all land parcels and properties can be safeguarded, which led to them becoming vulnerable to illegal occupation, vandalism, and hijacking.

loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za