Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa Real Estate Investor Magazine - November 2017 | Page 40

LEGAL
Inner City Evictions
The effect on investors
BY CHRISTOPHER ABRAHAMS
J
ohannesburg, once touted as the Manhattan of Africa
with towering office blocks, vibrant inner-city apartments
and bustling restaurants, is now but a mere shadow of its
former self. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Johan-
nesburg, as echoed in cities across South Africa, underwent a
massive transformation, a transformation which saw an eco-
nomic and cosmopolitan hub transition to a virtual ghost town
riddled with abandoned and vacant buildings and an ever-in-
creasing number of migrants who surged in to fill the void left
in the wake of the mass exodus of business from the inner-city.
Fast forward to the present day and South Africa’s cities are,
much like Johannesburg which is currently faced with a hous-
ing crisis, now home to thousands of lower income earners
who call its vacant and abandoned buildings, home. This sad
reality has seen unscrupulous individuals unlawfully assume
control of these abandoned buildings, which are often derelict
and