Gauteng struggles to identify all its hijacked buildings

Gauteng’s Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) has missed its deadline to identify hijacked buildings in the province.

Hijacked buildings are a growing concern in Gauteng, particularly in high-density areas such as the Johannesburg CBD.

The problem arises when vacant buildings are hijacked by individuals who claim ownership and charge tenants rent.

These buildings often lack municipal services, such as water and electricity, because the local government still considers them vacant.

The tenants of these buildings are in danger, as illegal landlords overcrowd them and bypass municipal infrastructure to deliver services.

The fraudulent landowners often rely on illegal connections to power their buildings, causing headaches for the municipality due to stolen electricity.

SAPS and other local law enforcement agencies often raid hijacked buildings, but this fails to address the root cause of the problem.

This also places financial pressure on the province, due to the need to provide temporary accommodation for tenants removed from the buildings.

In October 2025, Gauteng’s Premier, Panyaza Lesufi, announced that the province’s CoGTA would be working to identify these hijacked buildings.

He said the identification process would be completed by 28 November 2025, after which the government would expropriate the buildings.

This self-imposed deadline passed without any announcement from the CoGTA Department about its progress on the matter.

Currently, the department has still not announced its progress, despite questions being raised in Parliament.

The department said it failed to meet the original deadline due to the complexity of verifying property ownership records.

ActionSA’s Gauteng legislative caucus leader, Funzi Ngobeni, said this reasoning made the department’s missed deadline even more unacceptable.

“No one disputes that identifying ownership and verifying property records is complex. But that makes the government’s missed deadline even harder to explain,” he said.

“If it knew the process would take longer, it should not have given the Legislature and the public a firm completion date.”

Expropriation without compensation

The CoGTA in Gauteng was not able to confirm how many hijacked buildings had been identified in the province.

Ngobeni said the identification process is important for Gauteng’s residents, who should be kept informed of CoGTA’s progress.

“Hijacked buildings are more than abandoned properties. They have become places where criminal syndicates operate and where vulnerable people are exploited,” he said.

The department also failed to answer questions about how many hijacked buildings had been expropriated by the government.

The expropriation of hijacked buildings was proposed to combat the growing crisis, with the government taking control of property assets without paying the original owner.

This was proposed to speed up the eviction of illegal tenants and prevent lengthy legal battles over property ownership.

The government also intended to use expropriation to prevent urban decay by turning vacant buildings into affordable housing.

The eviction process is slowed down by the Prevention of Illegal Occupation (PIE) Act, which requires municipalities to provide alternative housing for residents evicted from hijacked buildings.

This act is designed to protect vulnerable people who have already been exploited by illegal landlords.

It also places a heavy financial toll on municipalities and can lead to lengthy court cases.

Many property owners have also voiced concerns over the use of expropriation without compensation.

They have said that many buildings are hijacked without the original owners’ knowledge or consent, making expropriation an unfair measure.

These owners often assume the building has remained vacant, and are left with a building they cannot sell once it is hijacked.

It is also a lengthy process to evict illegal occupiers, which many property owners are unwilling or unable to afford.