XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: soc.culture.south-africa, alt.niggers   
   From: remailer@domain.invalid   
      
   On 01 Sep 2023, sporging rudy  posted some   
      
   > This is what happens when niggers are in charge of a city.   
      
      
   The building that caught on fire is in what's still called the   
   Central Business District, even though big corporations have long   
   moved out to the safer suburbs, leaving behind abandoned office   
   spaces that, in South African parlance, have now become "hijacked."   
      
   That means people desperate for housing in a country where   
   unemployment is among the highest in the world — officially at 33%   
   but likely much higher — have taken to squatting in squalid   
   conditions in the multi-story buildings, forced to pay rent to the   
   criminal gangs that now run them.   
      
   This is nothing new in this city of 6 million but made headlines   
   this week after the worst fire in recent memory prompted renewed   
   calls for action and led to much political finger-pointing.   
   Authorities are still investigating what exactly caused the   
   disaster.   
      
   Jumping from windows   
   Survivors of the fire, which broke out early Thursday morning,   
   described how they were unable to get out of the five-story   
   building's exit because security gates were locked. Some jumped from   
   windows and one mother threw her baby wrapped in a blanket out of a   
   second-floor window to safety.   
      
   After fire-fighters extinguished the blaze, forensics teams   
   collected remains, with white body bags laid out in the street in   
   neat rows. Desperate family members searched for loved ones, while   
   survivors huddled with the sparse belongings they'd rescued —   
   blankets, a boombox.   
      
   Prudence Ndlovu, 29, stood in a crowd behind a police cordon,   
   staring at the charred and gutted building that was her only home.   
      
   Paying rent to cartels   
   A Zimbabwean, Ndlovu is, like many of the fire's victims, a migrant   
   from a poorer African country who came to Johannesburg — often   
   dubbed "The City of Gold" — looking for a better life but   
   encountering crime and xenophobia.   
      
   She said she paid the cartel who had hijacked the building 1,200   
   South African rands a month in rent, about $60. For that she lived   
   in a makeshift shack erected within the building with her two   
   children and boyfriend.   
      
   Inside, the haphazardly partitioned buildings have broken windows,   
   dark stairwells, piles of garbage and sewage, and people's few   
   belongings — a dirty mattress, a cooking pot.   
      
   For some privacy many living in buildings like this use bits of   
   wood, curtains and cardboard to divide their space — all highly   
   flammable materials, especially when many residents cook on fires in   
   large metal drums or use candles when the illegal electricity   
   connection attached to the squat fails.   
      
   While the exact cause of the fire isn't known, residents and some   
   officials have suggested that candles could have been what sparked   
   it. South Africa is in the midst of a power crisis and there was a   
   blackout at the time, residents said.   
      
   Ndlovu, who ekes out a living selling snacks on the street, told NPR   
   she had "lost everything" in the fire. She said herself and her   
   children had only survived because they'd spent the night of the   
   fire staying at her sister's house.   
      
   "When I see today happening this thing, I think God was the one   
   moving me there," she said. "I see ... the other lady lose the child   
   and the other child is in hospital."   
      
   At least 12 children died in the fire.   
      
   Authorities don't enter   
   Meanwhile, Mthabiseng Maimane, from a neighboring apartment block,   
   complains criminal elements in such hijacked buildings are   
   contributing to Johannesburg's already shockingly high crime rates.   
      
   "What is happening here, the things that we see every day, we're not   
   even safe. ... How do the people take over the buildings?"   
      
   "Even for my kids, I fear for my kids ... they can't even go outside   
   to play," she said, adding that there are drug gangs and crystal   
   meth addicts in the abandoned tower blocks.   
      
   The security is so precarious that even the police are scared to   
   enter the city's hijacked buildings — of which there are believed to   
   be dozens.   
      
   Lebogang Isaac Maile, the head of the provincial Department of Human   
   Settlements, said the fire "demonstrates a chronic problem of   
   housing in our province as we've previously said that there's at   
   least 1.2 million people who need housing."   
      
   "There are cartels who prey on who are vulnerable people. Because   
   some of these buildings, if not most of them, are actually in the   
   hands of those cartels who collect rental from the people," he told   
   media.   
      
   The building at 80 Albert St. that burned this week — and which   
   officials say may have housed as many as 200 families — has a   
   history that's testament to South Africa's dark past.   
      
   It started out during the apartheid era as a building used by the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)