No one was in the dark about what was happening at 80 Albert Street.
“I was really angry,” said Mpho Phalatse, who would go on to serve for just over a year as Johannesburg’s mayor.
The building, she said, was “quite frankly, not habitable.”Neighbors were constantly complaining about the crime spilling out of it and the slumlords who had hijacked it.
It was a city-owned building that had been essentially abandoned.
A 2019 report by city inspectors showed scorched outlets and melted wires in the building’s rooms, clear fire hazards, all adding up to a steady drumbeat of increasingly worrisome signs.
Persons:
”, Mpho Phalatse
Organizations:
Albert
Locations:
Johannesburg