Joburg building approvals held up by inaccessible plans

702’s Bongani Bingwa speaks with David Fleminger, Chairperson of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation

Listen below:

Residents of Johannesburg are reportedly facing significant challenges when trying to build or renovate their properties.

An article in the Sunday Times alleges that city officials are soliciting bribes of up to R2,000 from residents and developers trying to access building plans.

Additionally, the city’s historical archive, which holds over a million documents in the now-closed Metro Centre, has been largely inaccessible since its closure in 2023.

Fleminger says this issue has been raised since the building was closed but they have not had any luck solving the problem.

This creates a huge risk of those plans being stolen or destroyed as the building is standing empty.

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“If those plans leave the archive there is no way to get them back. There are no copies of these plans anywhere else, there are no digital copies. This is literally the only repository.”

- David Fleminger, Chairperson of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation

He says they do not have any hard proof that officials have been accepting bribes to access these plans, but they have heard many anecdotal reports of this happening.

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