When the right to housing is ignored, the consequences can be deadly.
The story of the Usindiso building fire of 2023. The COI into the fire found the city responsible for the scale of deaths. The film also raises questions around the misuse of money allocated by the government for the rehousing of victims of the fire. The overarching question the film raises is around negligence and mismanagement of housing regulations and policy and the reneging of the social right to housing.
This film is about more than one fire. It’s about the systematic breakdown of urban housing policy, the abandonment of vulnerable people. Negligence has a cost. And someone must be held accountable.
Welcome to the State Capture and Beyond campaign – an ambitious nationwide initiative committed to combating corruption and building accountability in South Africa.
Led by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and the Human Rights Media Trust (HRMT), in partnership with Brot für die Welt (BfdW) and co-funded by the European Union, this campaign tackles the far-reaching impact of state capture while promoting public participation, especially among vulnerable and marginalised groups.
Our mission is simple but urgent: to empower citizens, foster transparency in public processes, and hold those in power accountable.
Through the voices of affected communities and advocates, the three case studies and two explainer videos in this series expose how corruption severely undermines basic rights, and profiles how people are standing up to reclaim them.
