Just Access: The Real Democracy - Episode 4: Can the State Deliver the Promise?

Okay.

So yeah, I think with respect to the question of fire engines and general questions around emergency services, for example, but acutely around the question about addressing problems of fires in the city, I think we have to understand the context of Johannesburg.

I think it's easy for us to really look at, like, failures a-around the city, and a lot of it could be attributed to this in a recent period around coalition government.

But I think there's a longer history around this kind of failure, okay? That these administrative failures around procurement have been a long time coming, and they've only really just been exacerbated, according to w- my understanding, exacerbated around the questions of coalition governments.

So I think with regard to the fire engine issue, fires are quite localized problems that need to be addressed on a smaller scale.

Johannesburg is a big city.

It's quite a sprawling area that has different pockets of areas that need to be addressed.

It's not, like, a really dense city.

So it already presented a challenge for city administrators and people around that work in this sector.

My understanding is that it was already a challenge.

But they have not risen to the challenge at all.

I think it's been a long time of really just descending issues.

They have just cascaded down the line.

Recently, when we were looking at this thing around 2024, 2025, nobody knew how many fire engines Johannesburg had that were working.

At that time, it could have been 10.

Some people even mentioned that we only had two at the time, that the City of Johannesburg [chuckles] was in control of only two.

Recently, the claim is that there's 22, but according to our understanding around the regulations for the addressing of fire engines for the city of over six million people, you're meant to have about 70.

Now, the city is quite happy that they've increased the fleet to around 22, but as you can hear, that's not enough, obviously.

So, I mean, the issue around the unevenness about how these things fall, it's easy to see.

For instance, when you had the Usindiso building fire, this is a inner city that's been neglected generally, and a lot of these buildings are not built and not structured for fire prevention in the first place.

So it's already a kind of combustible situation where any small thing can be exacerbated, and in the same sense, you have in our poorer areas, like in, uh, your informal settlements that are not built for fire prevention, any small issue becomes majorly, you know, manifested in that area.

So we think about this question around the fact that there's fires that happen in informal settlements all the time that are not addressed.

So all these kind of issues that are generally felt by citizens across the city become acutely felt by people in poor households and poor communities.

So the current situation is that the city is unable to really address the problem of fire prevention in the city, and what's happened is that there's been a private solution to the issue.

I think there's about two major private fire services that deal with these issues, and they're quite good at it.

Okay.

So yeah, I think with respect to the question of fire engines and general questions around emergency services, for example, but acutely around the question about addressing problems of fires in the city, I think we have to understand the context of Johannesburg.

I think it's easy for us to really look at, like, failures a-around the city, and a lot of it could be attributed to this in a recent period around coalition government.

But I think there's a longer history around this kind of failure, okay? That these administrative failures around procurement have been a long time coming, and they've only really just been exacerbated, according to w- my understanding, exacerbated around the questions of coalition governments.

So I think with regard to the fire engine issue, fires are quite localized problems that need to be addressed on a smaller scale.

Johannesburg is a big city.

It's quite a sprawling area that has different pockets of areas that need to be addressed.

It's not, like, a really dense city.

So it already presented a challenge for city administrators and people around that work in this sector.

My understanding is that it was already a challenge.

But they have not risen to the challenge at all.

I think it's been a long time of really just descending issues.

They have just cascaded down the line.

Recently, when we were looking at this thing around 2024, 2025, nobody knew how many fire engines Johannesburg had that were working.

At that time, it could have been 10.

Some people even mentioned that we only had two at the time, that the City of Johannesburg [chuckles] was in control of only two.

Recently, the claim is that there's 22, but according to our understanding around the regulations for the addressing of fire engines for the city of over six million people, you're meant to have about 70.

Now, the city is quite happy that they've increased the fleet to around 22, but as you can hear, that's not enough, obviously.

So, I mean, the issue around the unevenness about how these things fall, it's easy to see.

For instance, when you had the Usindiso building fire, this is a inner city that's been neglected generally, and a lot of these buildings are not built and not structured for fire prevention in the first place.

So it's already a kind of combustible situation where any small thing can be exacerbated, and in the same sense, you have in our poorer areas, like in, uh, your informal settlements that are not built for fire prevention, any small issue becomes majorly, you know, manifested in that area.

So we think about this question around the fact that there's fires that happen in informal settlements all the time that are not addressed.

So all these kind of issues that are generally felt by citizens across the city become acutely felt by people in poor households and poor communities.

So the current situation is that the city is unable to really address the problem of fire prevention in the city, and what's happened is that there's been a private solution to the issue.

I think there's about two major private fire services that deal with these issues, and they're quite good at it.