![]() And this is where Nelson Mandela, the iconic freedom fighter, began this fight against apartheid. That is the system of segregation where Black and white and all races were kept separately. It was an incredibly diverse city.īut ironically, it’s also where apartheid began. It was when gold was discovered here in 1886 that everybody rushed here, and everybody from Eastern Europe all the way to China came to find their lives here and to make their fortunes here. So Johannesburg is a relatively young city. Bring me back to those hopeful early days. ![]() How did Johannesburg get here? Walk me through it. And for those of us, particularly South Africans, what we’re wondering is if the economic capital of the most prosperous part of the country, which is one of the most advanced economies in Africa - if you can’t keep that city running, what does the rest of this country look like? And what is the hope for the rest of the country, quite frankly? sabrina tavernise In the last few years, we’ve seen Johannesburg slowly decaying, becoming worse and worse every day. They cordoned off the road.Īnd that tells you something about what Johannesburg is as a city. By day two, people had returned to their homes. And thank goodness, there were very few fatalities.Īnd you would think that seeing a giant crack on a main road would shock people, but it didn’t. For example, a few weeks ago, a street quite literally exploded in Downtown Johannesburg. So we have had a series of disasters in Johannesburg, and we’ve kind of just quickly moved on from them. sabrina taverniseĪnd as someone who’s from Johannesburg, how did you understand what had happened? What did it look like to you? lynsey chutel So up to, about, 600 people, possibly even more, just standing there, their entire lives just in ruin and in embers, quite frankly. These were people who lived inside this building. And what we realized is that these weren’t onlookers. lynsey chutelĮven though the fire had been brought under control by the morning, by the time the sun came up, there was still smoke coming from the building, and there were just crowds and crowds of people. And up here, you can see some of the residents who were desperately trying to get out had left a mattress there and were jumping from the top floors. You can see that it’s burned from the back, it’s burned from the front. ![]() And it was just a scene of such devastation. People who had run out of the building were sitting there in shock on the sidewalk. You can, literally, see that the bodies have been covered with metal sheeting, with blankets - lynsey chutel And then, by the end of the day, it was 77 people, and I’d rushed down to the site, and the bodies were laid out in the street. When I first turned on the TV, it was about 20 people. lynsey chutelĪnd the death toll kept rising, hour by hour. Now, they are still searching through the building for more victims. archived recording 2įirefighters rushed to the five-story building. It is a very quickly developing story - lynsey chutel Massive blaze in the Johannesburg CBD this morning. And by the time I woke up - archived recording 1 So last Thursday, at about 1 o’clock in the morning, smoke began to rise from this downtown building. ![]() So Lynsey, tell me about the fire you’ve been reporting on in Johannesburg, which, as it turns out, is the deadliest residential fire in South African history. Today, my colleague, Lynsey Chutel, on how the city that was once a symbol of the hope of post-apartheid South Africa is now an emblem of just how bad the breakdown has become. sabrina taverniseįrom “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily.”Ī devastating fire in Johannesburg last week is raising troubling questions about chaos and dysfunction in Africa’s richest city. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email with any questions. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. This transcript was created using speech recognition software. Transcript A Tragic Fire and Broken Promises in South Africa The fire that killed at least 76 people in Johannesburg last week is raising questions about chaos and dysfunction in Africa’s richest city.
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