Page 12 - Tim Cocks News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Like many impoverished residents of downtown Johannesburg, Sihle Dube had rented a tiny room from someone who didn't actually own it, in a rundown building that was becoming a trash-strewn haven for drugs and crime. Dube scrambled into his trousers and tried to climb out of his first floor window, but he slipped on a satellite dish, fell and blacked out. More than 70 others did not make it out alive, one of Johannesburg's worst disasters in living memory.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -Like many impoverished residents of downtown Johannesburg, Sihle Dube had rented a tiny room from someone who didn't actually own it, in a rundown building that was becoming a trash-strewn haven for drugs and crime. Dube scrambled into his trousers and tried to climb out of his first floor window, but he slipped on a satellite dish, fell and blacked out. More than 70 others did not make it out alive, one of Johannesburg's worst disasters in living memory.

WHAT ARE HIJACKED BUILDINGS AND WHEN DID THE ISSUE BEGIN? Since the end of apartheid in 1994, a housing crisis in South Africa's largest city of Johannesburg, in Gauteng province, has grown worse, as big businesses moved out of the inner city into affluent suburbs. Criminal syndicates in the 1990s and 2000s started "hijacking" buildings that were left empty and renting them out illegally.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - More than 70 people were killed overnight when fire raged through a five-storey Johannesburg apartment block that may have ...

Zambia sought to deny bail to five Egyptians and six Zambians charged with espionage for entering a restricted zone of Lusaka airport, two weeks after Zambian authorities said their plane had been...