eThekwini Municipality's bold steps in urban rejuvenation: 8,000 prosecutions and 90 store closures

The eThekwini Municipality has divided the inner city zone into 20 blocks in its effort to rejuvenate the inner city safety and security, with a staggering 8,000 prosecutions and 90 stores shut down in the 2024/25 financial year. 

The municipality presented a brief outline of its plan to address crime at a Town Talk meeting on Thursday, where it updated roleplayers on progress made on selected workstreams for the inner city regeneration plans.

Puvendra Akkiah, a senior manager at the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and town planner, said the city developed a local area plan in 2019, which was then divided into 15 work streams. 

About the safety and security block approach, the municipality set up a hijacked building task team, addressed offences committed by homelessness, and established an enforcement tracker.

The subdivision of the inner city into 20 blocks allows municipal enforcement branches to conduct thorough inspections.

Akkiah said these inspections were done on a wall-to-wall basis throughout all floors.

He stated that various branches have served notices on offending properties, and follow-ups are being conducted on expired notices, escalating for further prosecutions.

He added that unauthorised food stores were served with prohibition notices, and the metro police enforced the closure on behalf of the Health Department. Fire inspections were also conducted, with a reasonable number of notices served on owners for non-compliance with fire safety regulations.

Akkiah said that follow-up inspections into previous blocks indicate compliance as forthcoming from offenders.

“There are stringent inspections on shops supplying food, with at least 90 stores that were shut down. Since the commencement of the programme, at least 375 integrated enforcement operations have been conducted in the focus area.”

He added that over 1,508 joint clean-up operations led to 2,050 tons of waste being removed from the inner city. 

“General overt and covert policing operations are ongoing in the inner city, and there have been many successes in crimes relating to drugs/drug trafficking, robbery, theft, especially cellphone-related and other serious syndicated crime,” Akkiah said.

He explained that the municipality is innovating service delivery in the city, and an organisational restructuring was undertaken. One of the features of this restructuring is the establishment of a sub-directorate for Bylaw Enforcement and Operations. 

“This sub-directorate presents the consolidation of all enforcement branches within the eThekwini, conducting enforcement and prosecution on a fully integrated basis,” Akkiah said. 

He explained that enforcement in the sub-directorate will be accommodated on a common enforcement tracker system.

“The system presents a dashboard which will allow management and other relevant staff to monitor the performance of all the enforcing branches on the Digital Dashboard,” Akkiah said. 

Akkiah explained that incorporated in the electronic upgrading and innovation of the metro police is the state-of-the-art technology for the SMART Policing Strategy, which includes the new CCTV Command Centre. 

“The projected date for completion is anticipated to be before the end of 2025. The project was designed to look at cost-effective mechanisms to present a state-of-the-art facility which will accommodate an Operations Command Centre as well,” Akkiah explained. 

City Manager Musa Mbhele said the municipality welcomes input from the public, especially during Town Talk sessions. He said suggestions made would be taken forward. 

“For us to be able to build a sustainable city to ensure it leads to its vision that eThekwini will become Africa's most caring city, we will not be able to do so without public input,” he said. 

zainul.dawood@inl.co.za