Fixing South Africa’s fragmented building oversight system requires more than routine municipal fines; it demands structural reform, interdepartmental collaboration and better local resourcing. That is the clear takeaway from a Department of Public Works and Infrastructure report into fatal building collapses across KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Western Cape.
To close regulatory loopholes, amendments to the National Building Regulations are now being drafted. The proposed reforms include establishing a unified Tripartite Parliamentary Working Group to streamline site inspections and introducing statutory blacklisting for negligent professionals.
The urgency of these measures is clear: 17 people died in building collapses last year in incidents investigated by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) and the Council for the Built Environment (CBE).
During the release of the report, Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson highlighted inconsistent oversight and regulations, unapproved construction, weak site-level inspections, municipal staff shortages and ineffective penalties for non-compliance.
- In Doornkop, Soweto, Gauteng, a residential building collapse led to three deaths and three injuries. The property was constructed on high-risk dolomitic land that had previously been earmarked for demolition.
- In Sea Point, Cape Town, formwork failure at the Magnolia development left four people injured. The failure was caused by premature loading of an uninspected temporary structure.
- In Ormonde, Gauteng, a roof-slab collapse caused nine deaths and six injuries. It was triggered by structural steelwork deficiencies that made the structure incapable of bearing wet concrete.
- In Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal, a four-storey building under construction at the River Range Ranch Temple complex in Redcliffe collapsed while concrete was being poured on the upper levels, killing five people and injuring 11.
Carol Phiri, chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Works and Infrastructure, said fines under the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act 103 of 1977 were no longer a deterrent. As a result, she said, “urgent” amendments were being drafted to criminalise illegal construction and gross regulatory negligence.
Phiri said the failures revealed a breakdown across local spatial planning, national infrastructure oversight and site-safety enforcement.
The proposed amendments would introduce potential liability for developers and owners, including criminal charges for developers who build without approved plans or professional oversight.
Municipalities would also be held accountable, with personal liability for building control officers (BCOs) and municipal officials who exhibit gross negligence by turning a blind eye to illegal sites or failing to enforce prohibition notices.
Phiri said there would be automatic statutory blacklisting and criminal referrals through the CBE for registered professionals who sign off on unsound or unverified work.
“Fragmented enforcement allows sites to operate illegally. Municipalities approve plans, DPWI regulates professions, and the Department of Employment and Labour enforces the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The solution would be a Tripartite Parliamentary Working Group comprising the Public Works and Infrastructure, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, and Labour and Employment portfolio committees,” Phiri said.
However, built-environment experts warned that new legislation alone would not resolve the crisis.
Professor Abimbola Windapo, from the Department of Construction Economics and Management at the University of Cape Town, cautioned that South Africa already had substantial regulatory and professional frameworks, including the National Building Regulations.
“The immediate priority should be to improve construction implementation and execution by ensuring that building approvals are followed by effective construction-stage inspection and monitoring, that competent registered professionals — including construction managers, architects and engineers — are engaged to supervise projects, and that there are punitive consequences for non-compliance.”
Speaking about possible solutions, she said the objective should be to move from a reactive collapse-investigation system to a proactive prevention system.
“I would recommend a proactive, risk-based, life-cycle building-control system that includes improved municipal technical capacity; independent or enhanced inspections for higher-risk projects; digital tracking of approvals, inspections and professional appointments; mandatory reporting and escalation of serious non-compliant project activities; and continuous skills development for building control officials, professionals and contractors.”
Professor Hangwelani Hope Magadimisha-Chipungu, a town and regional planning expert from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said there needed to be a real deterrent for developers who deliberately ignored building regulations.
She said penalties should be substantial and take into account the financial benefit a developer may have gained from illegal construction.
“Developers could also be required to pay enforcement and demolition costs and, in serious cases, be prevented from doing business with the government. Where reckless or grossly negligent construction results in death, criminal liability should follow where the evidence supports it,” Magadimisha-Chipungu said.
She said a lack of capacity at municipalities was also an issue, as some municipalities did not have sufficient inspectors or technical staff.
“As a result, illegal construction may only come to the municipality’s attention once a building is already well advanced. A stop-work order is also of little use if there is no capacity to monitor whether the developer has actually stopped and to take further action if the order is ignored,” she said.
Magadimisha-Chipungu said there was a need for minimum staffing standards for municipal planning and building-control departments. Municipalities could not be expected to properly regulate complex construction projects if they did not have enough qualified staff, she added.
“Smaller municipalities, in particular, could be supported through shared provincial teams of planners, engineers, building inspectors and other specialists. There also needs to be a stronger effort to attract and retain professionals in local government and to get qualified people into municipalities that are seriously under-capacitated,” she said.
Echoing these views, Professor Jeffrey Mahachi from the University of Johannesburg’s School of Civil Engineering and the Built Environment stressed that South Africa did not need regulation simply for the sake of regulation.
“What we need is a regulatory system that is coherent, properly resourced, professionally accountable and capable of enforcing the regulations that already exist.”
He said the current review of the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act should clarify the regulatory and institutional framework, including the roles and competencies of BCOs and building inspectors and the statutory requirement for professional registration of those undertaking defined inspection functions.
He called for strengthening of professional accountability through improved competency assessment and appropriate recognition of specialist engineering disciplines and that the emerging Office of the Engineer General is established with sufficient independence, technical authority and consequence-management powers.
He added that an integrated national construction information and risk-reporting system should be developed linking the relevant regulatory institutions, with particular attention to greater integration of CIDB, NHBRC and Agrément South Africa.
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