“We Came Here to Live” Human Stories Behind Immigration and Urban Strain in Johannesburg’s CBD
Sithembile Moyo
Johannesburg’s CBD has always been a place where hope arrives before dawn. From the early gold rush to today’s bustling inner-city streets, the city has pulled in people searching for survival, opportunity, or simply a fresh start. But in recent years, migrants from across Africa,Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Somalia, the DRC and others have reshaped the CBD into a vibrant but strained melting pot, where dreams rise alongside decaying buildings and overstretched services.
On a warm Tuesday morning, the streets around Joubert Park pulse with movement. Salon music spills into the pavement, street vendors call out specials, and the smell of roasting coffee drifts from a small Ethiopian stall. The CBD is alive yet beneath its energy lies a quieter, heavier story of overcrowding, unsafe housing, and a city struggling to cope.
One of the most urgent urban challenges is the crisis of hijacked and derelict buildings. In Hillbrow, Berea and parts of Yeoville, old apartment blocks have been taken over by criminal networks who control the entrances, demand illegal rent, and create an atmosphere of fear. Even walking past these buildings can be dangerous.
Locals say passing by certain blocks especially at night comes with risk. “You walk past at your own risk,” says long-time resident Thobile Maseko. “There are drug operations, muggings, prostitution rings. Crime is happening right there by the doorstep. The buildings are rotten, and what’s inside them is even worse.”
Inside one of these buildings in Berea, 29-year-old Malawian tailor Blessings Phiri threads his machine as he speaks softly. “When I first came to Joburg, I thought the city was shining,” he says. “But the building we stay in… it is not safe. There is crime outside, there is danger inside. We sleep with fear, but we also sleep with hope. I work because I want a life better than what I left.”
Blessings shares a single room with three other men. The corridor outside is dark even in daylight, with cracked walls, exposed wires and a smell of damp rising from the floors below. He shrugs as he looks around. “If I complain, they will just put me out,” he says. “And where will I go? This is all I can afford.”
For many migrants, the CBD offers what their home countries cannot: markets with customers, jobs, and a community of people who understand their struggles. Yet the overwhelming number of residents packed into old buildings has pushed the CBD’s infrastructure far beyond its limit. Blocked sewage, failing electricity, uncollected waste and unreliable water supply have become normal in areas where population density keeps rising. Thobile says the problem is much bigger than the people living there.
“The problem is that the city is not planning for the number of people here now,” she says. “Everything is overloaded. The pipes, the buildings, the streets everything.” City officials acknowledge the challenges, though solutions remain slow. A Johannesburg housing inspector who asked not to be named describes the situation bluntly:
“We cannot keep up. There are too many people living in buildings that should have been condemned years ago. But they have nowhere else to go so, the cycle continues.” Law-enforcement operations are frequent but rarely resolve the root of the problem. Raids, property inspections and Home Affairs verification drive often stir tension between migrants and authorities.
Ethiopian shop Despite these hardships, migrants remain central to the CBD’s economic activity. They run salons, tailor shops, restaurants, market stalls and cellphone repair kiosks. Their presence keeps streets bustling from sunrise to nightfall. But without better planning and safer housing, the human cost remains high.
Urban experts argue that the CBD needs coordinated intervention revitalising abandoned buildings, creating affordable and regulated rental options, strengthening by-law enforcement without harassment, and fixing the immigration system so people are not pushed into illegality.
Yet for many migrants, survival continues one day at a time. As the afternoon sun hits the worn-out pavement outside his building, Blessings wipes fabric dust from his hands and smiles faintly. “We didn’t come here to cause trouble,” he says. “We came here to live. We came here to build something. Even if the city is broken, we are still trying.”
His words echo the spirit of thousands of migrants who walk through Johannesburg’s CBD each day people surviving between danger and determination, hardship and hope
