Hey I remember some of those places, I saw my first corpse back in the late 80s in an area nearby, it scared the bejeemers out of me, meanwhile my parents were enjoying the sights and sounds of native Africa.

Great site Geoff, although I'm not sure that replacement windows will help much, most of those buildings are now occupied by refugees and illegals from Zim, Mozambique, Angola and even Nigeria, the first thing on those ppl's minds is survival, so they really don't care about the litter or about new windows. Besides young hooligans and pissed off locals will liekly just break the windows anyway.

If I may make a suggestion, your ideas are good, but the problem is psychological not material, these ppl just don't care they don't feel like a part of their neighbourhood and they have other things on their minds like unemployment and near starvation. Perhaps you need to concentrate on getting donations for product (ie. windows) and getting funding to educate the locals to install the product, thereby they have a hand in the beautification of their neighbourhoods and feel like they are useful.

Well they are not afforded proper building maintenance because they are squatters. What is the incentive of the building owners to maintain their buildings if they are not receiving any rent or other funds in order to keep up the buildings.

This problem is fundamentally a social one, there are not enough jobs and there is not enough housing available. What you really need to address is creating job skills, job oppurtunities and real housing. In many case these buildings were once office buildings or hotels and not suitable for living.

This is a much bigger problem than trying to get the residents to replace windows. There is abject poverty here, and that needs to be addressed first.

I remember being scared driving through the city when I was growing up, those pictures just remind me how happy I am being out of that country. Personally I don't think people of European decent belong in Africa, we've taken everything and given very little back, anything that has been left (like developments and infrastructure) doesn't represent the original inhabitants needs and since it was basically for the white minority people still harbour resentment at this (this is understandable though) and these areas aren't looked after since the connection that people might have with it is from a bitter past.

A lot would have to change in order for these areas to flourish. As previously mentioned these spaces are full of squatters who don't have the resources or the desire (since it's not their own property, why bother?) to renovate or look after their spaces.

Since the city has so many abandonned buildings it might be a good idea to reporpose these buildings by training the people that will inhabit them in construction techniques and then give them back to the people so at the very least communities will form and conditions will hopefully stablise enough for further development to occur. Also the skills can be passed down to other people and more jobs and change will come.

People should take ownership of their surroundings instead of always being given everything for free. I hope that if the same situation occurs as Zimbabwe the government will have the foresight to train people to farm correctly and look after the land, rather than just giving it away to unskilled users and allowing desertification to occur.

Well I finally went over all the pics on that site, and I was pretty depressed. But then I looked at a pic of some guy walking next to a fence and I noticed the sunset and trees in the background and I remember playing soccer on an autumn afternoon after school in Pretoria back in the 90s, under a clear blue sky and in crisp cool weather and it cheered me right up.
Hmm that reminds me, I wonder how my dogs ended up, they were real blood thirsty buggers, they joined my neighbour's herd of blood thirsty buggers when we left SA.

You can get into Lenasia, a place in J'berg. The town is not far from Johannesburg Central Business District (35 km) and is zoned within the “City of Joburg” Municipality. The first inhabitants of Lenasia were of Indian origin. Its good for the photos and also the nature is good in everything.

Keeping a watch on Lenasia