Musgrave Road with St Thomas church in the background. Picture: Shelley Kjonstad/African News Agency (ANA) Musgrave Road with St Thomas church in the background. Picture: Shelley Kjonstad/African News Agency (ANA)
Durban - On the same stretch of Durban’s star graded hotels stands a dilapidated building on Albany Grove.
It is one of eThekwini Municipality’s “80 bad buildings” set to be rejuvenated as a means to clean up the city centre.
On Friday, the city began its demolition, starting with an abandoned building on Rutherford Road in the South Beach area.
Some of the bad buildings in the city’s radar have become drug dens, brothels and homes for vagrants, like the one on Albany Grove.
The Sunday Tribune visited the five-story unmaintained flat and spoke to a young woman who lives and works in the building.
Pretty, as she calls herself, is 34-years-old and has been living in the flat for the past three years.
After a fight with her siblings, she left her Hammarsdale home to start a life in Durban.
She said she was invited by Jumbo, a foreigner who gave her a place to stay in 2016.
Pretty engaged in sex work and has to work every night to make money. She claimed to earn close to R2000, depending on how “good business is on the day”.
But her earnings are not all hers - she has to give Jumbo a share.
“I have set clients as well, that call me for fun. I do everything the price differs. Some just want me to entertain them while smoking or smoke with them and have sex.
“I must give Jumbo some money from what I make and buy something to eat. Sometimes Jumbo spoils us. Like for Christmas, he will buy us clothes and if he’s in a good mood, sometimes, he would give us drugs for free,” she said.
In the flat, there was an overwhelming stench.
The only form of ventilation was from the bathroom - where the dented door looked like someone had kicked it in. The bathroom window was broken and led to an “escape route” which Pretty cautioned “if you hear the cops coming, that’s your exit and all the way down the pipes”.
The building was said to be illegally connected to an electricity supply.
Pretty said some of the whoonga boys were very handy, they fix the lights when they trip and reconnect the wiring.
“There’s no water in the flat. Six girls used to live here but now there’s four of us and two boys. The other two girls left our group and work somewhere else now. The two boys also do business with both female and male clients,” she said.
There was one communal tap in use, on the ground floor where she and many others who live there, use to fill water.
“We just sleep here and use the rooms for business. Some of our clients want a cheap private space to do drugs and have sex, but we only allow them to come here if they have money.
“It’s dirty but there’s nothing we can do, we just have to clean up. It’s better than being out on the streets,” she said.
The discoloured blanket thrown over the one-bedroom flat window ledge, to air out, was a distraction. The sound of rats tussling for space under the old green worn-out couch, which Pretty sat perched on while she continuously lit nipped cigarettes from an old coffee tin, during our interview, didn’t bother her at all.
A small radio and television was placed on a mounted shelf, with a stack of pirated DVDs lying next to it.
Pretty said hearing about the city’s plan to “clean and refurbish abandoned buildings” worried her, but she had plans to move to Musgrave to continue operating.
“Musgrave is booming, many girls are moving there now. I hear it’s nice, they make a lot of money and live fancy,” she added.